What is the benefit of a SATA RAID controller?

Mikey1280 · 27 Jan 2006 at 13:25

Hi. I am just curious to know what the benefit of a SATA RAID controller is over the standard Nforce 4 SATA controllers. Are they faster or something than the Nforce 4 controller, does PCI not slow them down, are the PCI express versions any faster? Are they purely just to add more SATA ports?

nightwish · 27 Jan 2006 at 17:48

Mikey1280 said:
Hi. I am just curious to know what the benefit of a SATA RAID controller is over the standard Nforce 4 SATA controllers.

Most mobo controllers are only likely to provide support for raid levels 0, 1 and JBOD. A high-ish spec addin card may also provide levels 3 and/or 5.

Mikey1280 said:
Are they faster or something than the Nforce 4 controller,

No

Mikey1280 said:
does PCI not slow them down,

Yes, potentially. Mot a problem if you only have a couple of 7200rpm disc on there, but the faster your discs are and the more of them you have, the bigger the bottleneck will be.

Mikey1280 said:
are the PCI express versions any faster?

Yes. Can't remember actual transfer speeds off the top of my head, but yes PCI-E varients will be faster.

Mikey1280 said:
Are they purely just to add more SATA ports?

[/QUOTE]

Can do. Also can provide extra raid levels as mentioned above. Can also use them on an older mobo which doesn't have sata ports

smids · 27 Jan 2006 at 18:12

PCI bus limits at 133MB/s HDU transfer. As the PCI bus is shared, you can really bottleneck.

PCI-E x1 (yes, x1) is 250MB/s each way (500MB/s bandwidth effective) and is dedicated. How much better is PCI-e than PCI? Ridiculously so.

max power · 28 Jan 2006 at 17:33

whoa here a sec lets not forget that there are a whole list of options on a raid card that could make it faster better than the on board nvidia option.

like 64meg of mem a good cpu on the card ect.

not to mention the reasources u WILL free up moving the duties off the mainboard and cpu. just look what happens when u stop using on board sound.

so the short answer depends on the card u choose BUT the better cards cost more $$$$$

smids · 28 Jan 2006 at 17:37

Yeah. My PCI-E SATA RAID card indeed uses less CPU and has a better performance than the nVRAID. (SIL3132 sata card).

Mikey1280 · 28 Jan 2006 at 20:44

Smids how much CPU usage do your drives on your controller, will you do the HDtune benchmarking test so I can compare with mine, what drives you got?

smids · 28 Jan 2006 at 21:08

Hmm, HDTune -I've never used that but I do have an HDtach, if that is any use:

Raptor 150GB

Mikey1280 · 28 Jan 2006 at 21:25

thanks a lot smids I will get this HDtach program then to compare. Do you know anything about SCSI drives?

smids · 28 Jan 2006 at 22:14

Only the basics, I'm afraid. It's too expensive for me to dabble with it, so I haven't bothered *he says after buying a Raptor 150GB :rolleyes:

*

Mikey1280 · 28 Jan 2006 at 22:17

Lol, so was the purchase of a Raptor 150 justified? My mate wants to get a SCSI setup just wondered if you knew anything about them. Thanks

smids · 28 Jan 2006 at 22:20

Not enough that so I would trust myself to reliably advise you. And yes, I love my 150GB. Easy to setup and very fast. The great thing is because it is 150GB, I can use it as storage and OS.

Mikey1280 · 28 Jan 2006 at 22:56

Lol I could never justify buying a raptor and dont have the money! What file size did you set the drive to 128kb,16kb etc or is this only for RAID. Hmmm 2 raptor 150s in RAid 0

now that would be nice

smids · 28 Jan 2006 at 22:58

That's the stripe size and is only for RAID0. Yes, two of these in RAID0 would be nice - but I'm saving my money for a PS3

.

Mikey1280 · 28 Jan 2006 at 23:00

Lol, when are the PS3s meant to be coming out? Have you got the normal raptor 150 or the raptor 150 X edition

smids · 29 Jan 2006 at 10:57

PS3 about May (Japan) so July (?) here. I have the Server version (the non-windowed Raptor 150). It's a better drive than the X which costs more, and has half the MTBF (1.2 millions hours v 600,000 hours - Mean Time Before Failure).