Thoughts on RAID Performance (PCI vs Onboard vs PCI-X) 1

[kjv1611]

I currently have PCI RAID cards that seem to perform quite well. Of course, on my current board, I do not have PCI-X connections, so PCI was the only choice for hardware RAID.

Oh, and they are all PCI-32, not PCI-64, as I read somewhere that some PCI slots are 64..

Anyhow, what I am thinking about is whether with a newer board/processor, whether keeping my PCI RAID Card will be the best idea or not.

Basically, will I still have a performance gain by doing a RAID 0 of 2 Raptor 74GB 16MB cache drives over using onboard RAID of the newer motherboard (with a Core 2 Duo processor)? I would think so, given that it is a hardware RAID solution, but I wanted to seek some advice from some guys around here.

Also, I currently have a RAID 3 array of 3 drives on another card (3 WD 500GB drives). I'm thinking about moving that to a slower machine, and just using it as a file server - I've asked questions in another thread about that.

In a way, I'd almost like to just do without the RAID setup altogether, b/c it's more headache than just strait plugging in a hard drive for the system. However, I got a HUGE performance jump when I did RAID 0 this last time. But, I'm sure a big part of that was in using the Raptors vs the 7200 RPM drives I had been using...


--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[kjv1611]

Hmmm... well, I guess this would be a good time to learn slipstreaming the Windows CD with the drivers. Because if the overall performance difference is as big as it seems it would be with the onboard Matrix RAID vs the PCI card RAID, then it'd be worth the initial install headache of such. And if I did a slipstream Windows XP CD, then I wouldn't have to worry about the floppy drive, either - which would be much preferred.

Thinking about all of this is starting to make me drool...

Excuse me while I go and get a napkin.

FYI, just thought I'd mention this:
My first computer I built was with an AMD K62 500MHz processor and associated parts. Later, I upgraded to an AMD Athlon 900MHz Slot A processor. Wow, that was a huge performance leap, b/c of the differences in architecture.
Later, I upgraded to the Athlon XP 3200+ - at the time the Athlon 64 lineup was about half-way through I guess.
This would probably be the biggest upgrade I've made in quite a while. The last one was about 3 years, maybe 4 years ago, if I remember correctly.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[ArizonaGeek]

On the board that you have - did you have to do a F6 to load the RAID drivers with Windows for it to recognize a RAID configuration, or no? That would be some important information, considering my RAID array would be on the system drive.

I did have to use the F6 option to load the drivers in XP. Which sucks because who owns a floppy any more? Luckily I had a USB floppy drive at my work. What I did was set up my two 250's in a RAID 0 then loaded Windows. After Windows was installed I loaded my three 400 gig drives in a RAID 5 then loaded the drivers in Windows. There was a two fold reason for that, one I wanted to make double sure I was loading the OS on the correct drive and two I didn't want to have to load a bunch of drivers on the install.

About two months after I got it I wound up installing Vista Ultimate. I copied all the disks to an old 32mb USB key and it installed perfect. Have not had one problem since loading Vista.

Cheers
Rob

The answer is always "PEBKAC!

 

[ArizonaGeek]

If you can, please take a test of your system drive/array with the same program.

I'll take the test when I get home tonight and I'll let you know what I come up with. Sorry I didn't see the post earlier, got hit with one problem after another yesterday. When it rains it pours, literally, had a leaky roof in my server room yesterday.

Cheers
Rob

The answer is always "PEBKAC!

 

[kjv1611]

Leaky roof in a server room = not a good day.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[ArizonaGeek]

Here are the results. I had to run it in XP SP2 compatibility mode on Vista Ultimate so I don't know how accurate these are:

RAID 5 (three 400 gig drives):
Random access: 13.5ms
CPU utilization: 4% (+/-2%)
Average read: 93.6 MB/s
Burst Speed was 192.0 MB/s

RAID 0 (two 250 gig drives)
Random access: 20.0ms
CPU: 2% (+/-2%)
Average read 51.4 MB/s
Burst speed was 186.3 MB/s

Stand alone 200 gig drive (no RAID)
Random access: 13.4ms
CPU 1% (+/-2%)
Average read: 52.9 MB/s
Burst speed was 119.7 MB/s

Hope this info helps you out!

Cheers
Rob

The answer is always "PEBKAC!

 

[Nelviticus]

Interesting that apart from a minor difference in CPU utilisation your RAID 5 shows better figures all round than your RAID 0. Just goes to show that the drives themselves are an important factor - bigger drives are generally quicker than smaller ones as they tend to pack the data closer together, so the heads don't have to move as far.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[kjv1611]

I'm guessing that the only reason why my PCI card gave a higher average read time is due to the fact of using Raptors in the RAID 0 array. Either way, those numbers look good.

One thing I have noticed, after looking up that board online in reviews is that it seems to have the most SATA and USB connections, but it also seems to have near the bottom of performance when compared to boards on the same chipset. It did when some contests, and most were so close, the difference was negligible. When it came to overclocking, it was left in the dust - particularly by Asus boards. Of course, Asus took the top 4 spots out of a contest of about 8 or 10 I think at anandtech.com.

But the Asus boards also cost at least twice as much, generally (after rebate on the Abit board), so I'm thinking this board is still worth it. . Especially considering an overclocked Core 2 Duo as the processor.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[kmcferrin]

Interesting that apart from a minor difference in CPU utilisation your RAID 5 shows better figures all round than your RAID 0.

Just keep in mind that this test is only testing read speeds, not writes. If it were testing writes then the RAID5 would definitely be slower there, as would any other parity-based RAID.

 

[Nelviticus]

The card I bought is PCI and supports RAID 0, 1 or 3. I moved my entire system over to it which in retrospect probably wasn't a good idea in terms of performance. It's fine for huge reads but not great for Windows startup, swap file use and general day-to-day PC activity (although not bad either as you wouldn't notice it was slower). At least I have redundancy now though.

I wish I'd benchmarked the old set-up before I started - I had two 250GB Samsung SATA drives running indpendently and added a third to the array so I ended up with the same amount of storage. It took me three days to get everything migrated (with the able assistance of Norton Ghost and a 500GB NAS) so I don't really fancy doing it all again - twice! - just for a benchmark. I'd love to know how performance has changed though.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[kjv1611]

Nelviticus,

Are you using one of the PCI RAID cards by PNY - the PNY S-CURE cards? At least, it sounds like you're using a NetCell chipped board.

Are you able to take a test and see what your scores show up as with yours if that's the case? Oh, and let us know what mobo and CPU you're using, too.

I have 2 of the PNY S-CURE PCI cards setup, each with a separate RAID array - 1 for system, one for storage. And, it's looking like I may be better off going with just the onboard RAID on a newer board. So, if your board is newer than mine, that might also help see any differences..

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[ArizonaGeek]

It did when some contests, and most were so close, the difference was negligible. When it came to overclocking, it was left in the dust - particularly by Asus boards.

In my case I wasn't going to overclock my CPU. I am not a gamer or a video person so the extra boost really wouldn't do me any good. I am an audio guy so storage was my biggest deal. I was tired of losing data. I do regular back ups but it is such a pain to have to restore 600+ gigs of data and hope that nothing is corrupt on the move. At least now I have a spare 400 gig drive laying around so if I lose one in my RAID 5 I at least have a shot at getting my data back.

I did have a SATA RAID 5 card but I didn't think it worked near as good or was nearly as stable as the RAID on my motherboard. Of course I only paid about $100 for it which is on the very low end for a price on a SATA card with RAID 5, most of what I saw was over $500 and up to $1,000. Get what you pay for I guess.

Hope it works out for you.

Cheers
Rob

The answer is always "PEBKAC!

 

[Nelviticus]

My card is a 3-port XFX Revo 64 which is based on a NetCell chip, I'm guessing the same chip as yours. I bought it cheap for 11UKP (about 22USD).

My motherboard's an Asus P5B (not the 'deluxe' variety) and although it can do RAID the only two SATA ports you can use for this are one of the internal ones plus the external one - completely pointless. CPU is a Core 2 Duo E6600.

I'll run the benchmarks again and let you know what I get.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[kjv1611]

Thanks! I can't wait to see how that chip performs on a newer mobo/cpu setup. Of course, it still won't be apples to apples, being that mine is with 2 Raptors.

It's a shame that you can't even reasonably try RAID on your board - I'm really shocked that the only RAID option is separated between internal and external. That just doesn't make 1 bit of sense to me.

I think I may still be leaning towards the Abit board. Although I don't think I'm going to connect 9 internal SATA devices, it's nice knowing that much is there, in case I change my mind later on.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[kmcferrin]

It's a shame that you can't even reasonably try RAID on your board - I'm really shocked that the only RAID option is separated between internal and external. That just doesn't make 1 bit of sense to me.

ASUS does weird things like that. I've got an old K8N-E board (socket 754), and it supports RAID 0,1, and 0+1. But there's only two SATA ports on it, so if you want to do 0+1 you have to use IDE drives for that and then (presumably) a SATA optical drive (which didn't exist at the time the board came out).

 

[kjv1611]

Wow! That one almost sounds like a practical joke!

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[kjv1611]

Okay, another thought I've had on this whole subject:

I have read about how the P965 chipset has some issues that may have been cleared up/resolved with the newer P35 chipset, and maybe the G33 chipset. Well, Abit has a series of boards based on the P35 chipset, but the I35 Pro that is based on this one costs $184 at NewEgg - that's twice what the A9 Pro will be after rebate.

The main 2 overriding themes that I'm reading are these: Better cooling, and better overclocking - at least on the newer specific motherboard.

I personally am beginning to wonder how much difference will really be noticeable between the A9 Pro, and the newer I35 Pro. I mean, I'm sure it's not running half the temperature, and able to overclock to twice the performance level...

Any thoughts here? Upon looking around at what's available at each price point, the more I look, the more I think I'd be better off sticking with the A9 pro, since it does everything at least pretty decent, and has bar none the most SATA 3.0 connections that I can find on one board.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[Nelviticus]

OK here's the result for my 'Netcell Revolution SR5000 R3-3':

Random access: 17.2ms
CPU utilisation: 2%
Average read: 84.1 MB/s
Burst speed: 99.2 MB/s.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[kjv1611]

Yeah, that's a wee bit better than mine, and my guess would be either a better PCI bus, or either because mine is so loaded.

Well, I went ahead and jumped for the Abit A9 board. I figure that the difference between the other boards is not enough to worry about it, or pay more money. Plus all those connections!

Maybe within the next couple weeks or month, maybe I'll get the processor and all put together, and I'll see what numbers I can post.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[kmcferrin]

Well, the P35 has official support for 1333MHz FSB, and I'm pretty sure that the P965 doesn't. Also, the P35 uses ICH9 whereas P965 uses ICH8. I'm not sure of all of the improvements, but that might figure in somewhere.

The Abit IP35 was the one that I was looking at when I was considering going with a Core 2 CPU, but those boards aren't cheap.

 

[kjv1611]

Yep. If the one I'm going for wasn't on sale, and didn't have a mail in rebate, then that one would be the one I'd look at. From what I read, it has some amazing overclocking capabilities, and sounds like one of the most stable boards out there. It also is loaded with features. But at twice the price of the one I picked out, I just figured the differenes weren't worth it. I realize it supports 1333MHz front side bus, and the newer more stable (cooler, etc) chipset. That is the reason I kept going back and forth for so long.

But, I'm confident the A9-Pro will do plenty well enough. And frankly, when I think about it, I could just say "eenie meenie meiny moe" and pick a board that would out-perform my current setup, what with the Core 2 Duo.

So, it looks like this is what I have so far:
[ul]
[li]CPU - Core 2 Duo E6400 - free to me[/li]
[li]Mobo - Abit A9 Pro - $99 after discounts/rebate[/li]
[li]RAM - Patriot Extreme Perf 2 GB Pair DDR2-900 - $66 after discounts/rebate[/li]
[li]Graphics - eVGA nVidia 8600GT - $99 after discount/rebate[/li]
[li]2 74 GB, 16MB Cache Raptors for RAID 0 + 1 System (Matrix RAID) - already had[/li]
[li]Sound - Audigy 2 - Already had (it's Audigy 2 something, but I can't remember what the something is at the moment.[/li]
[li]Optical - Probably just use 2 of the (IDE)4 LG 18X DVD Burners I currently have - very nice, quiet, fast- may later go to using SATA opticals, but not concerned about that just yet - using round IDE cables.[/li]
[li]I may hook up a floppy at first, just go get Windows XP Pro installed, and update the BIOS if need be, then remove grandpa floppy. - already have[/li]
[li]Case - Antec P180b - got for $49 after sales/rebate a few days ago[/li]
[li]Monitor - same old 19 inch flat screen ViewSonic CRT I've used for a while (got about 2 or 3 years ago I think for $50, when practically brand new - from local news classifieds)[/li]
[li]CPU cooling - I may just use the stock cooling, but I am seriously considering picking up a Scythe Ninja for $35 from directron.com - from what I saw in several SilentPCReview.com comparisons with various new CPU coolers, it seems the quietest and coolest over all, especially for the price. - but haven't ordered that yet.[/li]
[/ul]
Then, I'll either just go ahead and put the storage RAID on the same mobo/case, or piece together some of the other parts into a file server. I could use the Athlon XP, but I may just sell all of that to help pay for the new stuff, and just find a cheap replacement mobo for the P4 processor with an old case I have, and put that all together - but this part is not determined yet.

All in all, it'll probably be at least 2 weeks, yet before I have everything where I can actually get it all put together and have it running. And that's assuming nothing else happens in the mean time (related or unrelated).

If the RAID performance is as much better as it sounds it should be with the Intel RAID compared to my PCI card RAID, then I am going to be practically in tears at how fast I can edit our church's audio. Of course, I'll be doing other things as well, but that's the most important ongoing task at the moment.

And I still have yet two other ideas for the "NAS" box that is still lingering in my mind, but I'll not go there unless I end up doing one of those for sure.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me