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...


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

 

[kjv1611]

Thought I'd post back to this one about my new setup/build.

I ended up getting the Abit AB9-Pro as mentioned, and I got the following:
[UL][LI]Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 - I decided not to wait longer for this one component when the rest was already sitting at my house. [/LI]
[LI] 2GB Patriot High-Performance DDR2-800 RAM[/LI]
[LI]eVGA Nvidia Gforce 8600 GT - 256MB DDR3 Ram[/LI]
[LI]The 2 Raptors - For now, I'm just running single drives, what with the floppy connection being so hard to deal with, and I can do SATA for the system drive, and not have to floppy up drivers - whereas if I try RAID for Windows drive, it requires the floppy.[/LI]
[/UL]
Well, that's not every single component, but probably all that's important to the discussion.

Anyway, I've not run hdtach yet just to see, but I've seen some huge performance gains so far. No PCI cards to install for SATA RAID if I want to go to that, so I like that option. I may later reinstall, and do the RAID 0 again, but I want to get a flash drive to be recognized as a floppy on my system before I do that.

Also, overclocking this CPU on this board is just amazing IMHO. The CPU was running at temps between 25 and 33, depending upon load. So, I figured I'd give it a go (this is using the Scythe Ninja CPU cooler). So far all I've done is push up the FSB a little, and instead of 2.66 stock, I'm doing 2.88 Ghz. I can't say that it has really made a difference in performance, but I'm just tinkering right now, anyway, in that regard.

The audio editing is amazing compared to my last system. The Core 2 Duo can't even be compared to the Athlon XP that I had. I have been mind-boggled at that.

The Abit board was a bit of a pain at first, until I flashed the BIOS to the most recent edition (v20). Now, it seems great - other than the floppy connection location.

The Intel RAID options do seem nice, but I had issues of getting the RAID drivers to load when I did try the RAID 0, so I just gave up (rather quickly) and just decided to stick to one drive for Window for now. I'm getting better performance than ever, anyway, and with the Raptor throughput probably being 85MB/sec compared to what I was getting 90MB/Sec before, it's no doubt.

I'm not saying I won't do RAID. I'm sure I'll get enough of an itch to do it eventually, but I am just holding off for now.

As for my storage hard drives, I'll probably continue with my idea of putting them in another computer for a "home made NAS", since by the time I added those back into the picture, my old power supply couldn't keep up anymore. It runs fine without the extra 4 hard drives.

All in all, I'm really really happy with my current setup. Thanks to ArizonaGeek for mentioning that board. I've been well pleased so far. And it's got more abilities and features than I'll be using anytime soon, I'm sure.

--

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