Mac Power G5 vs. AMD Athlon 64 system....

[slvr_phoenix]

Show me the reviews.

I've read them all years ago, but I suppose I could try to dig one up. In <A HREF="http://techreport.com/reviews/2002q4/ideraid/index.x?pg=17" target="_new">this</A> review you'll see where even with IDE drives and software XOR processing, RAID10 and RAID5 have about the same write performance with four drives.

If only my mobo worked properly I'd show you how RAID 5 sux arse.

Do you have onboard RAID or a card? Do you have IDE, SATA, or SCSI? Do you have hardware or software XOR? (If it's SATA/IDE, then it's about 99% likely to be software.) How much memory does your RAID hardware have? (If it's SATA/IDE, it's about 80% likely to be <i>none</i>.) How much of your CPU is used by your RAID5 array?

Chances are that if you're seeing RAID5 suck, it's because your have IDE/SATA RAID with software XOR and little or no memory in your RAID controller. Not only is this slow compared to a proper solution, but it sucks up a CPU's resources like ... well, I'll leave that to your imagination.

A <i>good</i> RAID5 solution (IE. SCSI RAID5 controller with hardware XOR and lots of cache running 15K drives) is expensive, but it kicks the pants off of a cheap SATA RAID5 setup <i>and</i> uses almost no CPU resources while doing it.

The biggest advantage of RAID0, RAID1, and RAID10 are that they take very little processing power and no cache to run, so cheap (most IDE/SATA) solutions using them work well. Where as cheap solutions for RAID5 are awful. But pay the money to do RAID5 right and it's completely different.

یί∫υєг ρђœŋίχ
<font color=red><i>The Devil made me do it, but I <b>liked</b> it.</i></font color=red>
@ 196K of 200K!

 

[Zoron]

Wusy... dude... <b>software</b> RAID 5 does indeed suck. However, <b>hardware</b> RAID 5 kicks serious ass. You'll never see software RAID 5 in a server; and at the same time, why do you suppose most servers use RAID 5 and not RAID 10?

Exactly... it kicks ass. :tongue:

<font color=red> If you design software that is fool-proof, only a fool will want to use it. </font color=red>

 

[slvr_phoenix]

The problem with my mobo is the solutionless PCI latency problem with the AMD 786 southbridge causing slowdowns on data rate hence I can't get an accuate result.

Ouch man. Is that as bad as it sounds?

یί∫υєг ρђœŋίχ
<font color=red><i>The Devil made me do it, but I <b>liked</b> it.</i></font color=red>
@ 196K of 200K!

 

[emogoch]

You'll never see software RAID 5 in a server; and at the same time, why do you suppose most servers use RAID 5 and not RAID 10?

Because:
1) You need atleast 5 drives in the RAID 5 to get the performance up to RAID 1, 0, or 10 levels (although, that's only a 1 drive difference). You'd be hard pressed to find a server with a hardware RAID that doesn't have atleast 5 drives.
2) Budget. Everyone likes redundancy, but no-one likes paying double for it, when you can get the majority of the speed and redundancy for a hell of a lot less.

 

[slvr_phoenix]

You need atleast 5 drives in the RAID 5 to get the performance up to RAID 1, 0, or 10

Wow. Even if we ignore things like the above link I provided that shows a four-disk RAID5 array on par with a four disk RAID10 array in a <i>software IDE</i> RAID solution, there's still that RAID1 by itself is only slightly faster in read (and the same speed in write) as a single drive. I mean RAID1 is useful for redundancy, but it's certainly not used for performance.

You'd have been much better off if you'd just specified RAID0. But, of course, RAID0 isn't in any way redundant. In fact, it <i>reduces</i> MTBF.

Which then brings us right back full circle. RAID5 wastes the least storage capacity to achieve redundancy, has the second-best performance (only losing to the anti-redundant RAID0), scales rather nicely, and is quite flexible. The price for hardware XOR and controller memory is RAID5's only major downfall.

یί∫υєг ρђœŋίχ
<font color=red><i>The Devil made me do it, but I <b>liked</b> it.</i></font color=red>
@ 196K of 200K!

 

[slvr_phoenix]

The problem occupied pretty much my semester holiday trying to solve it and I found no solutions.
Details are all in my RAID-5 thread in the HDD forum.

Ouch. I read it. It sounds like you're screwed. Sorry. (It also sounds like it's not a RAID5 problem, but a PCI-write problem.)

یί∫υєг ρђœŋίχ
<font color=red><i>The Devil made me do it, but I <b>liked</b> it.</i></font color=red>
@ 196K of 200K!

 

[slvr_phoenix]

Man do I ever hear that. 🙁 My DVD burner has been dead for two months now and I <i>still</i> haven't scrounged up the fifty bucks to replace it. Damn weird optical drive failures. I swear there's a gremlin that loves to toy with eject mechanics in my PC. It's the second time in the last year that a drive has just stopped ejecting the tray properly.

یί∫υєг ρђœŋίχ
<font color=red><i>The Devil made me do it, but I <b>liked</b> it.</i></font color=red>
@ 196K of 200K!

 

[WingDing]

I know the feeling mate.

...*cries*... :frown:

😱 I didn't lose my virginity, Wusy stole it 😱

 

[KalletheMan]

Oki. But can someone here confirm that the AMD X2 or Intel Pentium Extreme Edition systems are a much better choice than spending money on a MAC Power G5?

What harddrive should my friend buy? After the reviews I have read, it seems like it is the Western Digital drives which are the fastest ones, but I have some bad experiences with this brand. I think their drives doesn't last as long as they says. No I am currently trying the Samsung drives, and they seems like beeing of high quality, but are they very fast.

My friend doesn't want to invest in SCSI system, so he is going to buy SATA drives. So should I advice him to invest in AMD X2 processor, not the best graphic card(but a quite good one), and a good overclocker motherboard.
But there has been some different replies about if it is important to have fast memory. You know, the machine should also been using to video decoding/encoding, so I say that it is important with a fast MB and fast memory, especially, if you should overclock the computer(in the future).
Agree?

Thanks.

 

[Rugger]

I think their drives doesn't last as long as they says.

Seagate has a 5yr warranty on their drives. They're quiet dependable and fast.

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<font color=red>You're a boil on the arse of progress - don't make me squeeze you!</font color=red>