onboard raid VS pci raid??

[kemokim]

I just had a few friends telling me that when i look for my new mobo i should choose one without raid (i already have 2 identical drives) and instead look for a mobo without one and then buy a raid pci card...
they said that this would be A LOT better performance

so what do you think??

Kim Jørgensen

 

[AMD_Man]

Not much better performance, but more features. Go with onboard RAID if all you want is a simpe RAID 0.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[kemokim]

ok thanx... ill be on the lookout for some mobo's with 266A + raid

 

[FatBurger]

More features? Not really. RAID cards use the same chip and BIOS as their corresponding omboard motherboards.
HighPoint 370, Promise FastTrack 100, etc.

<font color=green>I post so you don't have to!
9/11 - RIP</font color=green>

 

[wseaton]

The answer is "none of the above", and any fool that thinks integrated motherboard components are better than add-in cards is an idiot as well. Maxtor has been shipping single channel Promise ATA 100 cards with many of their higher end drives which shows just how cheap these cards are (and worth).

All the cards mentioned in Patrick Schmid's review are bascially IDE accelerators that will only offer marginal performance over standard motherboard chipsets. If you are willing to spend $150 for the above mentioned "toys" I'd suggest getting a dual channel 3ware Escalade card instead. Even at ATA66, the 3ware will smoke the ATA100 junk in the recent review on this site.

Adaptec and 3ware build the only true ATA RAID cards that don't beat on your CPU like a Winmodem or cheap sound card and are respected by Server technicians like myself. I have a server with the 3ware and Promise ATA 100 card, and the 3ware destroys the Promise and doesn't drag on my CPUs like a Packard Bell engineer.

 

[FatBurger]

You have IDE drives in your server? Hmm...

BTW, there isn't really any difference between ATA66 and ATA100. Even when you benchmark two identical setups, one ATA66 and one ATA100, there's no real difference.

<font color=green>I post so you don't have to!
9/11 - RIP</font color=green>

 

[AMD_Man]

I know I read somewhere that onboard RAID chips usually have lite editions of the BIOSs of their PCI card counterparts.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

 

[Lars_Coleman]

Hmmm, a $400 RAID card from Adaptec, or a $60-$100 RAID card from Promise! Damn I just don't know what to get being a HOME user and all! I think that Tom's review showed some pretty awesome performance for me! What about you FatBurger?

AMD-Man =-= I have a Promise RAID on my motherboard and it says it's "Lite" when I boot up. I think somewhere in the review it said something about that ... not sure though.

<font color=red>BIOS updates do wonders ....</font color=red>

 

[FatBurger]

I know my the HighPoint chip on my motherboard is exactly the same as the HighPoint chip on the card sitting on my shelf.
The Promise chip mentioned in the review is exactly the same, but the BIOS might be different (doesn't say specifically).
Regardless, all three chips support RAID 0, 1 and 0+1 both on cards and onboard.

Matters like CPU usage might be a different story of course, but that's most likely due to the implementation, not the chip itself.

On Promise' website I see no downloads (BIOS, drivers, manuals...) for the 'Lite' controllers, suggesting that they are the same. We'll have to do more research before arriving to a conclusion, though.

<font color=green>I post so you don't have to!
9/11 - RIP</font color=green>

 

[Mogglewump]

As I remember from the Promise site "These drivers are for Promise PCI cards not integrated chipsets. If you have an integrated chipset speak to your motherboard supplier."

 

[Guest]

I was just playing with and benchmarking a few Raid arrays last night (all Raid0) and I was wondering if anyone else has had similar findings.

System1: Abit VP6, Dual PIII/1Ghz, Asus V7700 Geforce2 GTS 64M, (2) IBM 30G 75GXP, 1GB PC/133, Win2k Sp2

The harddrives are stripped using the onboard highpoint controller and split to 3 nearly equal partitions. c is fat32, d&e are ntfs OS is resident on E.

system2: Iwill DVD266-R, Dual 1Ghz PIII, Geforce2 Ti 64M, 512M PC/266, (2) IBM 20G 60GXP, Win2k (fresh install no SP)

The harddrives are stripped using the onboard AMi megaraid controller and split to 3 nearly equal partitions. c&d are ntfs, e is fat32. OS is resident on C.

Both systems have VIA 4in1 4.34(final) and the new nvidia Dentonator XP drivers.

-------
results using the drives benchmark on Sisoft Sandra 8.11

System1:
C-- 39,600 (fat32)
D-- 38,400
E-- 38,200

System2:
C-- 24,500
D-- 24,300
E-- 25,400 (fat32)

The numbers varied slightly on multiple benchmarks but thats basically where they were at. I checked and I do have the most recent bios and RAID drivers/bios for both boards.

I originally had dual PIII850/100s in the IWill and the scores were even worse.

The Abit machine (system1) has been running for 8months +/- and has a significant amount of data on it as well as a few programs resident. The Iwill machine (system2) had just been burned in and was fresh.

I guess I expected the 60GXPs to perform alot better. I have (3) 20g 60GXPs on a Win98 machine using a promise Tx2 addin card and they work very well.

Has anyone else seen similiar results (poor performance by the AMI controllers) with the Iwill boards.

Also, why is the Fat32 significantly faster on the access side?

 

[Crashman]

The main advantage of a PCI RAID controller over an onboard controller is that it's replaceable. I would not want to pay extra for an onboard controller for that reason alone. Should the PCI card become unsuitable for your application (for instance, a new OS does not supports it), you simply get a better one and RESELL your old one!

Back to you Tom...