SCSI Raid0 advice needed!

[SlackerXL]

Greetings everybody.

I recently bought the following scsi config for €350
- 2x73gb Maxtor Atlas IV 10krpm u320
- dell Perc3/dc (lsi megaraid 1600) scsi u160 raid controller with intel i960 processor and 128 mb cache ram
- and an old & huge perc4 controller for free with the whole package...

i intended to replace my aging 2x36gb raptors raid0 setup
and hoped that the Maxtor's could justify the cost....
and thats why i decided to go with the new P5WDG2-WS which features a pci-x slot for the perc3/dc card

As the motherboard isn't yet available here in Greece
and i've already received the scsi parts,
i decided to give it a try on a normal pci slot just to see if everything is working ok

the results in Winxp were dissapointing
27mb/s burst and 50 average at first
and after a lot of inet search i changed some settings in the raid bios and got up to 55-60mb/s burst and 58 average

but still i think its very poor compared to my sata 2x36gb raptors raid... 100mb/s or even a single sata drive

any ideas?
any tips or tricks?
should expect to see any great difference once i install it on the pci-x slot?


PS: I forgot to clarify the fact that i'm not interested in data integrity at all
all i want is to get the max performance for my OS and apps
(photoshop, cad, games)
as i already have a Highpoint rocketraid 1640 4x200gb baracuda sata raid 10
for my data

so any advice should be oriented towards that direction
(please excuse my English and let me know if some of the above mentioned don't make sense)

thanx in advance

[nn_step]

Considering the PCI slot has a max bandwidth of 133 MB/s.. What the Hell did you expect?
Might I suggest that you either get a PCI-X board or a PCIe Controller..
Uber Performance isn't cheap

[cooter]

Do not rely on HD benchmarks as they seem to be very inaccurate. I have seen my ATA133 RAID0 Array beat up on a 15k RPM Seagate SCSI RAID0 setup that i had and my current Fujitsu 15k Drive. i would time, load times for games, file transfers, boot times, program start times, etc.....

[cooter]

Considering the PCI slot has a max bandwidth of 133 MB/s.. What the Hell did you expect?
Might I suggest that you either get a PCI-X board or a PCIe Controller..
Uber Performance isn't cheap

Sorry for the double post but the PCI Slot max bandwidtch is not going to cause any performance bottlenecks for any 2 HD's in RAID0. It would take a big array of SCSI drives to do this.

[SlackerXL]

Considering the PCI slot has a max bandwidth of 133 MB/s.. What the Hell did you expect?
Might I suggest that you either get a PCI-X board or a PCIe Controller..
Uber Performance isn't cheap
as i said i'm waiting for the Asus board which comes with two pci-x slots...
but what can i really expect from a pci-x 66/64bit?
i haven't even reached the pci's bandwidth limit with this setup...

is the pci-x really going to give such a performance boost?

has anyone used a pci-x scsi raid controller both in a pci & pci-x slot
to compare some results?

[cooter]

You will not see any performance differnece between the two slots. I am running an Adaptec 39320-R Ultra 320 card in my system and there is no way it can max out the PCI slot.

[nn_step]

Correct me if I am Wrong but isn't the Burst Read for the Atlas IV 150Mb/s
and a Sustained Read Rate of 70MB/s
So in theory two of them should saturate the Maxium Bandwidth of the PCI slot..
But then again a lack of 7MB/s should be something to be concerned about... But should he want to go Raid5.. he will see a performance loss

[SlackerXL]

You will not see any performance differnece between the two slots. I am running an Adaptec 39320-R Ultra 320 card in my system and there is no way it can max out the PCI slot.
correct me if i'm wrong but besides the freq. (33 vs 133mhz*)
i think that the pci-x runs @64bit

isn't that going to make a difference in the performance of the array?


*66mhz in my case - perc3/dc U160 controller