Need a fast RAID 0 Controller beside ICHxR

[[XC] gomeler]

I'm assembling a string of parts for a PCMark benching run. Looking at 4 or more i-rams and frankly I don't want to use ICH9R or ICH10R as I'm afraid of the chipset being a bottleneck. YoungPro has already tried 4 i-rams on PCMark with ICH9R and it was acting very funky, as if it was bottlenecking. He also tried an Areca 1220 I believe and mentioned having issues, waiting on a response back. I myself need a card capable of RAID 0 with 4 drives and capable of pushing as much bandwidth as possible. I understand that RAID0 isn't computationally intensive, but I imagine having a DDR2 buffer and a dedicated IC to do the data accessing would help with performance. Anyone have any suggestions?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115027
Not worth it?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115048
overkill?

Need suggestions, storage gurus!

[Polizei]

Like you said, RAID0 doesn't require much until you get into huge arrays (like 8+) or when you're using SSDs. The first one should be fine provided you don't use it for SSDs.

[Serra]

There's a thread or two here about people who have multiple I-RAMs, I'd ask them directly. I know that as per Gigabyte, the I-RAM doesn't work well with any level of RAID... so I'd ask the people who own them what they were able to get working.

[IanB]

Frankly I was hoping that the ICH10R had fixed the SSD bugs (bootup issues and capped bandwidth) of the ICH9R, and that as the new boards come out this will be confirmed by users here. I've been waiting for P45 for that reason over P35, to avoid needing an offboard card just to do RAID0 and 1. :confused:

[Buckeye]

About the best I can push with mine is ~875mb/s on a ARC-1231 with 8x 32GB MTRON PRO's.

From what I can tell that adding more SSD's has almost no effect except slightly faster writes.

I have yet to find a Raid Card that can push more bandwidth than that, even with more SSD's.

Tho I am not sure if I-Rams, IODrive's can beat that. RamSan's break that by going fiber, but that's a whole different ball game playing around with those babies.

Good threads in here to read also.
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=530580

[bowman]

Frankly I was hoping that the ICH10R had fixed the SSD bugs (bootup issues and capped bandwidth) of the ICH9R, and that as the new boards come out this will be confirmed by users here. I've been waiting for P45 for that reason over P35, to avoid needing an offboard card just to do RAID0 and 1. :confused:

Intel would be crazy not to fix it seeing as they are set to bring SSDs to market themselves this year, along with slapping the ICH10 on the X58 motherboards. :shrug:

That'd be funny, Intel SSDs running better on nForce motherboards than Intel's own..

[jcool]

I'd get an Adaptec 2405. It's their new value line, featuring an 800Mhz Dualcore IO, 128MB of DDR2 and a PCIe x8 interface. My 5405 is basically the same, just with a bigger CPU (1,2Ghz) and more cache. But that's only useful for parity raid, what matters here is the bandwidth of the controller which is excellent for its price.

[[XC] gomeler]

Thank for all the discussion guys. Going to try and get in touch with the few guys that have used large numbers of i-rams, they typically don't return PMs though :(

[TheKarmakazi]

i am also watching this thread with interest, ive got 3 i-rams here and need a good raid controller. Gomeler will you post your findings here if any of the 'gurus' answer you?

[[XC] gomeler]

Sure thing. Have some EP45 boards arriving, going to get a chance to test first-hand also.

[TheKarmakazi]

gomeler;3053771']Sure thing. Have some EP45 boards arriving, going to get a chance to test first-hand also.

Lucky ducky. You made nice nice with gigabyte I guess? :up:

[[XC] gomeler]

Lucky ducky. You made nice nice with gigabyte I guess? :up:

Yup. Hoping I can keep playing nice with Gigabyte too, been using their boards long enough :D

[TheKarmakazi]

gomeler;3054547']Yup. Hoping I can keep playing nice with Gigabyte too, been using their boards long enough :D

Me too! Gigabyte may have an interesting color scheme, but the stuff that matters is all good.

Any updates on the controller search gomeler? Do you have all the RAM to fill those drives up? i.e. 4x4GB? What speed RAM you using?

[TheKarmakazi]

Just an update, I used 2 I-RAMs on an eVGA 790i board's integrated RAID. Didnt do half bad at all! Was easy to setup and maintained about 180MB/s. Would it be faster on an independent controller? Of course, but this was free and not too shabby.

[jcool]

180MB/s? That's about 100% better than 680/780i could do, but it still sucks for an IRam, let alone two.
Get yourself a decent controller NOW :D

[nik58]

MTRON SERIES 3000 - MOBI-3025 - 032 - 32GB SLC SATA

http://www.pctunerup.com/up/results/_200807/th_20080707152004_foto2.jpg (http://www.pctunerup.com/up/image.php?src=_200807/20080707152004_foto2.jpg)



I/F: ATA-133 & SATA 1.5Gb/s
F/F: Industrial Standard 2.5" or 3.5" form factor
Capacity: 32GB
Casing: Plastic on the 2.5" Aluminum on the 3.5"
Performance:
Sustained Read: 100MB/s
Sustained Write: 80MB/s
Access time: less than 0.1ms !
Warranty: 3 years

System setup

Asus P5K-E
Intel 8500 Penryn
G.Skill F28000CL5D 8 Gb
Asus Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT Silent
2 SSD Mtron Mobi 3000 32 GB in Raid 0



Info

http://www.pctunerup.com/up/results/_200807/20080707153322_infomobi.JPG

hdtach 1 disk

http://www.pctunerup.com/up/results/_200807/20080707153443_mobiich9.JPG

hdtune read

http://www.pctunerup.com/up/results/_200807/20080707153605_mobihdtuneread.JPG

hdtune write

http://www.pctunerup.com/up/results/_200807/20080707153719_mobihdtunewrite.JPG

raid 0 ich9

hdtach

http://www.pctunerup.com/up/results/_200807/20080707153850_hdtachwbcacheon.JPG

hdtune

http://www.pctunerup.com/up/results/_200807/20080707153957_hdtunewbcacheattivata.JPG

atto

http://www.pctunerup.com/up/results/_200807/20080707160104_mtronraidatto.JPG

Good result on ICH9-Mtron :up:


Ciao

[jcool]

Hey guys,

just benched on a 790i mobo yesterday. Nothing fancy, two WD3201ABYS Raid Editions in Raid 0, single drive performance is ~75MB/s average read/write.
I hit between 130 and 140 MB/s with HDtune and ATTO (read and write), got no screens now but just an FYI. ICH9R scored ~144MB read/138 write.
Days of crappy NV raid performance seem to be finally over with 790i. Same HDDs scored a breathtaking 95MB/s on 680/780i :D :shakes:

[JustusIV]

Here is a vid of Rocket RAID 2320 + Gigabyte IRAM x 8 doing 886MB/s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNPPRhPV7y0

Interesting watch no the less.