LSI 9260 vs. AMD SB850

[F@32]

Hi all,

Today I embark on a quest to figure out if RAID controller which is three times as expensive as the motherboard it will be plugged into, can outperform said motherboard in simple 2-SSD drive RAID-0 configuration. I solicit advice from all the storage gurus on how to tweak LSI controller for the optimal performance. As you can see LSI is falling short in AS SSD benchmark. Any thoughts?

The set-up:
Drives: Intel X18-M Gen1 50nm 80Gb, 4K NTFS allocation unit
Controller: LSI 9260-4i, FW 12.11.0-0016, Driver 4.32.0.64, no FastPath
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H, bios F8, 8.71 storage driver
CPU: Phenom II 965, TRUE-120 default clocks
RAM: 2x2Gb DDR3 G-Skill Ripjaws F3-12800cl9d
Video: Asus HD5850, Cat 10.6
Sound: M-Audio Audiophile Delta 2496
NIC: Intel Gigabit CT PCIe
PSU: Antec Quattro 850Wt
Case: Antec 1200
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

LSI 9260 settings will be listed in the following order:

Stripe - 128K
Read Policy - ARA
Write Policy - AWB
IO Policy - Cached IO
Access Policy - Read Write
Disk Cache Policy - Enabled
BAckground Initialization - Enabled

Windows Write-caching policy
Write caching - Enable
Write-cache buffer flushing - Disable

1. SB850 Windows 7 soft raid


2. SB850 128K stripe, NCQ on, write-back on, flushing off


3. LSI 128K stripe (128 ARA AWB CIO RW E E. E D)


4. LSI 16K stripe (16 ARA AWB CIO RW E E. E D)


5. LSI max throughput check