New LSI 9200 series controllers: 6Gb/s, 2.88 GB/s seq. reads, 1.87 GB/s seq. writes

[One_Hertz]

I don't see why people say this card is great... Sure the max sequential speeds are high, but the small file speeds aren't that good at all. The access times are also awful like from an Adaptec. What is so great? The areca 1231 is better but even on it the small file speeds and the access times are still not on par with ICH.

[Spoiler]

I don't see why people say this card is great... Sure the max sequential speeds are high, but the small file speeds aren't that good at all. The access times are also awful like from an Adaptec. What is so great? The areca 1231 is better but even on it the small file speeds and the access times are still not on par with ICH.

As far as I know, everyone thinks this card is great because it's the only readily available card that supports PCIe 2 and performs decently well in sequential reads/writes.

I need to take a better look at access times on these cards and see what the overall impact would be on the work that general users/gamers do. Besides benchmarks what kind of real noticeable difference am I going to see when using a LSI 9260 versus an Areca 1231? I suppose it all depends on what people are doing too.

A more specific question would be:

What kind of applications/tasks would show a noticeable difference when going from an Areca Controller access time of .015 ms to .1 or .2 of an LSI card?

[One_Hertz]

What kind of applications/tasks would show a noticeable difference when going from an Areca Controller access time of .015 ms to .1 or .2 of an LSI card?

If you are going to go all "value" and "noticeable difference" on me, then my question is:

What kind of applications/tasks would show a noticeable difference when going from a single X25-M to a large SSD raid on an LSI card?

The answer is - almost no apps/tasks... Certainly nothing that I do.

The thing is... faster IS faster whether it is easily noticeable or not.

[Biker]

This card is great because of high sequential bandwidth and pci-e 2.0 specification.

It is well documented and discussed to death that it's strong points are not 4k or access times.

Can we move on now please?

[Rhys]

The thing is... faster IS faster whether it is easily noticeable or not.

Yes it is! no one can ever disagree with that.
Bottom line comes down to how much someone is willing to pay extra for almost nothing in return, dumb money will gladly pay more to receive zero tangible benefits.

On a side note, while important to allot of people, access time is not always the most important metric to the OP.

[alfaunits]

Hmm, from Tom's random file I/O tests, I don't find the card to be bad at all (either LSI card).
Do you realize 0.1ms results in >10000 IOps? And, Tom's charts show more than that.
http://media.bestofmicro.com/A/N/219...r_database.png
Now I don't see why you say the access time is correct rather

I don't see why people say this card is great... Sure the max sequential speeds are high, but the small file speeds aren't that good at all. The access times are also awful like from an Adaptec. What is so great? The areca 1231 is better but even on it the small file speeds and the access times are still not on par with ICH.

[One_Hertz]

Do you realize 0.1ms results in >10000 IOps?

It doesn't.

[alfaunits]

It doesn't.

0.1ms = 10 IO per ms, *1000 per second = 10000IOps.
?

[One_Hertz]

0.1ms = 10 IO per ms, *1000 per second = 10000IOps.
?

With the que of 1... Those tests you linked use much higher than 1.

[F.E.A.R.]

0.1ms = 10 IO per ms, *1000 per second = 10000IOps.
?

You forget the filesize

[alfaunits]

With the que of 1... Those tests you linked use much higher than 1.

So? The LSI card outperforms Adaptec in some of the random I/O, and by a very large margin even.
That just shows the latency is either wrong, or not important.
FYI, my 2xX25-E RAID0s on Areca have latency of 0.1ms in Everest.
But they sure as hell aren't slower than the X25-Ms in the graphs here

You forget the filesize

Which is related... how to random drive I/O???

[One_Hertz]

So? The LSI card outperforms Adaptec in some of the random I/O, and by a very large margin even.
That just shows the latency is either wrong, or not important.
FYI, my 2xX25-E RAID0s on Areca have latency of 0.1ms in Everest.
But they sure as hell aren't slower than the X25-Ms in the graphs here

Latency and the IOPs you keep talking about are two different things. Latency = IOPs only in linear access. Various apps use a combination of linear and non-linear access (lower que and higher que). Both mean something.

Biker - AS SSD can not benchmark raid arrays that have a good amount of cache hence the screwy results. Try IOMeter/Passmark/IOzone or anything that is actually a good benchmark and you will see the same ~500-520MB/s reads.

[F.E.A.R.]

Which is related... how to random drive I/O???

Sorry - my bad english. I don´t understand this question
Ask me differently (detailed).


@ Biker

What is the raw bandwidth (without cache - or sustained r/w)?