First IOXTREME Review

[Computurd]

i think that you guys are totally underestimating, or overestimating, the amount of latency hit for the lsi. upon looking back at the settings that stevero used for his lsi when he tested them and the fact that he was on the older firmware i believe this card is being misrepresented. he had the settings for cached i/o, and that is about the absolute worst setting for the latency on the lsi, it absolutely destroys it. i know several others who run this card and they agree to a man that "direct i/o" is the ONLY way to run it. Also he has no read ahead selected. adaptive read ahead is by far the best setting as well. i understand that stevero was not familiar with this card, and was also not testing with: first off, a fast ssd, and: second off, acards, these types of things require different settings. so he is not testing it with MY setup is what i am stating. his setup is far from the definitive end-all on testing with this card. the latest firmware for this card was 23 of october, after his testing was "complete". dont get me wrong, im not knocking his testing, he did a good job with what he had. but they have updated card firmware since then, and released windows 7 drivers, which they didn't even have at the time of his testing. this latest firmware was what really took this card over the top tbh. i am not saying that it is the fastest card on the planet, etc. but i AM saying that it is faster, or damn close to, that i/o extreme. napalm has already shown he can beat it, too. steve ro testing is without an OS on the drives, and also was with a 64k stripe on the lsi, which is far from ideal. ideal is 1mb, again that is agreed upon by many others who use this card.
Have you not thought to ponder for a moment that areca is working on the 18xx series?? which is 6GB/s SAS!!! they are not working on a next gen sata3 card that i am aware of. as a matter of fact i have heard that mentioned several times, in several places. that should give you pause. i think that the 6gb/s sas is being underestimated.

now conjecture aside, here are some results, i post the 8k i/o meters i just ran and compare them to the top pic here, which is the listing fo rthe i/o extreme. note IOPS and bandwidth vs mine beneath it.





also here are two screenies to prove im not just pulling this outta my ass.




I really really wish there were more stats and tests from this i/o extreme to compare to, and there will be soon, i am going to let my array run some GC for a while, then i will run some new tests with the lsi. this is hardly the results of a peice of crap raid card, i guarantee you that. and also i would challenge you to show me where else, other than this forum, that you have seen any testing "proving" how sorry the lsi 9260-8i is. i would love to see some links, because i am failing to find it with the aid of google.

[Computurd]

P.s. i have managed to best stevero's results with the the lsi-9260-8i and acards with my array as it is, no gc yet or any tweaking at all this is a fully functional os.
Top result is from stevero's testing with acards on a lsi 9260-8i bottom result is mine. on the top result you are looking at the 4k random reads, i ran the same file he posted in his review, same blend.

[One_Hertz]

Ok so you are at 35k now. Not bad. That is a single X25 ssd. Your biggest problem is latency, which is 0.2ish? The 1231 does 5Xk with a very small latency hit. What makes your card a crappy card is that it is only $200 less than the 1231, while being a lot slower. Do you have l4d? Can't really compare loading times directly because they are using a slow cpu (x25-M should be around 8 seconds for those maps with 4.5ghz+ C2Q; ioxtreme around 5 seconds I guess), but can definitely make some inferences based on that.

In regards to your 'other reviews' question. I think toms did a test with two of those cards raided together with 16x x25-es plugged in. From my memory the results were pretty pathetic considering the setup, except sequential numbers. There were other reviews but I would have to search for them. Maybe later tonight.

Edit: I really want one, but I am a bit weary of basing my whole purchase off a single l4d loading benchmark from a site that may or may not know what they are doing. If I knew for sure that it would drop loading times by 30%+ from a single x25-m then I would get it in a heartbeat. Sigh, I will probably get it anyway.

[XS Janus]

We need pioneers like you One Hertz. Don't fail us!

[F.E.A.R.]

In want to be a pioneer too, but no shipping to GER

[lowfat]

In want to be a pioneer too, but no shipping to Canada

fixed

[F.E.A.R.]

Is ioXtreme now bootable?

There is a shop in 10km distance
But only ioDrive - i think

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D03av...layer_embedded

They shows only 100.000 iops by seq. - not random!!!

[lowfat]

Is ioXtreme now bootable?

no.

Windows has to be installed on a separate drive.

[alfaunits]

Something is def. wrong there, very low IOPS.
I'm sure it can do waay more. At 4K random IIRC a single IoDrive should do 100,000 IOPS. )around 400MB/s)

BTW, recently released IoDrive Octal 6GB/s speeds, 800,000 IOPS Soon to replace RAM?

[F.E.A.R.]

no.

Windows has to be installed on a separate drive.

Not for me
I better wait for a driver to boot from this thing


@ alfaunits

Nice comparison - data center footprint before and after
But what to do with the free-up place??? Yes, more Octals!


http://www.fusionio.com/load/media-d...ctal-Study.pdf

[One_Hertz]

fixed

Do you not have any friends in the US you trust enough to just have them forward you stuff?

[lowfat]

Do you not have any friends in the US you trust enough to just have them forward you stuff?

Currently trying to find one

If all goes well I'll order it tonight.

[One_Hertz]

Currently trying to find one :dunno:

If all goes well I'll order it tonight.

Awesome, so you will be the ginny pig.

[Agrophel]

2x Intel 25-m G2 160GB + Areca 1231ML
60 sek for 4KB 100% random 100% read, queue set to 64



Yea this is OS drive


But give me bootable drive and buy it :P

[lowfat]

2x Intel 25-m G2 160GB + Areca 1231ML
60 sek for 4KB 100% random 100% read, queue set to 64



Yea this is OS drive


But give me bootable drive and buy it :P

I would love to try out the ARC-1231ML, but in Canada the card itself is more than the ioXtreme.

[One_Hertz]

snip

What size was the file you made with iometer?

[Agrophel]

8k is size of file.

But got 2GB cache

[alfaunits]

Do you seriously expect us to believe that that config can do 100.000 random IOps? Give me a break...
Only in cache - skiiiip.

2x Intel 25-m G2 160GB + Areca 1231ML
60 sek for 4KB 100% random 100% read, queue set to 64



Yea this is OS drive


But give me bootable drive and buy it :P

[SteveRo]

Good evening all, I really want the ioxtreme formfactor (single pcie card as opposed to a raid card with all the data and power cables and drives all separate) to be the better solution. For me, Ioxtreme needs to be bootable and needs to come down in price a bit. I would think the sweet spot (if the hot hardware performance assessment is real) would be something like $499.

So anyway - about performance – again if hot hardware has an accurate report - ioxtreme should stack up pretty well against many high end solutions out there right now. See the data below, the areca 1231ML/acard and the ich10r/acard combo’s are faster in some areas and slower in others (caveat: @ 8KB, 80% read, 80% random). I clocked down my i7 to 20x133 to match the stock 920 clocks used by Hothardware – to make it a more apples to apples comparison.

edit - Also note - I can't tell for sure if Hothardware used one or eight workers for this portion of the bench. My acard testing was with iometer set to one worker (not eight). I will rerun some of the acard tests (below) with eight workers and post the results. When lowfat gets his unit we can construct a more accurate assessment.

edit - looks like moving from one worker to eight decreases the throughput 1-2% based on limited testing of ich01r/6xR0 64, 256 and 1025 outstanding I/Os.

So Ioxtreme looks very promising, I would like to see some 4KB 100% random numbers before I’m totally convinced.

[lowfat]

Ordered. Will be a few weeks before I receive it likely though.

[SteveRo]

Ordered. Will be a few weeks before I receive it likely though.

post your link you bot from!

[lowfat]

post your link you bot from!

http://www.amazon.com/Fusion-io-ioXt...8678675&sr=8-1

AFAIK this is the only place that they are being sold currently.

[Computurd]

@one hertz ..so then you are saying that because of both the latency and the IOPS that the lsi is crap correct? well then you are saying the exact same thing about the i/o extreme as i am posting the SAME LATENCY and HIGHER IOPS than that card in all of the benchmarks . 55687 is the iops on my card, in 8k, which is higher than the i/o extreme, at 41k, and my average response time is around .18, while its is .19...so then the x-25 is faster than the io extreme is exactly what you are saying. please inform me as to how you are reasoning this, i would like to see. also please include the links promised, as i am eager to learn. ia m not understanding the hype on this thing, even what the linked video shows me is not impressive AT ALL.

A SINGLE X-25 gives you 135 mbps in 4k 100 percent random??? i would like to see that screenie.

[Computurd]

just ran that at 8k 80percent read 80 percent random, besting both the i/oextreme and the results stevero posted with the "1231ML acard 6xRO" with the same queue depth of 256.

[SteveRo]

This might be vaporware (?) but take a look at the fusionio Octal -

http://www.fusionio.com/load/media-d...ctal-Study.pdf