LSI 9211-8i

[SteveRo]

that number 11 on the all-time list is me BTW i have no idea why my name isnt linked i have tried fixing it multiple times.!

Good morning, try making it private - then edit - then repost.

[lutjens]

Just ran a quick bench...9260-8i has a lot of headroom...

[SteveRo]

Just ran a quick bench...9260-8i has a lot of headroom...

Excellent numbers - including the 4k even - what drives are you using!

[SteveRo]

I'm not sure how much I believe in CDM (I really only trust iometer and maybe everest) but for comparison here is the 9211 4xacrdR0 50MB CDM -



Here is 1231ML-2G 8xacardR0 100MB CDM -

[lutjens]

Excellent numbers - including the 4k even - what drives are you using!

8x Corsair P256 SSD...

[SteveRo]

8x Corsair P256 SSD...

How many 4KB read iops does each of drive do?
Is the good 4K mostly the drives or mostly the controller?

[lutjens]

Haven't benched IOPS yet...I'll add it to my to-do list...

[Computurd]

those comparisons are nicce, but could you run them with the same 50mb setting steve-o? nice results man you are really showing some great results with those cards! what i meant was with your results were those a software raid, or a hardware raid?
Lutjens, what settings are you using with the 9260-8i? those are great!

[trans am]

so based on these results what LSI card should I get for just 2 ssd for my bootup raid?

[GullLars]

BTW ppl, did you notice that Nizzen is nr 2 on the PCmark vantage alltime top20? And those numbers were done almost a year ago, and is his 24/7 setup with OS installed... (i think)

Graphs comming tonight, i have some stuff to take care of first, and i also have to make some graphs for our norwegian forum. I'll see if i post a link here so you can check them for comparison if you want, i'll write everything in english anyways.

Good point in doing IOmeter testing with different block sizes, but the reason i wanted you to do a fine grained queue depth scaling is to see exactly how the RAID scales as a function of QD. In theory, the scaling should be perfect up to QD = [flash channels pr SSD]*[#SSDs], but in real life you get about 5-10% overhead pr QD on each unit, pluss an overhead from RAID administration on the controller. It is the overhead on the RAID controller as a function of RAID size and Queue Depth i wished to investigate with the tests i requested.
I'll make some graphs showing the scaling of IOPS and throughput by block size also.

[trans am]

which one is faster?

9260-4i ?

or 9211-8i?

is the 9260-41 worth the extra $100?

anything is better than this sb750 raid!!!

[Computurd]

if you have the extra hundred, sure by all means, however, the 9211 is a helluva solution. i can hardly guide you in this though, i think it depends on the amount of devices. if it is two only, then you will be far better served with 9211. i dont know i havge yet to come to any concrete conclusions yet as i simply have not had the time to finish playing. i can tell you this, there is a negligible difference in game load times between the two. they are both so fast it really doesnt matter, ya see? unless you are going for uber setup with tons of devices 9211 will be fine. however, be aware of its limitations with only raid 0 and one. also if you are using intels you will maybe need cache because of the write issues with the intels. Tiltevros can fill you in more on that as he is testing with intels.

[alfaunits]

Note: 9260-4i is for 4 drives, not 8.

[trans am]

if you have the extra hundred, sure by all means, however, the 9211 is a helluva solution. i can hardly guide you in this though, i think it depends on the amount of devices. if it is two only, then you will be far better served with 9211. i dont know i havge yet to come to any concrete conclusions yet as i simply have not had the time to finish playing. i can tell you this, there is a negligible difference in game load times between the two. they are both so fast it really doesnt matter, ya see? unless you are going for uber setup with tons of devices 9211 will be fine. however, be aware of its limitations with only raid 0 and one. also if you are using intels you will maybe need cache because of the write issues with the intels. Tiltevros can fill you in more on that as he is testing with intels.

Turd, i'm glad youre on here. this is good info. My current summits have 128MB Onboard Cache on each one.
here's my current situation. I hopped on the ssds in the summer. newegg had a deal with the 60gb ocz summits for 139 ea. I couldnt pass it up. SO I naturally bought 2. these are using samsung controllers.
read here. http://www.anandtech.com/storage/sho...px?i=3531&p=22

after I got them I had jsut migrated to AMD 790FX and ditched intel but the ICH10 was a godsend compared to the raid on sb750. Ive done pages of optimizations in win7 and drivers from AMD. the performace is minimal. Ive been using perfectdisk10 along with Freespace cleaner and its been even better. for those of you in this thread that have ssds and have no idea what the hell im talking about please go here: http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...ad.php?t=64753

and here: http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...58&postcount=3


more about the drives im using currently:
Series OCZ Summit
Model OCZSSD2-1SUM60G
Device Type Internal Solid state disk (SSD)
Architecture MLC
Expansion / Connectivity
Form Factor 2.5"
Capacity 60GB
Interface Type SATA II
Features Utilizes 128MB Onboard Cache


Performance
Max Shock Resistance 1500G
Sequential Access - Read 220MB/s(max)
Sequential Access - Write 125MB/s(max)
MTBF 1,500,000 hours


so now everyone knows more about my rig.
my last areca lasted 5 years and was worth every penny. I only used 2 drives with it the whole time. a pair of raptors back then.
since then ive been looking for my next raid card to use with SSD and sataIII would be nice so this LSI 92xx is looking perfect. I probably will toss these summits eventually and get a pair of SLC's in the future.
I'm doing what the majority of us do with raid. bootable os/ games and apps on the raid. use one or 2 samsung F3 as backup drives.
****ALL I ever do is 2x drives in raid0. I doubt I will ever blow $$$$ on 4 or 8 ssd's. I'm mostly gaming or video/music editing. even a spending $330 92604i seems like a drop in the bucket compared to an areca $1200 1680IX.

if a 92604i would be faster than a 9211 4i or 8i then the extra $100 is worth it to me. I plan on having it for a while.
Basically I want the fastest lsi 92xx 8x card for 2 ssds in raid 0

is it?

[Computurd]

this hba should more than be an improvement for you. the raid card would be nice, but with your setup and what you aim to do, me personally, go with the 9211. i am by no means an expert, i am a student of this stuff so do not take my word for it in its entirety. lets hear some feedback from other guys around here there are great minds on this forum who might feel otherwise and have convincing reason why. i dont see it personally but LOL oh well
i am doing some serious testing on this here thing-a-ma-bobby and i will have some serious graphs and results by monday. at least hold off until then?

[trans am]

this hba should more than be an improvement for you. the raid card would be nice, but with your setup and what you aim to do, me personally, go with the 9211. i am by no means an expert, i am a student of this stuff so do not take my word for it in its entirety. lets hear some feedback from other guys around here there are great minds on this forum who might feel otherwise and have convincing reason why. i dont see it personally but LOL oh well
i am doing some serious testing on this here thing-a-ma-bobby and i will have some serious graphs and results by monday. at least hold off until then?

oh well I hope newegg still has them in stock. the word about these cards is going to get out fast. Just think about all users like me that blew $500 plus on raid ssd and are using crappy onboard nvidia and amd raid. think of what the options were? go to intel and use ICH10XXX, use onboard amd/nvidia and get crap performance or blow $600-1200 on an Areca? this is without a doubt the best thing to happen to SSD raid since the SSD was born.

so am I correct by saying the only difference btw. the 9211 and the 9260 is the 9260 comes with 512MB DDRII cache (800MHz)??

would cache only benefit if you have a lot of drives connected or would it help regardless?

[Computurd]

okay one thing to think upon however, i am looking at 9211-4i for you and it has a x4 link, that gives me pause. why the x4 link?? the 4260-8i has a x8 lkink for more throughput. but however, if you are using the 4i card with some future specs ssd's you might run into caps there with that x4 link...why in the hell did they do that?? i admit i am perplexed on that one....give me a few to look into this all documentation i have seen says x8 link maybe the egg has it wrong, but the -8i definitely has x8

[trans am]

okay one thing to think upon however, i am looking at 9211-4i for you and it has a x4 link, that gives me pause. why the x4 link?? the 4260-8i has a x8 lkink for more throughput. but however, if you are using the 4i card with some future specs ssd's you might run into caps there with that x4 link...why in the hell did they do that?? i admit i am perplexed on that one....give me a few to look into this all documentation i have seen says x8 link maybe the egg has it wrong, but the -8i definitely has x8

thanks man. i definitely want 8x pcie. I went to LSI and read the papers on the 9211 but its definitely 4x pcie. 4x slot totally defeats the purpose of having a raid card.

Is this a card you plug into the onboard raid on say amd sb750 in my case and it takes the load off the internal raid? or is this a standalone raid card that I can hit ctrl F after post and build my raid set and install windows. browse for raid drivers for LSI and install and boot from the card? I want to eliminate the onboard raid once and for all. is this a raid card or am i totally off?

THis is what I just ordered. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816118107

I think I made the right choice. I'll post my before and after results as soon as it arrives. i'm so stoked! THanks turd for finding this diamond in the rough. Maybe others knew about these cards but like most of us looking to maximize our ssd raid its been higher end $600+ Areca cards or nothing. You kinda found the holy grail for SSD Raid and were the 1st one to take the dive for us. I think you started a revolution with this thread. Give it a month and I'm sure everyone will know the LSI 92xx series.
fyi this is going in my 2nd x16 crossfire slot.



9211 4i:

http://www.lsi.com/DistributionSyste..._PB_100709.pdf



9260 4i

http://www.lsi.com/DistributionSyste..._PB_072209.pdf

[Computurd]

the 9211-8i is x8 though, and still a helluva deal at 250!!!! thats what is so confusing to me is why they make the 9211-8i a x8 but the 9211-4i x4....bu5t really you cant go wrong with that 9260-4i man it is sweet, i know probably ten guys with that card now, and they all love it to pieces

[One_Hertz]

4x vs 8x really shouldn't matter... I believe its PCI-E 2.0? 4x should be 2GB/s then. We don't even know if the raid card can do this bandwidth to begin with, as I have never seen anyone with over 2GB/s yet.

[Spoiler]

4x vs 8x really shouldn't matter... I believe its PCI-E 2.0? 4x should be 2GB/s then. We don't even know if the raid card can do this bandwidth to begin with, as I have never seen anyone with over 2GB/s yet.

Agreed.

Why would anyone be concerned with PCIe 4x 2.0? Especially when the card can only have 4 drives.

The big question kind of like what One Hertz was saying, what happens when we get 8 SSDs (spec'd @ 6 Gbps) and load them up on the 9211-8i? That will be quite interesting.

[Computurd]

i agree that you have a point there about the x4 link, BUT that is with current gen drives. theoretically with the 6gb/s devices you would be able to saturate that bus. of course no one has done it yet, there isnt the hardware in the wild yet!

[trans am]

i agree that you have a point there about the x4 link, BUT that is with current gen drives. theoretically with the 6gb/s devices you would be able to saturate that bus. of course no one has done it yet, there isnt the hardware in the wild yet!

I'm guessing 2010 is going to be the year for SSDs. I think all the SSD makers are going to be going sata3 very soon so hopefully we can put that 8x to work. I always figure when buying hardware that you never change like a psu, monitor, raid cards... just get the newest technology, widest upgrade path and best quality you can afford and it will last for years. You guys know this already. I'm just excited to get it so I can set it up and see what ive been missing out on.

[fhj52]

OMG! The admin has been busy and I have access! Tnksalot...

Where to begin ...?

Ah, I know. PCIe2x4 link.
I too found it very odd that LSI advertised(& still advertises!) the SAS9211-4i with a x8 link but the actual production uses x4 interface and link.
Here are some numbers:

PCI Express 2.0 (x4 link) 16,000 Mibit/s(2000 MiB/s) == 1.953GB/s
( PCI Express 1.0 (x8 link) is the same)
There is some overhead for the PCIe bus so the theoretical 1.95GB/s is actually somewhat less. There's some argument how much but 5% is pretty safe which yields about 1.86GBps. ithink using 1.9GBps maximum throughput before saturation level is reached is a safe mark.

I ran the numbers and for four drives, SSD or HDD, even with SAS|SATA600 interface, the PCIe2x4 link won't get saturated. Approximately 200MiB/s is the upper limit for the fastest HDD drive. Using 8 drives, with expander, at that rate only produce a total 1600MiB/s(1.56GB/s) which is still well under saturation limits. So PCIe2-x4 link is good enuf for up to at least 8 HDD (via expander of course).

HOWEVER, that's not true when the drives are setup for RAID and an expander is used so more than 4 SSD are sending data to the bus.

The fastest SSD cannot get data on the bus faster than 300MiBps(~293MBps) due to the SATAII interface. Four SSD is not a problem (1142MBps=1.1GBps) but 8 SSD, in a perfect theoretical environment w/ RAID & SAS600 expander, could do 2344MBps or about 2.3GBps and that is well over the saturation point of 1.9GBps for the PCIe2x4 link.

I'm pretty sure that LSI made the 9211-4i with PCIe2x4 for the sub-market of those who have PCIe x4 slot but no x8 available. I think they also assume that anyone willing to spend more than $5000 for 8 SSD, expander and cable(s) is not going to buy the cheapest adapter just to save less than $100! ...

...anyway that's my input on why there is a 9211-4i with PCIe2x4 link when the others are PCIe2x8 link.

...
Since I always use RAID 10|1E & only run RAID 0 or 5-ish for some interim emergency the 9260 is huge overkill and I got the 9211-8i. My 9211-8i should be here next week ... I hope.

[Spoiler]

I just went ahead and got the 9211-8i today as well. You really can't beat the price!

Now to decide on whether to buy some Intel drives or wait for some Micron C300's.