LSI 9211-8i versus LSI 9260-8i versus Areca 1231ML-2G

[Anvil]

mbreslin,

8x C300s cost about $7500 in Norway + $900 for the 9260-8i

Compared to the cost of the drives+controller, $155 for they Key is cheap *if* it unleashes the kind of performance I expect it to.
(I do get why you are annoyed, it's just that most customers are medium-large companies and I don't think they'll get upset about the price)

[mbreslin]

I never said it was expensive, let me quote myself..

I just think it's a crappy way to do business.

The money is nothing compared to the cost of the array and certainly compared to the cost of the entire machine, I never claimed otherwise I just was holding out on principal.

What's worse than them milking more money for hardware already purchased is that I so quickly went from "Banana them." to "Ordered.". These forums have a way of making me click buy buttons!

[Computurd]

for a system of your uber awesomeness a key is definitely required
it will help answer a question of mine as well...see no matter what settings that i use, my random read is about the same regardless. now this means one of two things, either it is the top of my drives, which i am sure it is, or it is the top of the processing power of the card....either way it is still the fastest out there right now imo. i havent done a whole ton of testing yet with load times, that is next on my agenda. had to get up higher on pcmv first
now only 980x and 1231 with cache are above me, but i have a plan for that with...well we will see if it works first :P
cant wait to see your and anvils results!!
oh and fellas on teh quick install guide of the fastpath key the instructions are WRONG....yes hard to believe, but they tell you to put it on a pair of pins that arent even on the card, the illustration for the 9260 is actually a 9210. which never hit production. the only reason i knew where to put it was becasue i had dug a pic of the key up on intel documentation a few weeks back. they had a pic of the key on their lsi rebranded 9260. i will post a pic of correct pins to use.
now all i need is some 25nm ssd goodness from intel...

[mbreslin]

Yeah I saw your result ct, insanely good for a 920!

I will take another run with fastpath and new crucial fw. The voltage needed to get my 980x to 4.8ghz scares me but hopefully it'll survive again.

Steve was right of course that it wouldn't be long before I started tinkering again. If the 1880 really shines I'm willing to fork up the 1200$ or whatever the msrp winds up being.

Another 5970 and the ud9 is very tempting as well.

[Computurd]

oh that result is decent but not as good as the one i submitted last night jeez it took them three days to get that one on there, so teh really good one should be on tomorrow? should be numero uno for the 920 on teh bot as well, did have number two
i will have more though, figured out a little trick, just need some time to tinker myself. back to real work tommorow, but after that some more time on defcon-one and i should be able to really set it off!
need some more time to acquaint myself with this controller, its a much different beast now. there is much more to be gained from this FastPath, just takes time and patience.
unless the areca is spectacular i wont be buying it for awhile. lsi is WAY ahead of the game right now with drivers, etc. the card is really maturing, and it should take some time for areca's new card to mature as well, but who knows maybe outta the gate it will smoke the lsi. we shall see. the one im interested is the one with dual processors on it. that looks killer!
the 9260 seems to take higher pcie clocks much better than it did before fastpath, gonna be working in that direction as well soon, havent really toyed with that. the IOH could take some more volts as well, i know i am toasting it, there are still many tools in the box, just gotta pull them out cant wait until you get it as well so we can collaborate.

[mbreslin]

The 9260 doesn't show up for me at 105+ pcie, it may be something to do with having 5 pcie devices and not enough voltage (I bumped 2 ticks but don't really want to go more than that). I got tired of draining loops really fast and vowed not to do it again for just some benchmark so I never ran pcmv with just a highly oc'd 5870 and the 9260 and no other pcie cards. I'm quite sure I could have scored higher. It would be nice to pass corsair with their 3 more drives than me and ln2. If the 1880 is even 5% better than the 9260+fastpath I'll be getting it and probably another 5970 and the ud9. I'm very drawn to having the best available cpu/graphics/storage. I'm very close now and it's probably a ridiculous venture but what can I say, I'm hooked.

[trans am]

does scsi 4me give you the key instantly and you can dl the fp software or is it a disk you need to wait for? I want instant gratification. paul is the new fw for 92608i only or do you have the 4i as well?

[SteveRo]

The 9260 doesn't show up for me at 105+ pcie ...

Same for me - 104-105 was all I could do with 9211, 1231 went to 119.

[Computurd]

it is a physical key that you install trans am. it works for -4i but doublecheck when you buy it. by physical key that means you have to plug it in...some pics for ya here.....
@stevero/mbreslin..yup 9260 always been finicky with pcie clocks. what i was alluding to is the fact that it seems to take higher pcie now.

heres some pics...

key....


card, key is under the sff ports (where you plug in cables)


closeup of the card, key sticking out of the side

[SkOrPn]

CT, you need to slow down with buying all this hardware man, all the extra radiation your polluting your environment with is causing your hair to fall out.... LOL j/k hehe

[GullLars]

@GullLars: You've hurt my ego when pricing my array, can you please tell me where I can purchase 8 256gb c300s and a 9260 for anywhere in the ballpark of 3000$? If this was even possible I'd buy another 8 just to have 16 drives ready for one of the 1880s.

Sorry man, didn't mean to. I for some reason i was thinking 8x x25-M 160GB. I don't know how i managed to confuse it.
C300 256GB is about $700 on newegg, = $5600 for the drives
LSI 9260-8i is about 530 on newegg.
$6130 whitout the key, $6290 with the key, a 2,6% increase

[mbreslin]

It was in jest and hope it came across that way.

(and since I was an insane/dumb day 1 adopter I got them all from crucial for msrp (799$))

I actually got them within a few minutes of them being available, only 3 as they sold them 3 at a time so it took me a few days.

Edit: Throw in the 9211 and it's over 7k just for storage. I actually winced while typing the previous sentence.

Edit2: If I would have waited for newegg to get them and then lower the price (they had them at msrp for awhile as well) the 800$ saved would sure have helped the sting when I buy a 1200$+ areca. Hindsight..

[GullLars]

I got it that it was a somewhat jokefull comment, but i realized putting the ballpark figure well below half the actual cost does not serve your array justice, so i felt an actual apology was in order

[SkOrPn]

Does anyone know if the heatsink mount is a standard size of some sort? Wondering how difficult it will be to actively cool this thing...

[mbreslin]

I read on newegg that the 9211 overheated often for someone but I never had any problems while benching it. The 9260 heatsink gets about as hot as ddr3 with no fan but it's never had any issues, it gets a little air that's blowing out of a hot rad but that's about it.

To answer your question it seems close to the size of many small blocks I've seen but I'm not certain. I can't imagine needing it possibly in a server environment but then you're going to have some good san ace's blowing on it and the AC set to 'antarctica'.

[SteveRo]

I think my 1231 overheats from time to time - I just aim a case fan at it and all is well.

[SkOrPn]

ok cool, so no real problems with heat then? I just dont want to feed my 5870 warm air from below since I only use the stock cooling on that.

[Agrophel]

Areca sell fans fints on Areca 1231ML. I did buy one for my areca 1231ml.

[trans am]

it is a physical key that you install trans am. it works for -4i but doublecheck when you buy it. by physical key that means you have to plug it in...some pics for ya here.....
@stevero/mbreslin..yup 9260 always been finicky with pcie clocks. what i was alluding to is the fact that it seems to take higher pcie now.

]

Paul thanks for the heads up! what performance increase can we all expect from that little chip. Did you have any old screens you saved with the same lsi config settings/stripe size cpu speed etc? you can show us a before and after results?

[SkOrPn]

That little chip is the BIGGEST possible profit margin LSI could ever think of. I mean how much to manufacture that tiny thing? A few dollars per unit at most? Amazing stuff these companies think of. I just hope this greedy idea doesn't move on to other hardware items, like hard drives, motherboards or CPU's. What a rip..... sorry for the rant, but Im still amazed they are actually getting away with this. That thing should be $20 max... lol

[trans am]

That little chip is the BIGGEST possible profit margin LSI could ever think of. I mean how much to manufacture that tiny thing? A few dollars per unit at most? Amazing stuff these companies think of. I just hope this greedy idea doesn't move on to other hardware items, like hard drives, motherboards or CPU's. What a rip..... sorry for the rant, but Im still amazed they are actually getting away with this. That thing should be $20 max... lol

exactly why I made this youtube presentation for the LSI guys:

enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sb33g13Cr8

[Computurd]

couldnt agree more skorpn. highway robbery. i will post a little 4k comparison here in a few trans am, show ya some befores and afters. gonna complete my whole chart, comparing with this :

[trans am]

wtf comp are the results on the left the ones before the key and the right is after? instead of blowing money on these stupid sandforce drives I shoulda spent the money on the key. That is amazing!
I dont care how cheap you guys say LSI is for doing this. they made it available and it is what it is and its still a hell of a lot cheaper than a 1k areca card. I think I'm gonna blow the sandforces off on ebay and revert back to the indinlinx and get the key. I am not seeing a huge boost on the sandforce to the indlinlinx with the lsi except on the 4k but that might be be fixed with the chip. Im gonna go back to the indlilinx drives for a moment and do a proper back to back comparison and then you guys can tell me what I should do.

[SkOrPn]

wtf comp are the results on the left the ones before the key and the right is after? instead of blowing money on these stupid sandforce drives I shoulda spent the money on the key. That is amazing!
I dont care how cheap you guys say LSI is for doing this. they made it available and it is what it is and its still a hell of a lot cheaper than a 1k areca card. I think I'm gonna blow the sandforces off on ebay and revert back to the indinlinx and get the key. I am not seeing a huge boost on the sandforce to the indlinlinx with the lsi except on the 4k but that might be be fixed with the chip. Im gonna go back to the indlilinx drives for a moment and do a proper back to back comparison and then you guys can tell me what I should do.

It isn't cheap, its just wrong, but the LSI guys are smiling all the way to the bank thinking "whats so wrong about it?" eh? For results like that I wouldn't think twice about paying what LSI wants for that little thing, lol... Just wish it could be pre-installed and sold with the card instead, so at least it doesn't look like they have taken advantage of customers who do not have the key.

Love the song trans...

[Computurd]

no no fellas....that is all the same stuff BEFORE the key....i am going to make a chart to match that AFTER the key....the left is random and the right is sequential

I did my settings and hit F10
windows started
booting again
I got into desktop
yeah man!
double clicked two thousand and one
pouring ln2 out
before its too late
while watching the goddamn frame rates

got that damn song stuck in my head trans am