Fastpath..

[SteveRo]

Mr. GullLars - much thanks for all the graphs - the visualization really helps
Mr Lowfat - where are you! Paul, I agree - ioxtreme need to be in this compare.

One more thought -
Besides the adjustments of the controller card itself - read ahead cache, write cache, ncq, ...
For me there appears to be three major variables that i need to combine and optimize -
1. number of drives to attach (# of acards to attach to the 1231 in my case)
2. stripe size - 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 or 128k (1231 choices)
3. allocation (sometimes referred to as cluster) size - when you define your partition (partition magic and other tools let you change this - i have read).

I have recently discovered that finding the sweet spot of the combination of these three can reap significant improvement -
pcmv HDD test - 105638 - http://service.futuremark.com/compare?pcmv=327338

Edit - I am still tweaking.
Looking at the orb - both Anvil and Mike have higher scores than this one!