Raid Card

[2chesapeakes]

I am running 2 x OCZ Vertex in raid 0 on the onboard controller and read that for more than 2 SSD's a raid card would improve performance. I would like to know what type of performance boost I could expect from a raid card. I would like to spend $200 or less for the card.
Yes for the first time in my life I am looking for a budget piece of HW.

[Chuchnit]

Jeff are you benching with a raid setup? I don't think raid card and budget can go in the same sentence. Maybe with just two ports, but then you have no room for expansion on the card. Look for one with 800mhz IOP 341 I think or the 1.2ghz IOP 343 if I have the processor numbers correct.

[Neuromancer]

Yup sounds about right. They do have a dual core IOPS controller now if I am not mistaken.

Also I thought ICH10R was really good for SSDs, in the sense that it being CPU driven was not as limited as all but the top Areca cards.

[karmakazi]

Dont bother with a budget raid card, performance is usually mediocre. ICH10R is good unless your getting a huge amount of SSD's.

[2chesapeakes]

I made a mistake in the original post I am running 4 x OCZ Vertex in raid 0. Would abudget card still not gain any real performance?

[karmakazi]

What are your numbers like now on ICH10R?

[2chesapeakes]

So I am bringing this post back to life. Here are some benches on the on board controller.
4 x OCz Raid 0 128K stripe
Here is the raid card I am considering. rocketraid3510 (http://www.directron.com/rocketraid3510.html)What type of benfit would this give if any.

http://i521.photobucket.com/albums/w337/2chesapeakes/Disc%20Bench/ATTO.jpg

http://i521.photobucket.com/albums/w337/2chesapeakes/Disc%20Bench/AsSSD.jpg

http://i521.photobucket.com/albums/w337/2chesapeakes/Disc%20Bench/Assd.jpg

http://i521.photobucket.com/albums/w337/2chesapeakes/Disc%20Bench/BufferedRead.jpg

http://i521.photobucket.com/albums/w337/2chesapeakes/Disc%20Bench/LinearRead.jpg

http://i521.photobucket.com/albums/w337/2chesapeakes/Disc%20Bench/RandomRead.jpg

[Chuchnit]

Jeff those numbers look great to me, but I'm no storage expert like Jamie or Bill. The main advantage you are going to see is the load being completely taken off the CPU. IIRC, that RAID card is very fast. Of course if you go to xs they will say it sucks because its not the latest and greatest.

[Neuromancer]

The rocketraid card uses the Intel IOP 341 800 MHZ Processor so should limit SSD to something under 800 MB/s.

Looking at single drive benchmarks, you probably STILL will not maximize the Vertex's potential with that raid controller. AT supposedly 250 MB/ read speeds 3 of these drives would probably max out the 800 MHz IOP controller in practice. 4 would definitely be bottlenecked by the card and Write performance will probably bump the ceiling as well.

[Buckeye]

Jeff those numbers look great to me, but I'm no storage expert like Jamie, but Bill is the greatest

There I fixed that for you :)

I haven't messed around with my Raid in a long time but those numbers look really good, shoot it takes 7 MTRON PROS to reach those kinds of numbers :Dizzy:

Like I was saying in MSN my card is a ARC-1231ML and the newer stuff will blow it away. Good thing about it tho is I can stack 12 drives on it.... try's to picture 12 Intel SSD's on this... it would cap its bandwidth for sure and blow it up HAHA.

[Chuchnit]

There I fixed that for you :)

.

Oh you are a funny guy :laughing: You are the RAID Jedi master though :Hi:

[2chesapeakes]

Jeff those numbers look great to me, but I'm no storage expert like Jamie or Bill. The main advantage you are going to see is the load being completely taken off the CPU. IIRC, that RAID card is very fast. Of course if you go to xs they will say it sucks because its not the latest and greatest.

The rocketraid card uses the Intel IOP 341 800 MHZ Processor so should limit SSD to something under 800 MB/s.

Looking at single drive benchmarks, you probably STILL will not maximize the Vertex's potential with that raid controller. AT supposedly 250 MB/ read speeds 3 of these drives would probably max out the 800 MHz IOP controller in practice. 4 would definitely be bottlenecked by the card and Write performance will probably bump the ceiling as well.
So now I am even more confused. I have been reading most of the day and some of what I was reading was that unless I was going with a raid level 5 or 6 the onboard controller provides no real benefit. Others swear by the on board controller regardless of the level of raid. Rocket Raid has a controller with the Intel IOP348 however this card is not compatible with the OCZ Vertex drives. I have also read that Sata raid contrllers are better than SAS/SATA the ones with the fan out cable but the people were argueing over .024ms access times. Any suggestions and all advice is greatly appreciated.