Can certain chipsets cause poor PC performance?

Can a different Motherboards chipsets ruin a PC's performance or is the perfomance based on the hardware? Can a built in Raid /SATA card be crap and cause poor perfomance in a PC? I kind of wonder if the raid card I got my Raptor hooked up to is crap because I have tried to bench my Raptor drive and I am only getting 16MBPS transfer rate when I should be getting a higher transfer rate than 16MB's. I have a no name motherboard with the 400MHZ VIA chipset and a Highpoint raid/SATA card built in. What is a good fast SATA raid/controller card I can by that will give me performance with a 36gig Raptor?

Enlighten me please?

yes chipsets can cause performance differences, but not enough to cause a raptor to only get 16mb/s. i would post this in the storage section, you will get more/better help there.