- Joined
- Jan 10, 2006
- Location
- Solvang, CA
When you use onboard (SATA) raid does it use software to raid or hardware? If you use a seperate hardware raid card how much more performance would you get out of it?
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Onboard raid vs Raid card
- Thread starter Andor
- Start date
Every onboard solution I know of is software raid.. May be some exceptions but generally onboard is software.
You need to be carefull about add in raids cards though because they too can be software raid. Make sure you check that if you purchase a card.
Hardware raid usually will take some of the load off the CPU for the raid configs, where software raid relies on CPU power to keep the raid intact and do the calcs.
You need to be carefull about add in raids cards though because they too can be software raid. Make sure you check that if you purchase a card.
Hardware raid usually will take some of the load off the CPU for the raid configs, where software raid relies on CPU power to keep the raid intact and do the calcs.
OP
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2006
- Location
- Solvang, CA
- Thread Starter
- #3
So are we talking about huge gains in performance or relatively small?
And just by looking at the cards like on newegg I can't tell which are which. Can anyone point me to some non software controlled ones?
And just by looking at the cards like on newegg I can't tell which are which. Can anyone point me to some non software controlled ones?
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2003
- Location
- Land of 10,000 Lakes
Generally >$150 = Hardware, <$150 = Software. If using Raid0, software controllers are just fine. It is when you run into Raid5 & 6 that you want a true Hardware setup.
If you are only going to run Raid0, your onboard controller is fine.
If you are only going to run Raid0, your onboard controller is fine.
- Joined
- Dec 19, 2005
- Location
- New York
bchur83 said:
I second that statement with one consideration.
In terms of onboard raid solutions, if using an NForce4 motherboard use the NVRaid Controller for Raid 0 vs. the Silicon Conroller. The silicon controller hindered performance substantially on my rig. The solution was moving over to the red NVRaid SATA ports and re-striping. Another FYI, Maximum theoretical transfer rate per channel on NVRaid is 300MBps and 150MBps on the Silicon as well.
Dom
- Joined
- Feb 2, 2003
- Location
- The old Playboy Mansion in Chicago
I have an Nforce 3 mobo with NV raid and some other Marvell chip. THe NV raid works very well for a software solution. SiSandra benchmarks my 2 X 200 gb sata maxtors at 94mb throughput vs. 50 for a single drive.
Be careful if you wish to use MORE than 2 drives for raid O, my Epox mobo will let you use all 4 ports for raid 0, BUT only 2 have a clock lock and can work at high motherboard fsb speeds. I.e. my marvell raid controller only works to 235, but my NV raid works all the way to 305.
So if I wanted to use 3 or 4 drives for raid O, my Max fsb for the cpu would only be 235--Very poor indeed.
Be careful if you wish to use MORE than 2 drives for raid O, my Epox mobo will let you use all 4 ports for raid 0, BUT only 2 have a clock lock and can work at high motherboard fsb speeds. I.e. my marvell raid controller only works to 235, but my NV raid works all the way to 305.
So if I wanted to use 3 or 4 drives for raid O, my Max fsb for the cpu would only be 235--Very poor indeed.
