Questions about Intel south bridge ICH8R

Ok, what is so special about this (P965) Intel Matrix RAID?

Is it that much better than Nvidia 680i chipset and their RAID offerings??

EDIT: Matrix RAID mobo's

Maybe this will be helpfull or not
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/03/the_southbridge_battle/

Have you read the Matrix Raid sticky?

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=467848

Thats what the ICH8R is capable of doing that other chipset raid is not.

There are other Intel chipsets that can do this however, there is a link to wich ones that can in the sticky.

If you compare with non intel, the strongest selling value is capablity to have a safe volume (Raid 1/5/10) "AND" fast volume Raid 0 spanned through same physical drive arrays.

Currently no other manucfacturer can provide this feature yet, and IMO it is suitable for casual home users which need speed while protection as well at the same time with only 2 drives.

If compared to same Intel families, then ICH8R (965 series) is better compared to it's older brother ICH7R (975 series).

Salesman mode on , other than above, IMO the driver provided by Intel currently is very mature & stable, and if I'm not mistaken it is already built in into latest Vista disc, so no more F6 method (if this still valid in vista) or sort of "nlite"-ing the Vista disc.

bing said:

If you compare with non intel, the strongest selling value is capablity to have a safe volume (Raid 1/5/10) "AND" fast volume Raid 0 spanned through same physical drive arrays.

Currently no other manucfacturer can provide this feature yet, and IMO it is suitable for casual home users which need speed while protection as well at the same time with only 2 drives.

If compared to same Intel families, then ICH8R (965 series) is better compared to it's older brother ICH7R (975 series).

Salesman mode on , other than above, IMO the driver provided by Intel currently is very mature & stable, and if I'm not mistaken it is already built in into latest Vista disc, so no more F6 method (if this still valid in vista) or sort of "nlite"-ing the Vista disc.

Click to expand...

Ok, what about just raw speed? Is the P965 better than the 975 or even the 680i chipsets?

What do you mean by "raw" speed ?

Have you check the link referred by meionm for comparison with 680i chipset ? Honestly I can't comment nVidia vs Intel yet since there are not enough public comparison yet in the net to make a conclusion.

About ICH8R vs ICH7R, there are many comparison out there in the net that you can find.

I also did a comparison on my own between this two Intel southbridges and ICH8R eats ICH7R alive.

Have to admit it wasn't a very tight controlled test but using consistent methodology, I did torture both SB chips by reading/burning DVD-RW disc, running heavy disk benchmark, copying large files in/out to external USB harddrive drive and usb thumb stick all were run simultanously ! The conclusion is ICH8R wins by big margin !

Too bad I didn't save the result properly to share it here ! It was run in hectic mode since I was about to sell my old mobo ICH7R !

Edit : My benchmark was run with the exact same materials on both runs except the mobo which are CPU, RAM, and Raid-ed disks, since I was in the middle of replacing the mobo. Also it was proven during my migration, the raid configuration at ICH7R are moveable to ICH8R without losing the Raid config, of course I had to re-install the OS since on different mobo but my all my important stuff in the Raid 1 was still there and safe.

I currently have Nf4 chipset and if I moved to the 680i, I would not loose my data either on my RAIDed drives. But, would you say that the Intel RAID solution MATRIX, is a true hardware based solution? Because if it is, there is no way I'm going to the 680i if thats the case.

matrix raid works be essentially creating 2 diferent raid arrays on the same 2 drives. half of the drive belongs to 1 array and the other belongs to another. so essentially you can make a raid 0 for your os and a raid 1 for data on the same 2 wd raptors and get some kickass performance and have the ability to keep your data safe.