Insane Raid Controller Performance - Areca RAID Controller Input Needed

[I.M.O.G.]

all out of pocket, I don't want to be in the pro league on hwbot for what is really my hobby. if you use sponsored hardware, you are supposed to go pro - many do not, but I am one to try to follow rules.

but 4 drives is just a starting a point. if it is enough to get us first, we will probably stay there. if we need more, we'll get more. I am guessing that four will be enough to take first. we will likely need more to defend 1st as people will be gunning for us that are also fairly well equipped.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

So yesterday I "forgot the Christmas Turkey" which meant today I "had to go home to get it". while I was there, I figured it doesn't hurt to power up my rig now that it is fully thawed and dried out - the fx-8120 lives to fight another day. I had mentioned yesterday I wasn't sure if it croked after I pummeled it with wprime at high voltage - bulldozer performance may not be all that hot, but these chips run like bulldozers. I have ran this poor chip all the way past 2.1v and ran wprime on all 8 threads at 2v (extreme LLC makes the 1.98 I set go to 2v under load).

Bulldozers new motto: if you are gonna be dumb, you better be tough!

 

[Convicted1]

all out of pocket, I don't want to be in the pro league on hwbot for what is really my hobby. if you use sponsored hardware, you are supposed to go pro - many do not, but I am one to try to follow rules.

but 4 drives is just a starting a point. if it is enough to get us first, we will probably stay there. if we need more, we'll get more. I am guessing that four will be enough to take first. we will likely need more to defend 1st as people will be gunning for us that are also fairly well equipped.

I've already got 2 120GB MaxIops also... So in reality we'll have 6 on tap if we need them right away.

One of them is my Daily machines OS Drive, but I could image to another drive and be good to go in a hurry.

 

[Neuromancer]

LOL gladto hear it IMOG.

Usually in the same price range the Mercury Extreme Pro 6Gbps SSD performs almost identically to the Vertex3.

Got PCMark 05 results at these links.

http://www.techreaction.net/2011/08/01/review-ocz-vertex-3-240gb-max-iops/5/
http://www.techreaction.net/2011/06/14/review-owc-240gb-extreme-pro-6g/3/

 

[Convicted1]

The only thing that scares me about leaving the OCZ drives is the firmware issue.

I know that OCZ's latest firmware update has solved all the firmware issues.... But I don't know about some of these other manufacturers.

 

[Evilsizer]

maybe things are fixed with these newer drives as far as FW goes. if i were buying ssd's agian like i did two years ago, i would be going samsung. even though reviews show it to be a bit behind in 4k QD32 vs even standard vertex 3. in the other tests the samsung 830 drive is on the same level or higher then the standard vertex 3. i could not find a review with the samsung drive and vertex 3 max iops in the same one. i dont cross reference drive testing as it could be a bit different from site to site. the 120gig samsung 830 shows to have near the same IOP's as the max iop's. the only thing samsung does not go into detail about is testing on how they arrived at their IOP numbers. the drives smaller then the 120gigs have much lower numbers even compared to some of the SF based drives.

my POV is that i would rather know that intel/samsung/crucial(micron) got their FW right the first time. that it wouldnt take 3+ fw revisions to fix alot of issues. other brand ssd's may take longer to come to market but some people can wait and just buy the newest one that is first to market.

all that aside the max iops for benching will be no doubt faster then the samsung drive in alot of areas. for the day to day user though, the samsung drive will be a good choice. on top of that the price of the samsung drive as by newegg is 209 the maxiops is 244, looking at the 120gig drives. if going more then one drive even for just a raid-0 setup it would be some nice saving for something else.



*sorry if a went a bit OT there IMOG**

 

[I.M.O.G.]

NP, valid input. for our specific use the maxiops is it - it doesn't even need to hold data and will be blank for the bench. so firmware or anything else doesn't matter for this, like it would for regular use.

the maxiops is 225 at newegg right now, instant rebate, not including another 20 or so via mail in rebate which I never count on getting.

 

[johan851]

NP, valid input. for our specific use the maxiops is it - it doesn't even need to hold data and will be blank for the bench. so firmware or anything else doesn't matter for this, like it would for regular use.

the maxiops is 225 at newegg right now, instant rebate, not including another 20 or so via mail in rebate which I never count on getting.

MAX IOPS is the fastest consumer SSD out there right now. And it's not too pricey either. I wouldn't use it for a daily rig due the firmware issues mentioned, but you're builder yourself a dragster, not a Corolla.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

Each one of these are worth at least 50 HTPP, only need 3rd on an i7-920, need 2nd on a q6600, and need 1st on a e6600:
http://hwbot.org/search/submissions...&_imageAttached=on&_videoAttached=on&offset=0

1st on a 2600k is 250 GTPP, though we'd have to figure out how to do 64 pages/sec on web page rendering as well as have a cherry 2600k:
http://hwbot.org/submission/2218295_mtech_pcmark_2005_core_i7_2600k_50458_marks

Even a bad 2600k, 24th is worth 50 GTPP:
http://hwbot.org/submission/2160869_omega3_pcmark_2005_core_i7_2600k_35882_marks

Every category 1x-8x is worth about 50 GTPP if we can rank in the top 3, some are worth well over 100.

 

[Convicted1]

Each one of these are worth at least 50 HTPP, only need 3rd on an i7-920, need 2nd on a q6600, and need 1st on a e6600:
http://hwbot.org/search/submissions...&_imageAttached=on&_videoAttached=on&offset=0

1st on a 2600k is 250 GTPP, though we'd have to figure out how to do 64 pages/sec on web page rendering as well as have a cherry 2600k:
http://hwbot.org/submission/2218295_mtech_pcmark_2005_core_i7_2600k_50458_marks

Even a bad 2600k, 24th is worth 50 GTPP:
http://hwbot.org/submission/2160869_omega3_pcmark_2005_core_i7_2600k_35882_marks

Every category 1x-8x is worth about 50 GTPP if we can rank in the top 3, some are worth well over 100.

We've already beat that 2600K submission.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

Hah, forgot about that. Nice work.

 

[Railgun]

Regarding the fw issue, though I don't know what I'm running I've not had an issue since installing. I think it's more controller interaction than drive itself.

 

[Evilsizer]

What made you go with 120 over the 240? I guess it wouldnt matter with cache on the raid card but the 240 has higher numbers then the120. If samsung fw were abit diferent the 256mb cache would give it a bigger boost in the 4k region. That is unless they needed the 256mb cache to get those iop numbers in the first place.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

mainly price with the 120 compared to the 240. and the drives are better than anyone else at the top of pcmark on ssds. we also wanted to make sure we went with a card that gave us room to grow - if we need to, we will buy more or better drives.

basically, the controller is better than what anyone is using, and so are the drives. we could always spend more, but in thus price range it is very strong and the most reasonable. there are some storage setups from this year that would likely crush it, but they are closer to ten grand than 2 grand. hopefully this gets us by for now. that's why I wanted to make sure we got things right in what nuero and railgun were discussing.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

controller came in today, ran it on a sempron 145, with 4maxiops in raid0:

XP startup ~550
general usage ~350
virus scan ~1000

I will need to pull down the XP startup time to submit to hwbot, but this thing is fast. on a multicore Overclocked processor, those numbers will be even higher, especially the Gen usage score.

 

[mbentley]

 

[I.M.O.G.]

Grabbed 2nd place in world for pcm05 single core (mobo limited, multiplier locked at 14, can't run FSB higher than ~360MHz on CIVE):
http://hwbot.org/submission/2243550_

530MB/s general usage
430MB/s virus scan (cpu limited, as virus scan runs in a multithreaded test, which hammers a single core CPU)

By the way, the RAM I bought is dual rank, and is only detected at 2GB by the controller. I need to get a different stick that is single rank in order for the controller to detect it as a full 4GB. Mainly mentioned it since the ram referenced above in this thread isn't exactly ideal, in case anyone else picks up this controller. I didn't know better before, but now I do.

Going to grab 1st place in world for pcm05 8 core this weekend, if I can get the performance up - having a bit of trouble right now with getting the storage numbers I posted previously.

 

[johan851]

Sorry about that! Didn't know better myself.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

no problem, I just looked up the difference between single and dual rank. It makes sense now that I read it, but nzaneb and I both made the same mistake. looks like there are single rank ecc 4gb ddr3 sticks on amazon, I will pick one up there I think.