Dom,
I could swear that when I was looking up areca info, it SEEMED to say you could run one raid array off TWO cards, so another areca1231ml and split the mtrons between the two, and that should up the benchies a little. 1700 mbs availabe between two cards. like raid SLI.
Sorry if you already mentioned this but.
What is the max stripe size the areca 1231ml controller will do? and is the max what you used in your tests?
I noticed with the I-ram that even tho 128k stripe benchmarked faster, that the 4k stripe size actually was faster in real usage.
Also, when I timed loading a level in say crysis, which shows how long the level took to load, that 1 i-ram would load the demo in say 12 seconds, and a 2nd i-ram would shorten that to maybe just over 11, and adding a 3rd did nothing to lower it all, so 1 SSD is pretty killer for speed as far as the average person would need.
Nostromo
A lot of your questions will be answered in my review.
Thats why I have hesitated and refrained from responding in here about application loading and boot under Raid 0.
Windows boot remained identical from 1 drive to 2, to 5, to 9.
Application loading for the most part received the most benefit from the single SSD, just as I predicted. You will notice the largest single benefit swapping out your mechanical rotating HDD for an SSD for random file reads and app loading. But, when raiding SSD's you are only adding horsepower, not torque.
If you can kind of get that analogy. Horsepower is how fast you hit the wall, torque is how far you blast through the wall and how much damage you inflict. In drag racing torque is what gets you off the starting line and through the first 60 feet of the race, horsepower is what wins the race up top.
Now place that analogy into computers. Imagine torque = access time/latency and horsepower = sustained read. One single SSD will give you below .1ms access time, so your torque is going to create the snappy feeling and instantaneous file loads. Now, even though you are adding additional horsepower (more drives in raid 0) your torque remains the same. So unless you are loading apps/games that have a few heavier duty file loads. ie: larger blocks of files during the load, not small blocks. The games/apps will benefit from more horsepower during the load operation. So, for the most part the Raid 0 array scaled incredibly and windows feels much nicer as a total package. But specific game/app loads are not something you should be jumping for joy about in a Raid 0 array. They are pretty much identical for the most part to a single SSD.
However, in all other instances including combined read/write operations and OS file write operations the Raid 0 array will prove to be a dramatic increase in performance.
I have a whole slew of results coming in my next article. Youre gonna love it!
Dom
PS- Max stripe size is 128k. I have tried every stripe size (except for 4k) and in synthetic benchmarking they all produced identical figures including CPU uitlization. As far as real world analysis, I didnt even think to measure. Good point.
