your HD tune results?

[Supershanks]

LOL, that burst rate is sooo wrong

Yep but intel have done a freat job of making it consistently wromg comparisons between :-
a) different drivers
b) Ichr8 v ichr9

The real reason behind the burst rate is the impact of write back cache
see Write Back Cache Impact

I wouldn't worry DataMatrix, transfer rate only has advantages in very specific applications. General Windows work and gaming can't really justify it.

I've heard people say similar things about a sports car. Oh you can only do 70 on the motor ways. There are times when it's just fun to do.

[DataMatrix]

2 x Seagate 320GB 7200.10 on NVRAID 0, P5N32-E SLi PLUS (This is my main drive. OS/Games/Downloads/etc...)


2 x Western Digital Caviar 80GB on ITE IT8212 RAID 0, P5N32-E SLi PLUS (This is mostly storage and pagefile)


Both of the above arrays done at the same time

[arthurleung]

DataMatrix, there is definitely something wrong with your Nvidia driver / configuration, it is way too slow for 7200.10. The IDE RAID speed is sub-par, you would expect at least 55MB/s average even with the crap Nvidia PCI bus.

[DataMatrix]

DataMatrix, there is definitely something wrong with your Nvidia driver / configuration, it is way too slow for 7200.10. The IDE RAID speed is sub-par, you would expect at least 55MB/s average even with the crap Nvidia PCI bus.

Hmm, probably due to the striping sizes I use (about 8KB/4KB, I can't remember). What do you recommend?

[Supershanks]

that's a very small stripe , intel default to 128k stripe most use 64kb which is whhat the raids in my examples are based on. as others have said there is definately something wrong with those results, nvidia raid is not noted for great performance but is genarally way better than that. Try My Raid guide, and nitty gritty of strip sizes for more info or check out nvidia's web site they usually have a half decent guide., you can download.

luck

[DataMatrix]

that's a very small stripe , intel default to 128k stripe most use 64kb which is whhat the raids in my examples are based on. as others have said there is definately something wrong with those results, nvidia raid is not noted for great performance but is genarally way better than that. Try My Raid guide, and nitty gritty of strip sizes for more info or check out nvidia's web site they usually have a half decent guide., you can download.

luck

Well, I do use Diskeeper which keeps my array in good shape, I use small strip sizes due to games, etc. Could the NVIDIA RAID controller be bottlenecked by the strip size?

[Supershanks]

i think your raid perfoirmance is suffering due to your stripe size. Also the lower your stripe size the more load your cpu is taking compare your cpu usage with mine mine 4~6% yours is 8~15.7% I'd suggest experimenting with say 64kb & see what your results are.

[shaithis]

Areca Raid5

[this_is_gav]

I've heard people say similar things about a sports car. Oh you can only do 70 on the motor ways. There are times when it's just fun to do.

Yes, but while a sportscar can go faster if required, hard-drives can only delivery performance where it's requested. Your game loading times aren't 4 times faster - most won't even improve at all. Where transfer rate comes in it working with large continuous file reading or writing - uncompressed audio, video or large images, and some sorts of databases. For everyday use the advantages of a striped RAID setup are very limited. 99% of other applications rely heavily on access rate, and transfer rate is limited to the speed of the slowest drive in that case.

[DataMatrix]

Well I'll be buying a P5K and an extra 2 7200.10 320GBs at the end of the month so I may get a RAID card like shaithis. been looking at them, and they look mighty tasty (although the P5K only supports 1 16x & 4x PCI-E when the Areca needs 8x so it may be slightly bottlenecked).

Or I may just use the Intel raid of the P5K which also looks mighty tasty.

[Supershanks]

Your game loading times aren't 4 times faster - most won't even improve at all. Where transfer rate comes in it working with large continuous file reading or writing - uncompressed audio, video or large images, and some sorts of databases. For everyday use the advantages of a striped RAID setup are very limited. 99% of other applications rely heavily on access rate, and transfer rate is limited to the speed of the slowest drive in that case.

Sorry, so if that's the case why have you gone to the expese of buying 2x wd raptor'sd spending approx £156 74GB Western Digital Raptor SATA 16MB £78 If what you claim is correct you've poured money away ?? £1.054/GB

My drives ny comparison are mucho cheapo 80 Gb HGST (IBM/Hitachi) HDS728080PLAT20 Deskstar 7K80, IDE (PATA), 7200 rpm, 2MB Cache, 9.0 ms Total £106, £0.331/GB From what i've heard i've also got an advantage in sound, having quiter drives. I had a pair of therse drives on my old amd rig & added a further 2 for fun , as they are cheap.

But it seems that with the exception of access speed the benchmark favours the 4xhitachi
Looking at your benches i'd be particularly concerned about the 10.2% CPU utilisation, compared with my 6%, there's 4% that could be being utilised by something else.

Now if the real world performance is how you claim i've wasted £102 compared to £156. I've got 320Gb of storage v 148Gb.

[this_is_gav]

Sorry, so if that's the case why have you gone to the expese of buying 2x wd raptor'sd spending approx £156 74GB Western Digital Raptor SATA 16MB £78 If what you claim is correct you've poured money away ?? £1.054/GB

Because I do do video editing, and I got the drives cheap

I've also got 2 (36GB) at work, and it's good for some of the audio work I'm sometimes laboured with. Not really large enough for the video work I do, so I do that at home. These were old drives I used to have at home, and I wouldn't have bought them specifically for work.

Even if you do do basic editing, I'd still argue it's not particularly good value for money unless you're a professional or do so much editing that you're losing time due to using only a single hard drive, and if you're a pro you'd like a hell of a lot more than a few Raptors striped.

[Clunk]

Raptors started off black, then they had a clear top, and now striped, what next?

[Supershanks]

Even if you do do basic editing, I'd still argue it's not particularly good value for money unless you're a professional or do so much editing that you're losing time due to using only a single hard drive, and if you're a pro you'd like a hell of a lot more than a few Raptors striped.

I'm sorry you lost me on that argument seems to contradict itself??

@DataMatrix

I may just use the Intel raid of the P5K which also looks mighty tasty

Don't get carried away the ichr9 shows about the same erformance as ichr8 (commando 965 chipset). What i find superior is matrix raid which imo beats nvidia raid hands down.

Yes you can get some great add on cards, shaithis's Areca Raid5 look superb but i'm not too familiar with raid add on cards. the cost Areca ARC-1220 8 Port PCI-E SATA II RAID 6 Controller (Sorry if i've picked a bad example, it was the only Areca card that i could find) of £300+ is a bit rich for me.

[shaithis]

4 port areca 1210

Scan: £216 out of stock tho

Also sold by http://www.hamiltone.co.uk (where I bought mine) but you need to call for price.


Its an excellent card IMO. I upgraded to it from the equivalent 3Ware Escalade and the performance difference was night and day. Loading times for anything is very very fast.

Areca also seem quite good with drivers. Their x64 driver has been working in Vista since the earliest beta, although they are still to release a digitally signed driver.

[Supershanks]

That's a pretty awesome card shaithis, that puts you in a league of your own
as i say i'm running cheap & cheerfull using the resources to hand. Depends really what your aiming to do.