How to pick a systemboard for multiple disk performance

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James Board

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I'm planning my next system build, which will use a fast 6-core CPU: something like a 4930 or 4960. I want to optimize disk performance, across many disks. Maybe a 4-disk or 6-disk RAID-0.

I want to know how to evaluate the various system-board in terms of overall aggregate disk performance. Some boards have up to 10 SATA ports. Some even have 10 6 Gb/s SATA ports. Can they really handle 10 SSDs doing I/O at 500 MB/sec? If not, how can I tell how well they perform when doing I/O to multiple disks?

In general, when a system has N SATA ports, does that generally mean that all N SATA ports can be reading/writing disk drives at the maximum speed the disk will support? Or is it instead the case that the N SATA ports are only there so you have multiple storage options, but you can only use 1 or 2 of them at full speed?

I had a similar problem years ago when I tried to connect two external USB drives to a PC and do I/O to both. The maximum aggregate I/O speed across
both USB drives was the same as to a single drive. That sucked. Are these 10-port SATA boards the same way?
 
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popatim
the intel and amd sata ports are connected to the processor support chip and won't use a pci-e lane at all. The extra controllers will and how they connected/ perform will either be found in the owners manual or determined from reviews.

i must have remembered the wrong board. the one in your post has the extra sata ports on seperate marvell controllers. 3 controllers running 6 ports.

You look up the specifications on the manufacturers website.


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popatim

Titan
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It all depends on the sata controller being used and how it was implemented. Some extra controllers add a few sata ports but are put on an x1 pcie lane so top out with just 1 good ssd attached or even worse, it splits the x1 lane between both sata port so you only get 250MB/s...

What board are you considering?
 
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James Board

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I guess that's what I want to know. Does whichever system board put the SATA controller on x1 PCIe lane, or x2, or x4? How can I determine that on my own?

I haven't really narrowed down the choices, but let's consider the GIGABYTE GA-X79-UP4 LGA 2011 Intel X79. Here's the link at NewEgg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128562
It has 4 SATA 3 Gb/s and 6 SATA 6 Gb/s ports. Also, it's PCIe 3.0 so they are 500 MB/s per lane. If connected drives to all the SATA ports, what is my bandwidth likely to be, or what's the upper bound?
 
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popatim

popatim

Titan
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that board has 2 sata3 ports on the intel chipset, 2 on the Marvell, and 2 on the jmicron. You cant raid between them. I dont know of any intel solution that supports 6+ sata3 ports. So it looks like you will need a dedicated sata3 raid controller card if you want more than a 2 drive raid0 array.

researching users reviews and benchmarks is all we can do.
 
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James Board

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How can you tell that the board has 2 sata3 on the Intel Chipset, 2 on Marvell, etc? How can I determine that for myself?

Also, how are those sata3 ports connected to the system? Is it a 1x PCIe lane? A 2x PCIe lane?

Also, the board has 4 sata2 ports. I assume they are connected to the Intel SATA controllers. How are they connected to the system? 1x PCIe lane? A 2x PCIe lane? I can implement a 4-drive SATA2 RAID-0, right?

These are PCIe 3.0 lanes, so each is 1000 MB/sec each way, right?



 
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popatim

popatim

Titan
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the intel and amd sata ports are connected to the processor support chip and won't use a pci-e lane at all. The extra controllers will and how they connected/ perform will either be found in the owners manual or determined from reviews.

i must have remembered the wrong board. the one in your post has the extra sata ports on seperate marvell controllers. 3 controllers running 6 ports.

You look up the specifications on the manufacturers website.


 
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