K8N-E Deluxe NVIDIA RAID vs. Sil3114 RAID

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

For what it's worth, if anyone is running a two disk SATA raid array, the
NVIDIA chipset is MUCH, MUCH faster than the Sil3114 chipset. I know this
because I have 3 identical Seagate 160G sata drives. I had 2 set as RAID 0
on the Sil3114 and my 3rd as a back up stand alone sata on the NVIDIA
chipset. All my benchmarks were showing that my single NVIDIA drive (at 95
MB/s) was slightly outperforming my Sil3114 raid array (at 93 MB/s). Ouch!
How could this be? After some research, I found that the Raid performance of
the NVIDIA chipset was suppose to be outstanding. So I took the plunge,
swapped my drives to the other chipsets (and YES this REQUIRES a complete
fresh reinstall of Windows, ouch again), and there it was, like magic, my
raid performance increased nearly 3 fold. I'm now getting 260 MB/s from my
RAID 0 on the NVIDIA set and 94 MB/s on my single sata drive on the Sil3114.
There are the facts. Use them as you like.

 

[Paul]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

In article <G-qdneLDWOFEunzfRVn-qQ@comcast.com>, "Pointless"
<Get2ThePoint@comcast.net> wrote:

> For what it's worth, if anyone is running a two disk SATA raid array, the
> NVIDIA chipset is MUCH, MUCH faster than the Sil3114 chipset. I know this
> because I have 3 identical Seagate 160G sata drives. I had 2 set as RAID 0
> on the Sil3114 and my 3rd as a back up stand alone sata on the NVIDIA
> chipset. All my benchmarks were showing that my single NVIDIA drive (at 95
> MB/s) was slightly outperforming my Sil3114 raid array (at 93 MB/s). Ouch!
> How could this be? After some research, I found that the Raid performance of
> the NVIDIA chipset was suppose to be outstanding. So I took the plunge,
> swapped my drives to the other chipsets (and YES this REQUIRES a complete
> fresh reinstall of Windows, ouch again), and there it was, like magic, my
> raid performance increased nearly 3 fold. I'm now getting 260 MB/s from my
> RAID 0 on the NVIDIA set and 94 MB/s on my single sata drive on the Sil3114.
> There are the facts. Use them as you like.

Try this. Go to this page.
Select "Read transfer rate", then click sort.

http://www.storagereview.com/comparison.html

The fastest non-SCSI disk drive, is the 10000 RPM Raptor
at 71.8MB/sec. Two of those in RAID 0, on a motherboard
that has no bottleneck on the controller bus, would get
twice that rate.

Your benchmarks are benefitting from an Nvidia software
cache and perhaps the cache on the controller board
of the disk drive. If you use decent sized files for
testing, the transfer rate will come down to more
"normal" values.

There is a difference between burst transfer rates and
sustained transfer rates. If you have a tiny amount of
data, and it gets transferred in a vanishingly small
interval, the drive seek times (moving from one area
to another on the disk) will be the limiting factor.
If you try and do some real work with your "miracle
array", you will soon realize tha sustained transfer
rate is not as fast as you think. The next time
you have to clone a drive or do a backup, time it, and
see if you still get 260 MB/sec...

Paul