onboard RAID controller vs external RAID controller

[roughneck42]

my Gigabyte mobo (GA-8ihxp) has an embedded Promise RAID chip and I have successfully installed two ata133 drives in raid 0 and installed XP, works fine and is a great speed upgrade.

Does anyone know if an external, PCI slot Raid controller would provide better performance than the embedded raid controller? is the embedded Promise controller basically the same as a PCI based controller or does it count as 'software raid' i'm not sure?

thanks

 

[fishmahn]

The embedded controller is probably 'software raid' but the software overhead on raid 0 isn't enough to cause performance differences between that and hardware raid.

The PCI card with 2 7200rpm drives in RAID 0 will hit very close to the PCI bus' bandwidth limit and may bottleneck your performance.

I would stick with the embedded controller.

Mike.

 

[mpjesse]

PCI controllers for IDE, SATA, & RAID all suck. PCI is a huge bottleneck for devices like hard drives and CD ROM drives.

Like fishmahn said, stick wid ur onboard RAID.

-mpjesse

 

[RichPLS]

Better performance with RAID controller card, and much better features, one if card or mobo dies, you can get another and save RAID arrays. Unlikely with onboard, since mobo would probably be out of production or changed chipset, which means RAID is toast too.
Costwise, onboard hands down, Performance and Features, price aside, RAID card all the way.

 

[mpjesse]

I would agree w/ that statement if he's going to use a PCI-X or PCI-e RAID card.

Have you ever tried to run an IDE or SATA device on a PCI controller card? It's like watching old people screw.

-mpjesse

 

[RichPLS]

Negative, only used it with PCIx...

 

[slipchuck]

I was reading the "regular" PCI has a transfer rate of 266mb/sec.
as long as there is not a lot of other things accessing the PCI bandwidth at the same time, a raid 0/1 card should have no problems with most 7200 rpm drives in raid.
I would consider buying. of course if you have PCI express or equiv. bandwidth should not be a problem.
if you are pci, then the Promise TX2300 supports raid 0, raid 1 with sata 2 drives. (also compatable with sata 1 hard drives.

hope this helps