3rd Party SATA Controller Explanation PLZ!!!!

[wolfman140]

So here's a question: Will using a 3rd party SATA Controller card increase performance over any on-board controller? I don't use RAID currently, but have to WD Sata150 hdds (one a raptor for OS). So I just used the on-board Sata ports and drivers. Are these really inferior to buying a 3rd party card? Is there a big performance difference? Thanks in advance

 

[rsmart]

If the card is less than a few hundred dollars, then it's little more than the same RAID chips (JBMicron, SI, etc) mounted on a PCI/PCIe card and won't give any performance advantage. These all use the CPU to perform tha RAID function in S/W.

Promise, AMCC, amongst others make true hardware accelerated RAID cards, and any promotional blurb would make ab ig issue of this. these cards use onboard embedded PPC, X-Scale, etc CPUs with XOR hardware acceleration to improve performance. Expect to pay US$400 and up.

As an example:
http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?segment=RAID%205%20HBAs&product_id=156

 

[wolfman140]

Thx for the input guys