Asus P5Q-E true hardware RAID?

The box my motherboard came in said hardware RAID, someone swore up and down it really was hardware raid, so I called Asus who swears it's hardware RAID, but I'm still not convinced, is it really hardware RAID? Or is it just the same old host RAID every motherboard manufacturer says is hardware RAID?

Alright, another question, how much processing power does host RAID take? Would it cause any noticeable performance differences, or is it better just to buy a dedicated hardware RAID card?

Actually, the P5Q uses a JMICRON hardware raid chip in addition to the Intel raid that the ICH10R chip provides. If you look on your motherboard you will see two SATA ports that are different colors. Just refer to your motherboard user manual.

I cannot be 100% sure, but someone mentioned you may get better performance from the ICH10R ports. This may or may not be true, because I don't know how fast the JMICRON processor is, and it has been proven that bandwidth is strictly limited by the processing power of the RAID chipset processor, and since the ICH10R is "soft raid" and relies on your CPU, the amount of bandwidth is essentially "unlimited". The difference may also be so slim that it does not even matter.

I think the primary purpose for the JMICRON chip is the ASUS software "Drive Xpert", which provides a GUI tool to easily backup your data... Not to mention it will avoid any strains on your CPU like GhislainG said.