SSD RAID 0 OSX

[finch1240]

Hi, I have a couple Corsair 60 GB Force Series SSDs advertised as "maximum read speed of 285MB/s and write speed of 275MB/s

I am running a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R with OSX, My system is primarily a Visual Effects Compositing workstation and I am trying to find the best solution to run these drives in a RAID 0.

The options I have tried are:

1) RAID-ing them in the bios on the motherboard's Marvell 9128 controller. This produces an underwhelming xbench:

sequential:
Uncached Write 249.11 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 195.98 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 25.53 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 288.08 MB/sec [256K blocks]
random:
Uncached Write 64.09 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 213.90 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 20.16 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 268.00 MB/sec [256K blocks]

2) OSX can't utilize the ICH10R's RAID features

3) I am currently running an OSX software RAID 0 with better results than the Marvell:
Sequential:
Uncached Write 255.58 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 254.96 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 39.29 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 363.23 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random:
Uncached Write 242.67 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 252.85 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 28.24 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 334.04 MB/sec [256K blocks]


I have 2 main questions:

1) With my current OSX software RAID configuration, should I be concerned about any significant CPU performance loss considering it is a software RAID? (I need all the performance I can get)

1) Would I see a significant increase in the performance of my RAID if I were to purchase a sub $200 Raid controller?

Thanks!

 

[finch1240]

As a side note, I do not need to be able to boot from the array, I only need to use it as a scratch disc with DPX files on it

 

[tritonofg]

q1) Onboard mobo raid controllers are "fake" raid and use your cpu just as much as software raid...IMO it is better to use software raid than fake raid. furthermore, RAID 0 does not need parity calculations and need near ) cpu overhead

q2) Minimal change unlesss you are willing to fork over $300+ for a RAID controller with cache and BBU