Onboard raid vs pci raid card

[Phelios]

Is there any difference between the sata raid controller on an Asus A7N8X Deluxe and a separate Highpoint raid PCI card?

If not then I might aswell stick with the onboard raid...

 

[elzt]

Separate raid cards come with various different type and speed. Some of them give you more flexibility than the onboard solution in configuring RAID arrays, such as they allow you to select level of RAID (RAID0, 1, 5, 0+1, etc.) and strip size. For average home users, I would say the onboard solution is sufficient.

 

[Phelios]

Thanks for the reply.
What I'd like to know is - does the onboard sata raid solution on the Asus A7N8X use other system resources such as ram and cpu or does it use the northbridge processor or something else?
I intend on setting up a raid 0 for performance. I mainly do photoshop work, programming and gaming but I've started doing video editing too.

I was considering getting the Highpoint RocketRAID 1520 card if the expense is worth it...

 

[elzt]

I think the onboard sata raid uses the southbridge which in turn will tax some CPU resources. However, with modern high speed CPU's, you won't notice any performance drop when onboard raid solution is utilized. So there's really nothing to worry about.