Premium Controllers Under Scrutiny: Ultra160 RAID Adapters from Adaptec and LSI

Test Setup

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Test System
Processor Intel Celeron 1.7 GHz128 kB L2 cache
Motherboard AOpen AX4B Pro-533
RAM 256 MB DDR/ PC2100, CL2 Micron/ Crucial
Hard drives 4x Fujitsu MAN3367MP U160 SCSI36,7 GB, 10,000 rpm
Graphics card NVIDIA GeForce 2 GTS, 32 MB DDR
Network card 3COM 905TX PCI 100 MBit
OS Windows 2000 Pro 5.00.2195 Service Pack 3
Benchmarks and Measurements
Office applications ZD WinBench 99 - Business Disk Winmark 1.2
High end applications ZD WinBench 99 - Highend Disk Winmark 1.2
Performance test ZD WinBench 99 - Disc Inspection Test
I/O Performance Intel I/O-Meter
Drivers and Settings
Graphics driver NVIDIA Reference driver 29.42
IDE drivver Intel Application Accelerator 2.2
DirectX Version 8.1
Monitor resolution 1024x768, 16 Bit, 85 Hz Refresh
Adaptec driver Ver. 3.10
LSI driver Ver. 5.09

Test Results

Data Transfer Performance

The results in the RAID 0 mode clearly demonstrate which bandwidth the PCI bus can provide. Proof of this is the straight line in the data transfer diagram.

Patrick Schmid
Editor-in-Chief (2005-2006)

Patrick Schmid was the editor-in-chief for Tom's Hardware from 2005 to 2006. He wrote numerous articles on a wide range of hardware topics, including storage, CPUs, and system builds.