SATA-Controller Roundup (RAID 0/1 Performance)

Roundup @ GamePC

• Intel ICH6R
• Intel 6300ESB
• nVidia nVRAID
• VIA V-RAID / 8237 RAID
• Promise 20378
• Promise 20579
• Silicon Image 3114
• AMCC 3Ware Esclade 9500S-4LP

Zitat

While there are a lot of factors to look into when deciding what kind of RAID controller you want on your system, if you’re looking for a simple RAID-0 or RAID-1 controller, keep it simple. The native Serial ATA RAID abilities in modern chipsets from Intel, VIA, and nVidia are all very impressive, and across the board they give better performance compared to third-party, PCI based solutions. While chips from Promise and Silicon Image may boast special features to make them appear more attractive compared to integrated RAID solutions, typically the performance will not back up these claims.

In our opinion, Intel’s ICH6R is still the best RAID controller solution on the market if you’re looking for a simple two or four disk RAID array. The ICH6R is a refined controller core with an impressive set of features and is backed by a very stable set of drivers and a very easy to use menu system. ICH6R supports quad ports, native command queuing, and supports Intel’s nifty (and heavily under-utilized) Matrix RAID technology. If you’re getting a Pentium 4 motherboard, running your disks off an ICH6R Southbridge is the way to go.

For AMD users, nVidia’s nForce4 based nVRAID is also highly impressive. While nVRAID boasts incredible performance in terms of burst transfer rate, we found that in the majority of cases, VIA’s V-RAID solution was a bit faster. nVidia beats VIA on feature set though, as nVRAID supports four disks, is SATA-II/300 compatible, and supports NCQ, all of which VIA cannot claim. VIA’s solution does perform quite well, although the two disk limitation will become very apparent when more SATA optical disks hit the market and SATA ports become used more often.

Of the third party controllers, we would generally opt for a Silicon Image solution over Promise’s SATA solutions. Silicon Image chips generally support more disks and support a greater array of RAID options. Neither Silicon Image nor Promise SATA RAID chips perform fantastically well, but performance is not too much different compared to a native SATA RAID solution. As for the 3Ware Escalade, well, we wouldn’t recommend it for a simple RAID-0/1 array. RAID-5, well that’s another story, and that’s where 3Ware will shine. Alas, we will not be looking at RAID-5 abilities today.

Zitat von Viper780

ich weis ned recht was ich vo dem Test halten soll, nur einen einzigene Steckkarte getestet, da am langsamsten system und erna kommt des ned komisc vor das mehr als 10x langsamer beim schreiben i als alle anderen?

Was hat die Geschwindigkeit vom Sys mit den Schreibraten der HD zu tun? Die c't hat bis 2003 noch einen Pentium 100 für alle HD-Tests verwendet, was ausreichte, um ALLE Festplatten an ihre Limits zu treiben.
Und was das schlechte Abschneiden der 3ware Controller unter ATTO (write) angeht, so ist dieses Verhalten schon seit langem (über 2 Jahre) bekannt, siehe Tech-Report:
http://tech-report.com/reviews/2002...d/index.x?pg=16
http://tech-report.com/reviews/2002...d/index.x?pg=17
Ich würde da eher mal auf ein Problem mit ATTO tippen, denn daß ein Controller bei einem Test SO abstinkt, und bei den anderen immer in der Spitzengruppe ist, ist schon sehr merkwürdig...