Re: ASUS P4C800 Deluxe & SATA-2 drives?
- From: nospam@xxxxxxxxxx (Paul)
- Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 19:14:30 GMT
In article <2V5zf.14909$sq.4733@trnddc01>, "M. B."
<REMOVETHESPAMmystic02@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Paul,
>
> Thanks for the long and informative answer. I do have two follow-ups:
>
> 1) My board is P4C800 Deluxe and NOT the P4C800-E Deluxe version.
>
> The description for the P4C800 Deluxe and the P4C800 Deluxe-E versions both
> state the following:
>
> "The P4C800 Deluxe offers the most complete RAID solution. A Promise SATA
> controller offers RAID 0, 1 and 10 functions with Max. 2 UltraATA 133 ports
> and 2 SATA HD ports, enabling users to build a RAID array with any 2, 3 or 4
> of the ports. With unique multi-RAID function, RAID 0 and RAID 1 array can
> co-exist."
>
> However, there seems to be something "extra" in the P4C800-E Deluxe version:
>
> "Intel is the world's first chipset maker to integrate Serial ATA (SATA) and
> RAID 0, 1 functions into the South Bridge. The latest ICH5R chipset now
> delivers 150MB/s fast data transfer (SATA) and striping performance to
> enhance computing efficiency."
>
> a) Will this ICH5R make any difference? I can swap to an "-E" board for
> free if it's performance worthwhile. It seems that my current P4C800
> Deluxe board has a ICH5 (no R) chip.
>
> b) As of right now, my WD Caviar is connected to the motherboard's standard
> SATA connector. Do you think it may have any postive performance gains if
> I connect it to the Promise 378 SATA controller in IDE (not RAID) mode? The
> Promise 378 in identical on both boards.
>
> 2) The link you gave me with regard to the "32bit Transfer Rate" only talks
> about its relevants in RAID mode. I am running in standard IDE. Does that
> make a difference? What is the "PIO mode"?
>
> Thanks alot!
>
> - Michael
First, a correction. The second hub bus on the 875 Northbridge is called
CSA (communications streaming architecture). I only mentioned it as
a little trivia. It is not used on the P4C800 Deluxe, and is connected
to a Gigabit ethernet chip on the P4C800-E Deluxe.
RAID allows more than one disk to be grafted together to make a virtual
volume. RAID 0 stripes the data across multiple disks, and allows the
transfer bandwidth to be increased according to the number of disks used.
Since the ICH5R would support two disks in RAID 0, you could double the
bandwidth, as long as there are no other system bottlenecks to prevent it.
This would have nothing to do with SATA II, so you still wouldn't be running
that disk in SATA II mode, just combining two SATA disks to get double the
bandwidth. (RAID 1, on the other hand, operates the disks in parallel, such
that if one disk fails, the other one has an identical copy of the data.
While you get no extra bandwidth from that, it is a more reliable way to
store data.)
So RAID won't help you unless you have two disks, and you are willing to
take more of a risk that a disk will fail.
Connecting the drive to the Promise controller, whether run in some kind
of RAID array or in IDE mode, will always suffer from the bandwidth
limitation of the PCI bus. So forget the Promise, in terms of setting some
kind of world record. The Southbridge is still your best option on that
motherboard. RAID0 on the Southbridge can work at up to 266MB/sec, before
the hub bus becomes the limiting factor. Most people who benchmark RAID0
configurations, are more interested in the STR, and since the best disks
limit the RAID to about 140MB/sec or so, even RAID0 is not really bus
limited. You would need a four disk RAID0, to get to the hub bus limit.
Since you are so interested in limits, have a look at this result:
http://www.barefeats.com/hard45.html
That article demonstrates the importance of having a fat system bus in
your computer. A server board has busses like that. Or another trick, is to
stick an Areca eight port RAID card in the PCI Express video card slot of
an SLI equipped motherboard, as the 2GB second bandwidth of the x8 PCI
Express slot would allow eight disks to run flat out in RAID0. Desktop
boards were never intended to be "bandwidth kings".
Paul
.
- References:
- ASUS P4C800 Deluxe & SATA-2 drives?
- From: M. B.
- Re: ASUS P4C800 Deluxe & SATA-2 drives?
- From: Paul
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