From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Aug 23 16:13:38 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D10E616A4DE for ; Wed, 23 Aug 2006 16:13:38 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from nikolas.britton@gmail.com) Received: from wx-out-0506.google.com (wx-out-0506.google.com [66.249.82.235]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0090F43D45 for ; Wed, 23 Aug 2006 16:13:37 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from nikolas.britton@gmail.com) Received: by wx-out-0506.google.com with SMTP id i27so152358wxd for ; Wed, 23 Aug 2006 09:13:37 -0700 (PDT) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=ZSyE7HCEEmmB2iM5mAvryCZcz3/brW90h90bymbMUlz+G2kKqo9WAGfSrxcWHMUjs9GWxlOGQcjv8wg9RlfBrB0k9mSIqb7anFoOZKqdNcJeVyfuw5QlqUEFgFrDxYn83xODX+Aoo7yruSRxvleEUeGLf7x3fe/x4bX6YVoPnDQ= Received: by 10.70.89.1 with SMTP id m1mr814382wxb; Wed, 23 Aug 2006 09:13:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.70.49.3 with HTTP; Wed, 23 Aug 2006 09:13:37 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2006 11:13:37 -0500 From: "Nikolas Britton" To: "Bob Willcox" In-Reply-To: <20060823120146.GA21578@rancor.immure.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <44EC0B9B.5020705@withagen.nl> <003f01c6c68d$64688e60$b3db87d4@multiplay.co.uk> <44EC27C7.8060906@withagen.nl> <20060823120146.GA21578@rancor.immure.com> Cc: amd64@freebsd.org, stable@freebsd.org, Steven Hartland Subject: Re: suggestions for SATA RAID cards X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2006 16:13:38 -0000 On 8/23/06, Bob Willcox wrote: > On Wed, Aug 23, 2006 at 12:02:47PM +0200, Willem Jan Withagen wrote: > > Steven Hartland wrote: > > >The Areca cards I can recommend. Highpoint 1820a is surprisingly good > > >for its price and the later cards have better performance still apparently. > > >N.B. Use the min stripe size when creating the array for max performance > > >with this card under FreeBSD. > > > > I was more thinking along the lines of a HighPoint 2720, but perhaps a 1820 > > would also do fine. What device driver would one use with that. > > > > [Ahhh, 'man -k highpoint' is your friend] > > Now what I liked about the 3ware stuff was that there are tools to work the > > raid from within FreeBSD. So that would require the newers ones... > > > > But the hardware list is only showing the 2320 and 2322 with a rr232x(4) > > driver. Which sort of makes me wonder for all the other stuff and their > > drivers. > > > > The motherboard has both PCI-X and PCI-E so that should not be a connector > > problem. Now which bus is faster: 64Bit PCI-X at 133 Mhz, or a PCI-E 16x? > > The x16 PCI-E has considerably faster theoretical speed than 133 PCI-X > (appx. 4GBs vs. 1GBs). However, the RAID controllers that I've seen are > at most x8 so they are only capable of transfer rates half that fast > (2GBs). Personally, I would go with PCI-E since in some performance > tests I did with Areca cards last year (both PCI-E and PCI-X) there > appeared to be a slight performance advantage to the PCI-E cards (sorry, > I don't recall any of the specifics anymore, so please take that for > what it's worth). > I agree. PCIe 8x is a faster bus and it's typically connected directly to the MCH (north bridge) unlike PCI-X which is stuck on the ICH (south bridge). Also the 2GB/s that was quoted for PCIe 8x is it's one-way data rate "after" calculating in overhead. It's a dual simplex interface meaning it has one path to send data and another path to receive data. Imagine a simple two lane road.