On Friday 03 September 2004 05:43 am, James Oakley wrote:
On Friday 03 September 2004 9:57 am, Joe Polk wrote:
HW RAID ... is always going to be faster. There is no way, for instance, SW RAID could compete with say a 6400 w/256MB Cache Module.
You really should look at http://spamaps.org/raidtests.php
Jeeze I love it when someone makes and absolute pronouncement only to immediately be faced with proof to the contrary. !!! ;-) No one is claiming these results are always going to be the same but the hardware is not obviously a clear cut winner. A couple points which may be important (can't say for sure - I've never used that exact card) 1) The 256 cache on the 6400 is located on the other side of the PCI bus from the processor. The same amount of cache on the MOBO is on the same bus as the processor. So Software raid has better memory access. 2 The processor on the Raid card (any of them) is specialized, but still fairly wimpy when compared to whats on the MOBO. (This didn't always use to be true - back in the 386/486 days it was almost a toss-up). -- _____________________________________ John Andersen