64bit PCI IDE RAID Controller

[Player0]

Needed...any info?

[sptw]

64 bit? Hummm, well, i assume that you are going to put it on your new Iwill DPL533 Dual 533mhz Xeon E7505.I would go for 3Ware Escalade 7500 Parallel Ata Raid Card series (http://www.3ware.com/products/parallel_ata.asp).It seems that 7500-4 is the best choice.This card is a 64 bit/33mhz, but can be used in 64-bit / 66 MHz slots also,

[Player0]

Ah cheers, thats the one i was thinking of. THanks!

[sptw]

This is the best ATA RAID Controller on the market in my opinion Tom.Better than Promise and Adaptec.Look at least for 7500-4.Don't buy a 7000-2 because it doesn't offer a High Performance Raid 5.
X-Bit Labs have a excellent review with the7500-8 model (http://www.xbitlabs.com/storage/3ware-7850/) and 8 hds.

[Player0]

Yeah, it would be nice to somehting more professional. Raid5 would be interesting for the file server as well, but with slow writes, may not make a good video editing.

Its costly though. Theres a lot I need to get with xmas money.

[sptw]

Yeah, i know what you mean, a lot of the things to pay and to buy.Anyway, in case you decide for this card let me know how it perform.

[Player0]

OK - help :)

My new board has two 33mhz 32bit PCI slots. One 133mhz PCI-X 64bit slot, and two 100mhz PCI-X 64bit slots.

So. Ive been reading reviews, and Im looking at the 3ware 7500-4, which seems nice, but expensive. Looking at this new Promise SX4000 too. Its cheaper, and in reviews, seems to be faster than the 3 ware for normal workstation use (but not as good for server use, but thats not what im doing).

I think I want a card capable of doing raid-5 and these seem like my best options, im really leaning on the SX4000. BUT, it uses a 32bit 66mhz PCI interface!

Now im bloody confused. Can I plug this in to a PCI-X 64bit port to get the 66mhz interface? Or do i have to use one of the 33mhz PCI bus cards?

[sptw]

Hi Player0,

Let’s see:
Your Iwiill has 1 x PCI-X/133 MHz slot, 1 x PCI-X/100 MHz slot, 1x 64-bit/66 MHz PCI slot and 2 x 32-bit/33 MHz PCI slots.Those 2 PCI-X are the new industry-standart PCI specifications.Iwill use the new Intel PCI Controller Hub (82870P2) and it’s full compatibly with PCI 2.2 Specifications.It has 64-bit and 32-bit addressing support and the 133 MHz /PCI-X slot can provide a maximum bandwidth greater than 1 GB/s.Well, in theory, there’s no problem to fit this promise SX-4000 in this slot, but in pratice I don’t know if Promise or even 3ware are compatible with this new PCI-X specifications.Even if can, I think it’s not necessary to waste this slot.Both cards have a 266MB maximum bandwidth, then it’s better to use the 64-bit/66 MHz PCI slot.For this slot I know that 3Ware 7500 series are full compatible.3Ware 7500 series are 64 bits/33 Mhz and Promise SX series are 32 bits/66mhz.In my opinion you can fit the Promise SX-4000 in this 64-bits/66 MHZ slot, at least in theory, because the motherboard chipset is fully backward compatible with this, but as I said before , in practice sorry I don’t know if the Promise SX-4000 backward for 32bits/33Mhz or if it accepts 32bits/66Mhz.
About the price comparison between 3Ware 7500-4 and Promise SX-4000, yeah, you’re right.I think it’s almost $100, isn’t it?$250 for 3ware and $147 for SX-4000.In my opinion 3ware 7500-4 is better than SX-4000.3ware series use SRam.You know that SRAM is the logic used in cache memory, not main memory like SDRAM/RDRAM.While the burst write performance of SDRAM is similar in performance to SRAM, the random access, let alone any read operation, performance is almost an order of magnitude faster with SRAM. The key is latency.SDRAM is still DRAM.This is why the 3Ware cards use an ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) instead of a microcontroller (i960, StrongARM, etc...) like the Adaptec 2400A, Promise SuperTrak series and most SCSI RAID cards.They're not using buffered DRAM, but 0 latency SRAM that cannot be impeded by overhead and buffering.So it is often directly I/O mapped memory for transfers, which the 64-bit ASIC provides without delay.Using a microcontroller would negate the performance benefits of SRAM, since it cannot act like a simple bus arbitrator like an ASIC can.And to make matters worse for competing ATA solutions, the Adaptec 2400A and Promise SuperTrak use very slow i960 microcontrollers especially the SuperTrak.The problem seems to be with Raid5, because of the smaller amount of total RAM (2MB), but 3Ware claims that RAID-5 writing speeds can exceed 75 Mbytes per second, which is faster than any other ATA RAID card available today, due to the R5 Fusion technology that use a larger packet buffer to cache both random and sequential write operation.Well it is really usefull for video editing, but for a server, I don’t know.And for last, this new StorSwitch architecture Similar to network packet-switching hardware seems to be a very interesting technology introduced in ATA raid card controller.
The problem is : this $100 worth the difference?And they really exist?Unfortunatelly, I could not put my hands on this card yet, to make a sure that it worth the money, but if I have to choose I would go for 3Ware 7500 series.

[lechumbl]

Hi Virginio,

Man, you are a fountain of information!!
Great job!!

Take care........

[Player0]

Hi SPTW,

Thanks for the help. In the end, I chose to go with the Promise SX4000. I got this with a Micron PC133 256m stick which will be for cache. As long as the 64Bit PCI-X slots truely are backwards compatible with 32Bit PCI cards, I'll be all set. I've contacted Promise to make sure. I think PCI-X is 3.3v while PCI is 5v, which worries me a little. But, you are right, they are probably compatible. I ordered a third WD1200JB today as well so I can go to RAID5 which should be awesome.

With Serial ATA coming out (Im drooling over the 3Ware 8500), I felt that I should go with a cheaper solution. In all the reviews Ive read, the Promise card keeps right up with the 3Ware (and in terms of write speed, blows the 3ware away). I just havent seen any numbers that justified a cost of almost 2x the amount of the Promise card.

As for the SRAM versus SDRAM, you are right. Although I imagine the Promise controller has to have some cache memory as well. In terms of raw amounts tho, 256m of SDRAM while doing things like video editing may actually have a performance benefit over the smaller amount of SRAM, as large files will be more likely to fit more easily in to the SDRAM. I have to assume this is a large reason the Promise performs better in DivX writting tests Ive seen.

[Player0]

Got the card, the Raid5 array set up. But WindowsXP wont install. I hit F6, install the SX4000 drivers. Windows continues its thing. I get to the screen that sais press Enter to install Windows fresh or press R to repair an old version. I press enter, and Windows sais that it cant find any drives to install itself on, and then exits out.

So crap. Any thoughts?

[Drake]

Hrmm. I'd check out Storage Review (http://www.storagereview.com) and see what they say. Surely they'd have some info on installing OSes in RAID 5.

[Farabomb]

I had the same thing happen to me with the disk that shipped with my KX7. Try another driver and maybe that'll help.

[Player0]

I've tried the driver disk and downloading the drivers from the website. Neither help. Feh.

[sptw]

Hi Player,

Well i'm sure that you did everything correct, but did you you check if the driver'diskette has a file named Txtsetup.oem?This file is necessary to load the drivers on Windows XP.well, if not this, the only thing that i can imagine is some kind of incompatibility with SX-4000 and this Iwill DPL 533.I know that for Super Track SX-6000 there are some imcompatibility with some P4 mobo, Tyan mobo and MPX chipsets.They released a new bios for SX-6000 to fix this issue, but for SX-4000 the latest bios is dated 2002/08/20, and it seems that this Iwill is really new, then probably it's incompatibilty.The latest driver for SX-4000 is dated on 2002/12/17, did you try this latest driver?One more thing, only for purpose test, i don't know which slot are you using for, but try to change the slot.


Posted By Lechumbl:
Man, you are a fountain of information!!

Thanks Lee my good friend for your kind words, but it was only a research, something here, something there, then join it and voila......:)

[Player0]

Sptw, all the proper drivers are on the floppies. It could be an incompatibility, that would suck. Yep, I tried the latest driver. Ive tried different slots, it hasn't helped.

Im formatting now, but its taking FOREVER! Its been 3 hours and im only up to 46% ;)

[sptw]

Well, i could see that you fixed it.About format operation, it used to take a long time for RAID 5 and SCSI drivers, then probably it's normal with IDE too.

[Player0]

AHH! Nothing works! After formatting the drive, the raid controller said one of the drives was broken in the raid array. WinXP still didnt see the drive. Rebuilding the array worked fine.

AGGH!

Im loosing my mind, I have $4000 worth of PC sitting here and I cant even get the darn OS installed.

[Drake]

Try installing a different OS. You may be able to troubleshoot from there.

Or trying to install in a different system.

[Player0]

After fighting the b*tard for the weekend, I got WindowsXp to install. It wasn't really stable, but it installed. I had to disable ACPI and remove my ATI 8500DV. But, it did run. After a few reboots, it gave me UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_DEVICE tho, so I gave up.

I just ordered the 3ware 7500-4, which was my second choice. I dont think there are any speed issues worth the $100 extra price. But perhaps in terms of compatibility and support on a server class mobo, it will work out better. Its a shorter card too, should make my case look neater.

Too bad tho, the Promise SX4000 is a great card for a great price, I recommend it for anyone looking at RAID5 for their home PCs, would go great with an Athlon board. Why spend $40 extra everytime you get a Mobo to have RAID support when for $150, you can get a card that you can keep using from system to system.

[sptw]

Sorry to hear that Player0.It's too bad that this Sx 4000 is not compatible with your board.Sure it is a great card and cheap when compared to 3Ware.I hope it can be compatible with this Iwill.Let me know, and good luck m8.

[Player0]

Me too, maybe if I had listened to you in the first place, I'd be playing BF1942 already ;)

Maybe im just cheap lol :)

Or broke, same diff ;)

Had to give up DBZ Budokai to buy this ;)

[sptw]

Hey, c'mon Tom, you did the right thing when bought the promise card m8.$100 of difference is a big difference.It's a lot of money, at least for me too :D.It was a surprise for me this SX-4000 is incompatible with this board.In principle i was just thinking that it could be incompatible with pci-x or even with 64bits/66 mhz, but not with the entire board.It really was a surprise for me too.Maybe a firmware update can fix it, but you know, it can take a long time from the promise.Well, i'm here cross my finger for this 3Ware card don't disappoint you :)