Onboard RAID vs. PCI ???

[DrZone]

I've heard some discussion about this. Does onboard RAID really suck up alot of CPU ??? I have an onboard Promise RAID chip on my ASUS A7V266-E and i'd like to try it out with 2 x 80gb Maxtors. Do any of you think there would be a problem ?

Thanks in advance.

 

[ShadowDJ]

I don't think there would be a problem. The only mode that really brings a new high end processor to its kneeswith calculations are the backup configs with many drives (raid 5, methinks). Only the more expensive PCI cards run it in hardware, anyway. The only difference I've ever heard of is the onboard chips might have less cache, but I don't know if that's true or not.

 

[jayboal]

The short answer is no, but for more info, check out this discussion/review of IDE RAID:

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.html?i=1491http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.html?i=1491

 

[mastabog]

It is true that they eat up more CPU but as you have already seen, there is no Mobo that has a built-in RAID with more than RAID 0,1. That is one reason why they didnt put Raid 5 on a mobo (another would be the price i think). It would have killed the CPU. A true PCI card supporting up to RAID 5 has a build in processing unit and spares the CPU of processing RAID arrays. As far as i've seen those true RAID pci cards are huge in both size and price

So if i were you, i would worry at all about my built in RAID 0,1 eating up my CPU.

Cheers,
BoG

 

[Postmortem6]

I think they are pretty much the same.

see on picture.
biggest difference is BIOS chip. beside bios and controller chpis, there isn't anything else on card!
http://www.newegg.com/app/Showimage.asp?image=16-115-001-01.JPG

 

[DrZone]

Thanks for the info everyone. I appreciate it.

But after doin some more thinking, it may be wiser to use a non-RAID config with 2x80gb drives. Because i was thinking, if i lose a drive, i'll lose ALL of the 160gb - that's a huge amount of stuff.

 

[mastertech01]

If you are comparing like controllers, IE HPT370 onboard to HPT370 on card, the primary difference is being able to upgrade the bios of the controller itself. Onboard relies on the motherboard bios, where you can do an update immediately on release by HPT for the controller cards in PCI. Sometimes a mobo manufacturer is slow to update. CPU utilization of like chipsets should be relatively the same if not exact.