using Perc5i as SATA controller vs chipset provided SATA ports

J

jarthel

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 24, 2001
Messages
371
I have a Perc5i card here. Well actually 4 of them. I wanna use 1 as as SATA controller (RAID feature is not use. I just want to use the 8 SATA ports) for a ZFS FreeBSD setup. I'm just wondering if I would get performance advantages over the built-in Intel ICHx chipset provided SATA ports (other the obvious fact, I can 8 ports instead of the usual 4 or 6 available in the motherboard).

Thank you
 
On linux with 1068e cards similar to your Perc5i I get better total bandwidth than the ports on an ich9 on a core2quad 2.83 GHz Q9550. If I run badblocks on 8 drives at once I get nearly full speed on all 8 ports. I do not get 100% performance on the 6 Intel ports.
 
The only disadvantage i can think of with the "5" series dell PERC and SAS cards are that they use PCI-x chips from LSI with a PCIx-to-PCIe bridge chip. You would be capped by the bandwidth of a PCI-x bus (not sure what speed) rather than that of the 8-lane PCI-e 1.0 that the card appears to be. But you may never hit this limit depending on what equipment you use.
 
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