RAID Questions?

Soldier4Real

Soldier4Real

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So I'm hoping to build a new AM3 based machine in the next month or so. I'm thinking about running RAID 0 with 2 HDD's and using the on board controller from this board:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130223&Tpk=msi gd70

It actually has two RAID controllers on board which is where I'm getting confused. I've read that using built in RAID controllers may actually cause performance degradation because it's taxing the CPU. I see that there is one controlled by the SB750 South Bridge and the other is controlled by a JMicron JMB322. Is the JMicron an independent controller? Therefore a performance hit wouldn't really be a problem? I really don't want to purchase a separate controller card and this is more or less a "budget" build. I'm not looking to run SSD's or Raptors because to honest their just too damn expensive. Anyway any insight would be appreciated.
 
I just looked at the specs and it says the JMicron is only on SATA ports 6 & 7. I'm thinking it's for external drives only. Did you check the manual provided by MSI to see if you can find out more?
 
It is for internal SATA drives but I've already read some bad things about that particular controller :(
 
One things for sure -- you do NOT want to run a JMicron setup on a SSD. Terrible stuttering. They are supposedly fixing it though with a brand new revision coming out soon.
 
I think the JMicron uses the CPU too...

That said, it's not the CPU performance degradation that is the problem - it's setting up raid to begin with. If you look at the link below, the performance hit is like 5% of CPU max... which you're probably not going to really notice...

I was looking at what it would take to run a RAID-0 with 2 SSD's on a SB750 chipset (the one that the mobo has that you posted), and there's a few threads that I found with people unable to turn RAID or AHCI mode (required for raid) on because the bios gives them some error message.

Just search for: sb750 ahci problem

However, there's also quite a few people that have said that it's working just fine... so in the end it might be resolved. Most posts are at least 6 months old.

Here's some benches that I just found which look good.
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=608099

BTW I haven't set up raid myself, but I think there's a way to do it through the bios and through windows with a utility... not sure how it works exactly. But it should be fun.
 
Just my two cents that I've read
Use the onboard raid controler for a RAID 0
Use an aftermarket for another 0+1 at least that is what I see on the big boy rigs.
 
Yeah I've now read that RAID with the on board controller should be fine and not really tax the processor that bad. I think that's the route I'll go. Btw I plan on getting the new 955 BE and OC'ing to at least 3.8GHz with 6 GB of RAM so it should be a decent machine. The only thing I'm not ecstatic about is the board only supports Crossfire but ATI has dropped the prices on a lot of their cards.
 
I just read an article today that AMD sold X3 the first part of the year with the extra core still good. I'll post it in tech talk; but, you can find a diamond in the rough for 125 bones.
 
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