RAID Update - 3ware 9650SE

Well I have had a decently busy playing with the RAID controller that arrived on Monday.

I indeed have run some IO meter tests with 1, 4, 16, 32, 64, 128, and 256 outstanding I/O per second (IOs/IOps). I stayed with the 128k stripe for the ICH9R southbridges 'software' Intel Matrix RAID. For the 3ware 9650SE-2LP, I have tried 2 different stripe size (64k and 256k). I am somewhat disappointed with the lack of stripe size choices (only 16k, 64k, and 256k were available - WTF).

As expected, the ICH9R edges 3ware's 9650SE in HD Tune.

Here are 9650SE results for the 3ware 9650SE-2LP:

64kb Stripe

256k stripe

CPU usage is already lower for the two Hardware RAID results. Also, it would be worth noting that performance on the hardware RAID controller is a lot more consistent whereas the RAID via Intel's ICH9R tapers off.

I will be working on the various results for IOmeter. I can however say this, on high load (256 IOs), the software RAID controller (ICH9R) chewed up ~60% CPU utilization for one of the tests consistently (repeated). That is simply unacceptable under those conditions for any PC user. The RAID controller really shines in that aspect. By comparison, mundane apps like the built in calculator takes up way more than 1 IO (to give perspective on what kinda 'load' 1 IO is). Also, I snuck in a game test (loading a Crysis save file) and the RAID controller loaded it up nearly 2 seconds faster... :o

Stay tuned for graphs as I compile the data from 168 spreadsheets (automated results spit out by IOmeter).

yay....