K8N-E Deluxe & slow raid0 on Nvidia SATA

[Johan D]

I recently helped a friend to build this new computer. It's working nice
so far, but we're a bit confused on the performance of the Nvidia raid
controller.

He's got two WD Raptor 36GB SATA drives, configured in a raid0 array on
the Nvidia controller. We have installed Windows XP SP2 on this array,
and pretty much nothing else, no programs, etc. Of course we have
updated all drivers and the bios.

HDtach reports a maximum read speed of about 70MB/s, is this normal for
the Nvidia raid controller?

At home I have an Intel machine with the 875p chipset and ICH5R raid
controller, i get about 110-115MB/s with two WD Raptor 74gb in raid0. I
figure he should at least get 90-100MB/s on his setup.

Any ideas?

/J

 

[Paul]

I recently helped a friend to build this new computer. It's working nice
so far, but we're a bit confused on the performance of the Nvidia raid
controller.

He's got two WD Raptor 36GB SATA drives, configured in a raid0 array on
the Nvidia controller. We have installed Windows XP SP2 on this array,
and pretty much nothing else, no programs, etc. Of course we have
updated all drivers and the bios.

HDtach reports a maximum read speed of about 70MB/s, is this normal for
the Nvidia raid controller?

At home I have an Intel machine with the 875p chipset and ICH5R raid
controller, i get about 110-115MB/s with two WD Raptor 74gb in raid0. I
figure he should at least get 90-100MB/s on his setup.

Any ideas?

/J

You could try setting the PCI Latency Timer to [128].

When experimenting with RAID, it makes more sense to start out
using it as a data-only array while benchmarking it. This way,
you can change the stripe size on the array, and tune the array
for best performance. That is pretty hard to do when the OS
is on the disk, as you'll have to reinstall it.

Since Nvidia doesn't provide technical info of any value for
their designs, it is hard to say what to expect from Nforce3.
Your Intel chipset, for example, claims to place the SATA ports
on a 266MB/sec bus in the Southbridge, and that is what makes
it possible to get 115MB/sec. If you used the Promise controller,
you'll get a much lower number.

HTH,
Paul

 

[Dave]

I recently set up the same drives on a k8ne, raid0 on the Nivida controller.
My scores on hdtach are: random access-8.6ms, cpu-4%, average read-72.4MB/s,
burst speed-200.8MB/s. The sequential read speed chart ranges from 115 to 60
at the beginning down to 70 to 55 at the end.