quick question on onboard RAID controllers...

[Matthew]

Are the onboard RAID controllers on motherboards considered software
controllers? I have someone telling me in another forum that they do not
perform as well as an add on third party card because they are only software
based and thus use the CPU to controll the RAID. I always thought they were
hardware controlled because there is a chip for them on the motherboard...
but I've been known to be wrong most of the time

This would be for a HD edit suite and every little bit of processing power
counts...

 

[Matthew]

They're hybrids. there is hardware assist logic in the chipset, which the
driver exploits. all told they have relatively low cpu overheard, tho not
as low as a "true hardware solution". This overhead goes up w/ the more
complex raid configurations (raid 5), but it's still low (1-2%).

Thanks.