Requesting recommendations motherboard with PCI 66MHz 32 bits

L

Langholm

Hi all,

I have built a small home server with a RAID5 controller and 4 SATA disks.
The controller is a Promise FastTrak S150 SX4 supporting a 32 bit 66MHz CPI
2.2
(http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?segment=RAID HBAs&product_id=112).

I would like to replace my old and deficient A7V600 ASUS motherboard with
one that is more at level with this expensive RAID structure. I think that
the 66MHz speed could improve the throughput; also, I may go for two CPU's.

Where can I find a list of motherboards supporting 66MHz CPI 2.2 with 32
bit?

Recommendations or other experience would be appreciated with due thanks.
 
P

Pen

Langholm said:
Hi all,

I have built a small home server with a RAID5 controller and 4 SATA disks.
The controller is a Promise FastTrak S150 SX4 supporting a 32 bit 66MHz
CPI 2.2
(http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?segment=RAID HBAs&product_id=112).

I would like to replace my old and deficient A7V600 ASUS motherboard with
one that is more at level with this expensive RAID structure. I think that
the 66MHz speed could improve the throughput; also, I may go for two
CPU's.

Where can I find a list of motherboards supporting 66MHz CPI 2.2 with 32
bit?

Recommendations or other experience would be appreciated with due thanks.
Click to expand...
I would suggest you look into ratings for server mobos, as they usually have
66MHz PCI slots. I don't think you'll have much luck otherwise.
Here are some articles on the subject.
http://www.pcmag.com/search_results/0,1208,,00.asp?qry=servers&filterapp=&site=3
 
P

Paul

Hi all,

I have built a small home server with a RAID5 controller and 4 SATA disks.
The controller is a Promise FastTrak S150 SX4 supporting a 32 bit 66MHz CPI
2.2
(http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?segment=RAID HBAs&product_id=112).

I would like to replace my old and deficient A7V600 ASUS motherboard with
one that is more at level with this expensive RAID structure. I think that
the 66MHz speed could improve the throughput; also, I may go for two CPU's.

Where can I find a list of motherboards supporting 66MHz CPI 2.2 with 32
bit?

Recommendations or other experience would be appreciated with due thanks.
Click to expand...

The SX4 is OK if you use the right disk setup. It might not be the
most pleasant card to optimize.

http://www.tweakers.net/reviews/557/32
http://www.hzmail.de/controllers.html
http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=46037

AFAIK, you won't find a motherboard with exactly 32bit x 66MHz.
Desktop motherboards are 32bit x 33MHz.
Mainly server boards start at 64bit x 66MHz and go upwards (PCI-X standard).

In desktop boards, your best bet is to look for an Intel motherboard
with a 6300ESB. That is a Southbridge with an additional bus on it.
An example would be an Asus NCCH-DL board (Xeon). The 6300ESB makes
it possible to put 64bit x 66MHz slots on a motherboard.

In desktop boards, there is the DFI 855gme-mgf. That has a 6300ESB
and has one slot suitable for your RAID card. It is a Pentium-M board.

On the Athlon64 side, there are a number of Tyan offerings, and
they would likely be dual Opteron boards. You should check the
block diagram for the Tyan motherboards carefully, to see whether
both Opteron sockets must be occupied to enable the features you
want. The motherboard will be big and expensive, as will getting
processor(s) to do the job.

On the desktop Athlon64 side of things, your best bet is to buy
an Areca PCI Express RAID card and stop fooling around. Apparently
at least one of the A8N-SLI family has been tested with a PCI
Express x8 RAID card, and the I/O rate on that combination will
blow away the SX4. (Note - be careful of Asus PCI-Express x4 slots,
as sometimes Asus cheats and only connects x2 lanes to the slot.)

I suppose once you move to PCI-Express, that would also open
the door to more Intel PCI Express based boards.

There is a crying need in the industry, for PCI Express to
legacy slot bridging technology. The problem is, there is
just no way to package the add-in cards inside the computer
case, when implementing something like that.

HTH,
Paul
 
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