Nvidia RAID or Silicon Image RAID on A8N-SLI Premium?

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aqm consultant
Posts: 88
Joined: Mon Jun 20, 2005 1:11 pm
Location: California

Nvidia RAID or Silicon Image RAID on A8N-SLI Premium?

Post by aqm consultant » Wed Mar 15, 2006 1:21 pm

I'm setting up and A8N-SLI Preimium with RAID 1 with 2 SATA-II Samsumgs. The MB seems to have two options for RAID controllers -- Nvidia and Silicon Image. Why two? How are they different? Is one or other preferred for speed, reliability, noise, compatibility, or ???

Thanks,

quikkie
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Joined: Tue Sep 20, 2005 5:21 am
Location: Soham, UK

Re: Nvidia RAID or Silicon Image RAID on A8N-SLI Premium?

Post by quikkie » Thu Mar 16, 2006 3:23 am

why two? because you are getting a Premium board so they have to put more bells and whistles on the board so you feel you aren't getting ripped off ;)
As for which is better, I don't think there is that much of a difference, the CPU will still be doing a lot of the work to make the RAID function no matter which one you choose.
Compatibility: hmm hard to say without testing it myself, but I'd expect that if your MB died I wouldn't expect your raid array to function in a different controller.

teknerd
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Joined: Sat Nov 13, 2004 5:33 pm

Post by teknerd » Thu Mar 16, 2006 5:23 am

You want to use the nVidia based SATA ports as they are "native" on the chipset and hence will not use up your PCI bandwidth.

aqm consultant
Posts: 88
Joined: Mon Jun 20, 2005 1:11 pm
Location: California

Post by aqm consultant » Thu Mar 16, 2006 6:10 pm

Thanks for the input guys! I've checked a few other forums, and although there are conflicting opinions on speed, system load, etc., seems like nvidia is the way to go. Apparently, the Silicon Image RAID uses the PCI bus (and maybe some CPU), whereas the nvidia uses only CPU. Both have some reported driver/crashing issues, but what doesn't? :roll: I'm doing RAID 1 for reliability, not speed, and I'm not to I/O intensive, so am not too concerned about a little extra CPU load.

Hopefully, will have this built in the next few days and can report back.

Best to all,

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