Thirdeye462

hey all:

was just wondering if anyone here could educate me on the SCSI SAS drives and whether its practical to use in a gaming tower? Has anyone used one of these instead of say, a RAPTOR X? Is it possible to get better performance from these?

If it is feasible to use one, how would one hook up a SAS SCSI to a mobo? Im currently running an A8N32 SLI board. That said, i have the eSATA port, regular sata port and the raid config ports.

Thanks guys

system:

A8N32 SLI
XFX 7800GT x 2 (SLI)
3 gigs OCZ platinum EL RAM PC3200
Audigy 2 ZS
OCZ powerstream 600W PSU
Opty 185 @ 2.6gHz
seagate barracuda 7200 200 gig
gigabyte G power pro heatsink

linderman

SCSI systems have out paced the capabilities of the PCI bus which is where you see most SCSI controllers used in a desktop environment installed.

SCSI based systems have migrated in technology to the PCI-X slot which is 64bit which doubles the bandwidth for the scsi controllers & drives

The "best" choice of all is the new SCSI controllers connected to the PCI express "bus" although the PCI express is not really a bus its often referred to that way for lack of a better term. Anyway the bandwidth is greatley improveed, even better than PCI-X and the express "bus" is dedicated to each individual card just like video cards that are PCI Express or AGP is also a dedicated "bus" or dedicated path to the CPU processing actually.

yes; PCI Express scsi cards and Ultra 320 drives are the fastest drives going; however they are insanely expensive at this time. You can buy high grade drives for about on even money (raptors vs U320 SCSI 15,000 rpm drives) but for my opinion the Raptors are a bit over priced; they are using the fact that with SCSI you need to buy a controller card, therefore they can sneak closer to the cost of SCSI drives and people will still pick the Raptor because you dont need the controller.

As far as comparision of the PCI express SCSI controller with 15,000 rpm drives connected to it versus the Raptor I cant say!

the ATTO pci express SCSI controller card is damn near $500.00 clams! I got the 15,000 rpm drives but I am waiting to get my hands on that controller for $300.00 then I could "see" for myself.

My current set-up is faster (see my system specs) than the single drive Raptor performance in HD Tach benchmarking but in REAL world performance I cant see much of a diff I know my PCI bus is not getting overloaded when I am running a single drive so therefore increasing the SCSI bus width is not going to help me. I have a Raptor on my office machine and see these machines as close; with the edge going to the SCSI machine.

The SCSI drives dont tax the CPU nearly as hard as the SATA drive does, I think that's really where the only improvement I am seeing is coming from, during super heavy loading of the system with reading & writitng commands to the drives the SCSI is noticibly faster there; but not seen when writitng and reading is sporadic or pauses in the flow of "traffic" occur.

I think the smartest set-up for you when you want speed without spending Ferrari club money is using two Raptors in a raid array. Just make sure you back-up your data properly, becasue with a striped array if you lose one of the drives you lose all data; because one half of a write is written to one drive and the remaining gets written to the other drive.

the SATA raptor raid array will get results of the fastest for the "right" money. However; just as a teaser I cant wait to see what a striped array of 15,000 rpms drives will do on a PCI express SCSI controller either! I have a gut feelignt there will be some wow factor in that.

right now on the PCI bus you cant raid two SCSI drives without saturating the bus


dont hesitate to ask more questions

if you dont mind spending about $1000.00 you could get the job done! my wife would not only kill me for spending $500.00 on my dream controller; but I think she would do kinky things to my corpse!

linderman

BTW: the esata port just means "external sata port" its a riser that comes with your motherboard so you can connect an external sata drive.


as far as the raid thing goes; the more drives you add to the array the faster it will go thats why the scsi is SAS is soooo enlightening but crazy cost


http://www.attotech.com/ultra5D.html

Thirdeye462

hey joe:

thanks so much for the info. im glad i asked because i was unsure whether i had to buy the controller card as well. I know what you mean about the ferrari spending. those controllers are insanely expensive.
so with that in mind, if I were to go SCSI SAS, not only would i have to sacrifice a PCI-X slot but also buy a controller card. Seems like the Raptor is more fitting for my application.

thanks so much for the info.

craig

linderman

I have only seen one of those PCI express SCSI controllers in a system and its a corporate database server owned by a lighting manufacturer in my home town. I have a close friend that is an IT employee for them and he showed me the set-up knowing it would tease me. Couldnt tell you how it actually performs becasue I have nothing to base it against; I tried talking him into letting me install WOW or something on it! and thats when he ushered me outta the computer room!

Yes you would have to surrender a PCI express slots and pay for a controller


a pair of raptors would be the wisest choice; unless your sitting on plenty of "un-needed" cash !

what I am seeing several of the gamers doing is buying 36gig raptors used on ebay for about $35.00 a piece with plenty of warranty still on them. Install the OS & only your game on that two drivre raptor array
then if you do lose the array you dotn care; rebuild the array, install the OS again and your games and away you go, there is no data to worry about and you will have plenty of speed without crazy investment for under $100.00

gosh how I wish I was in the "spoiled kids club" I could burn "dads" card fast at newegg!