Date: March 21, 2007 - Author: Greg King
Once synonymous with servers, RAID has made its way into the mainstream thanks to the inclusion of onboard controllers by the motherboard manufacturers. Can a dedicated card make much of a difference to system performance? Along with High Point, we intend to find out.
If you take the time to listen to your surroundings at your next LAN event, there are sure to be a few words thrown around that aren’t likely to be used very many other places. Words like Crossfire, SLI and RAID often come up, but what do they all mean? Well, SLI and Crossfire are terms used by NVIDIA and ATi respectively, which relate to their multi GPU approach to gaming. RAID on the other hand is an entirely different beast altogether. Long thought to be mystical server voodoo, RAID (which stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks) actually has a very significant role and in certain scenarios, can improve performance considerably.
In RAID, there are a few different paths you can go down. For the speed freaks (read: gamers) RAID 0 is the only way to fly. By staggering the data being written to the array, hard drive performance spikes upward. Those of us who happen to have stacks and stacks of media on our PC, a smarter route to pursue would be RAID 1. In RAID one, the information being written on one disk is mirrored onto a second hard drive to significantly decrease the chances of losing your precious data in the even of a system failure. Finally, for those of us who like the advantages of both, and would like to have it all in one way or another, there are a number of combinations of RAID arrays in-between 0 and 1.
With all of that said, there are also different ways of setting up RAID. The first would be a software approach. This is by far the most common and cheapest way of setting up a RAID array on your desktop PC. As more and more chipset manufacturers are putting support for RAID in their chips, almost any enthusiast motherboard can be purchased with RAID available out of the box. While this is a cheap and easy approach, it does eat up a small bit of system performance. This leads us into the next form of RAID: hardware.
In hardware RAID, a dedicated RAID controller card is used. This card connects more often than not via the motherboards PCI bus but we are starting to see the emergence of PCI-E cards as time goes on. On a server level, we also see PCI-X cards. When compared to software RAID, the hardware approach appears to be ideal when factoring CPU usage but more often than not, controller cards are somewhat cost prohibitive.
Now, if you will excuse my incredibly simple explanation of RAID, let’s get back to the review. It should be mentioned that we are working on a complete and comprehensive article on the different types of RAID and the performance each type of setup provides to the end user.
As stated earlier, software RAID can be found on almost any recently produced motherboard and overlooking the hassle of installing RAID drivers during an XP setup, is relatively painless to setup.
Today on the bench, we are working with High Point’s RocketRAID 2310 controller card. Founded in 1995, High Point has been producing quality RAID controller cards for system builders and end users alike. Their cards might be found in corporate servers where uptime and reliability are a must just as easily as in a gaming PC, installed for the sole purpose of off loading CPU demand form their systems.
Throughout this review, we will not only focus on the performance of the RocketRAID 2310 card, but will also compare those results against the performance of the DFI ICFX3200-T2R/G SB600 Southbridge. In this review, an emphasis will be placed on the impact of using the RocketRAID in a true gaming environment. My point of view is that if this card can take away some of the CPU overhead, much like an add-in audio card can do, then from a gaming stand point, hardware RAID is the way to go. Can the High Point RocketRAID deliver suitable RAID performance and how will it stack up against the onboard controller of the DFI board. Without any more delay, let’s get into the review itself.
Arriving in its retail packaging, the 2310 is packed away in an incredibly informative box. One thing that stands out is the fact that this card uses a PCI-E x4 interface. While the card uses a x4 slot, it can be used in a x8 and a x16 slot just the same. Another main feature of the 2310 is that it can operate at SATA II speeds too.
Moving to the back, we find far more information about the card.
High Point has decided not to include anything but the bare basics. Once opened, we can see the accessories that ship with the 2310. All of the accessories, the 2310 included, come sandwiched in a thick foam to ensure a safe and secure ride when in transit. We also see that the card itself comes packaged in a anti-static bag to prevent any further damage that could occur during shipping.
Taking a closer look at the provided accessories, we see a manual, a driver disk, 4 blue SATA cables and a small PCI bracket that allows the 2310 to be used in a server if needed.
Moving onto the card, the first thing that I personally notice is the small size of the 2310… it’s tiny, especially for a card that is associated with server hardware. On the card itself, there are connectors for four different SATA II or I devices, as well as pin headers for HDD activity and failed drive notification. Dominating the center of the card is a Marvel 8SSX7042 chip. The Marvel chip controls the 4 SATA II ports as well as allows the card to communicate via the PCI-E slot.
The four SATA ports are located at the back of the card, facing toward the inside of the case when installed in a motherboard. This helps with cable clutter in a normal ATX PC case and when used in a server, this is the only position to really put the ports.
Let's jump into the software and then some testing.
Included with the 2310 controller card is a disk. This disk allows the user to install a web based admin console as well as make a floppy disk. In the following pictures, the versatility of the card is shown by the many number of operating systems supported. If one wanted to scroll down the list of supported operation systems, FreeBSD is found at the bottom, along with Windows and multiple Linux distros.
There are numerous tests that can be run to gauge just how the RocketRAID 2310 will perform. In our tests, we will run HD Tach, HD Tune, PC Mark ’05 as well as recorded load times of three popular games. Our test platform will consist of the following hardware:
It should also be noted that NCQ, while supported by the hard drives and both RAID controllers, will be turned off. Unless the hard drives are going to be accessed many time at once, NCQ creates a bit of system overhead and the resulting numbers reflect this time and time again.
As stated earlier in the review, the 2310 will be pitted against the onboard RAID controller on the DFI motherboard. This should show us where each excel when the same tests are ran on both controllers. To start out with, we will use the HDS benchmarking staples, HD Tach and HD Tune. While their testing procedures are very similar, they produce far different numbers. However, they do provide consistency from one controller to the next.
Next up is PC Mark ’05. In this bench, Futuremark’s bench suite tests a broad area of computer performance. For this review however, we will just be using their 5 HDD tests. This run consists of a XP startup test, an application loading test, general usage, a virus scan and a file write. All of these are something that we all will deal with on a daily basis.
Finally, we will cover a few popular games and record how long it takes them to load the level. For the tests, we use Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter and Far Cry. This is where most gamers defend the use of RAID in their gaming PC. Most feel that if they can get an extra second in a game, it could mean the difference between victory and ownage. To test this, a pre-saved point in the games will be loaded.
From the time the load button is pressed, we will use a stopwatch to record the time it takes to load. We consider a game loaded when you are physically able to take control of your character. In Rise of Legends however, once the level is loaded, you are prompted to click to advance. To record this then, from the time the load button is pressed until the click to advance notice is shown, time is recorded. While this is a rather crude way to record time, and we are the first to admit this, we attempt to level the playing field by loading each game 3 times and then averaging the times. Once the game is loaded, the system is restarted to clear any game data that might be cached in memory. This way we get a consistent load each and every time.
There you have it. When compared to an onboard solution, the majority of the tests found the High Point 2310 card besting the DFI Southbridge offering. The exceptions to this were found in the burst speed when in RAID 0. In most everything else, the 2310 comes out on top. Sometimes by a considerable margin, and sometimes not. The one thing to pay attention to the most, and this is coming from a gamers perspective, is the CPU usage.
Installation of the 2310 was simple and to the point. The only thing that I would have liked to have seen was a 3.5” floppy disk. As it ships, a driver disk must be made using the CD that ships with the card. In Vista, this isn’t an issue as drivers can easily be loaded during the OS install. However in XP, this creates a tricky situation should the user not have an extra PC that they can create a disk with. Aside from that, the card did was it said it would. Earlier I mentioned that we will be publishing an in-depth RAID article shortly that will cover the individual types of RAID and what benefits they offer to end users like you and me. In our article, this High Point RocketRAID 2310 controller card will be used and further information will posted about the performance.
Going into this article, I wanted to put my network experience to work and give a full blow review on the virtues of hardware RAID and a working environment. However, a different approach was used and the angle of the average gamers was the basis for this review. I feel that the purchase of a stand alone RAID card like this one is very similar to the reasoning behind purchasing a discreet sound card. Most want the added quality that a dedicated piece of hardware can provide.
Others want to take as much away from the CPU as possible and many want both. The same can be said about the RocketRAID 2310. Not only does it perform extremely well, but it also provides slightly faster loading times and does so by using very little of the CPU at all. With that rational, and given the $150.00 price tag, this is a very attractive choice for anyone looking to boost performance all around. With all this in mind, the High Point RocketRAID controller card gets a 9 out of 10 with an editor’s choice award on top.
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