[geeks] Anyone use this SATA controller in a PC

[Alois Hammer]

On Sat, 08 Mar 2008 10:36:32 -0600 (CST), "Lionel Peterson"
<lionel4287 at verizon.net> said:
>
> It has on-board RAID (including hot spare), but it is only SATA "I" (150
> Mb/sec)... I wonder if it really makes a difference on a system like this
> (Dual PIII Xeon 1 GHz)?

Maybe.  A reasonably fast, high-density hard drive can maybe pull...
what, 30-40MB/s off the platters in a linear read?  Assuming little to
no fragmentation?  It sort of depends on how many drives you end up
attaching to the controller.  Allowing for marketeering and protocol
overhead, you could maybe max out a 150MB/s channel with four or
possibly five drives, depending on what you do with them.

...except that 32-bit, 33MHz PCI tops at (if memory serves) 133MB/s for
the entire bus.  Presumably, your PowerEdge has got more than one PCI-X
slot of some flavour (at least 64-bit, 66MHz, at a guess), but you'll
need a reasonably expensive SATA controller to take advantage of that. 
I know that NewEgg sells a selection of PCIe RAID controllers, but it's
been a while since I've seen them sell anything in PCI-X.

Short answer: you'll never notice a difference between SATA-I and
SATA-II in this box.