Adaptec 39160 and IWill 3610 Ultra160 scsi card WHICH ONE BETTER?

[funnyfenix]

anyone has any experience about those two cards? please give me your input, I am thinking to buy one but don't know which one is better
thanks

 

[Peter]

None of those. They're both hugely overpriced. If you really need twin U160 channels, use a Tekram 390U3D. You get LSI's excellent dual channel U160 single chip SCSI solution on a 64-bit 66 MHz card (backward compatible). Alternately, there's 390U3W that uses the same hardware to offer one U160 channel and one legacu U/UW for your slower peripherals. Tekram also use LSI's own SCSI BIOS and mature driver set, so there's nothing lost from not using LSI's own, more expensive host adapters.

Also to be counted in, Tekram's retail boxes pack everything you need to wire your drives up, cables, terminators et al. LVD SCSI cables cost quite a bit if bought separately.

Counting the more complete retail pack in, we're talking from 150 to 200 dollars cheaper than the Adaptec solution, with absolutely nothing lost on the performance or quality side.

regards, Peter

 

[funnyfenix]

thanks for your input, but if I have to choose one of them, which one should I take

 

[Peter]

The IWill card uses a QLogic SCSI engine, which is not very widespread. Make sure you have solid driver support for the operating system this is going into. This, driver maintenance and operating system support, is the one area where you never have to doubt LSI ... Adaptec showed the occasional weakness there because of the huge mess of subtly different SCSI chips they put out over the years, but it seems things have stabilized in U160 times there.

I haven't tracked the SCSI ongoings at QLogic, so that'll be up to you. They're a chip design company who normally know what they're doing, but you might want to check with sites like www.storagereview.com for more useful input.

regards, Peter