Building a new machine, looking for very high disk performance

[rivan]

Are the 4xSATA controllers out there fast/stable enough to compete with a similar SCSI setup? I know the disks aren't quite as fast, but they're also 1/3 the price... thoughts?

Anyone have recommendations for controller chipsets (SIL3114, etc?) or motherboards? Would I be better off with an integrated solution (controller on board) or a card based controller?

The machine will be dual purpose... video editing during the day, video games at night, so PCIe would be good.

 

[airfoil]

SATA disks that come close to SCSI performance are the 74gb WD Raptors. But at $170+ a pop, they certainly arent cheap, given their rather low capacity.

I'd go with a dedicated card rather than use onboard RAID.

The card to consider is the PROMISE FASTTRAK S150 SX4-M, which offers a hardware XOR engine and 64mb onboard dedicated RAM. What I like about it is that is also offers RAID5, which by the way is what you should consider.