NF3250 native SATA - any reason to use SCSI anymore?

[MichaelD]

Hello AT,

I've been laying-low on the hardware front lately. Mostly b/c I moved and I'm now broke. But, the Quest For Bigger, Better, Faster, More, lives on!

Been reading up on the NF3250 boards; most feature native SATA, which takes SATA off the PCI bus providing for better performance from the SATA as well as things like Gigabit Ethernet, sound, etc.

I've been thinking about my upgrade path. Thinking about whether to reuse the excellent Fujitsu MAS 15K SCSI drives I already invested a small fortune in, or buy some SATA drives.

The problem of course, is the 32-bit PCI bottleneck. I have a 64-bit SCSI RAID card and it gets choked by that darn 32-bit bus. AFAIK, no NF3250 boards have 64-bit slots. Too bad.

With that fact in mind, would I be better off getting a couple of SATA drives and striping them on the native SATA controller on whatever board I get?


Cliff Notes:

Should I get some SATA drives or reuse my SCSI drives on a new NF3250 board?

Thanks!

 

[Chaotic42]

I'd use SATA unless you have a PCI-X or PCI 64/66 slot. No one will put them on their boards, so go with SATA.

 

[JSSheridan]

I don't know the answer to your question, but I have an observation. PCI Express boards will be available later this year and PCIE SCSI cards will likely be available also. This is going to remove your bottleneck so you can get the most out of your SCSI drives. Also, I know it is the American Way, but why spend money if you don't need to? Peace.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Get a board with 64bit PCI slots. 32bit PCI is pretty much dead.

 

[JBT]

I belive 939 pin and PCI-Express boards come out June 1st so if you can wait just pick up a PCI-Express SCSI RAID card and you should be able ot reuse all your stuff.

 

[sharkeeper]

Forget the kids gloves, you already have a decent Enterprise class storage solution.

Cough up for some dual Xeon love!

Cheers!

 

[MichaelD]

Thanks guys.

The problem is that I really don't want to spend $500 on a SCSI RAID PCI-E card. That's a little too steep for me.

I thought about getting a board w/64-bit slots. The only one (and it's literally in a class by itself) is the SuperMicro P4SCT-0. 64-bit slots, 8xAGP, bBe, SATA, etc. It's a P4 board though....the performance side of the house (for gaming anyway) these days is A64.

I guess I'll be dropping my SCSI drives into my server then and going w/SATA for my gaming rig.

It's a shame, really. Even though my SCSI card is only U160, it's not even running at max performance due to the 32-bit slots. I only see 120MB/s reads. Not bad for 32-bit, but not what I'd like to see.

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: shuttleteam
Forget the kids gloves, you already have a decent Enterprise class storage solution.

Cough up for some dual Xeon love!

Cheers!

Yeah, I wish!!!!

The only viable solution would be that Supermicro board...but then I lose the A64 love.

 

[sharkeeper]

By the time there is a real 64bit OS and applications that take serious advantage of it, all this stuff will be good for preventing the door from slamming in the wind so...

The full implementation of PCI-E is a year off realistically. Boards will emerge with just one PCI-E slot and no AGP so if you want the best of both worlds this platform is about as useful as tits on a bull.

Methinks my Xeons will be around for a while.

BTW, 120MB/S is nothing to sneeze at especially in the 32/33 realm. Never fear as those ATTO marks are useless anyways. With SMP the "if you build it they will come" rule definitely applies. Once you use and feel its power, uniprocessor machines seem slow and weak in comparison even if their uniprocessor core is much faster. It's because you, the user change your computing habits to utilise this extra power. To this day (outside of complex server benchmarks that no single user is expected to comprehend or compare) there exists no benchmarks to show the advantage of the apparent wow factor.

Cheers!

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: shuttleteam
By the time there is a real 64bit OS and applications that take serious advantage of it, all this stuff will be good for preventing the door from slamming in the wind so...

The full implementation of PCI-E is a year off realistically. Boards will emerge with just one PCI-E slot and no AGP so if you want the best of both worlds this platform is about as useful as tits on a bull.

Methinks my Xeons will be around for a while.

BTW, 120MB/S is nothing to sneeze at especially in the 32/33 realm. Never fear as those ATTO marks are useless anyways. With SMP the "if you build it they will come" rule definitely applies. Once you use and feel its power, uniprocessor machines seem slow and weak in comparison even if their uniprocessor core is much faster. It's because you, the user change your computing habits to utilise this extra power. To this day (outside of complex server benchmarks that no single user is expected to comprehend or compare) there exists no benchmarks to show the advantage of the apparent wow factor.

Cheers!

Thanks, Shuttleteam. As always, an informative and well-written reply.

At my old job, my desktop was a dual PIII-550 machine with a 10K SCSI drive. It was actually pretty speedy compared to the single 2.8GHz P4s that most folks were running.

I'm kind of in limbo right now AFA upgrades go...not that I'd be buying today, but it's just that I'm not sure what direction I want to go in. Dual A64s would be nice....but that's what Opterons' are for...ECC memory and all. *shrug* I dunno.

That's why I'm sitting on my AthlonXP rig for now.

 

[sharkeeper]

At my old job, my desktop was a dual PIII-550 machine with a 10K SCSI drive. It was actually pretty speedy compared to the single 2.8GHz P4s that most folks were running.

That reminds me of a person that blasted me for recommending they pay $$$ for a Dell Precision 220 with dual 1GHz P3's and 1GB of RDRAM. I looked at the computer and the problem was obvious!

It came loaded with NT 4.0 and they didn't like it because USB isn't supported in NT. Their solution? Install 98! HA!

The computer was suprisingly snappy once I loaded 2000 on it. They seem real quiet now.

It's a tough choice buying right now I must say.

I would only purchase a SMP computer if it were required. Right now it is a bad time to consider SMP as a luxury especially when the buyer is concerned with expense.

Ironically, I purchased a Dell Inspiron XPS since I am spending a lot more time on the road and my Satellite 5005 wasn't cutting it any more. I wasn't expecting to be wow'd by the performance of any notebook but this thing rocks! (for me that's saying a LOT!)

Cheers!

 

[jose]

Hi MichaelD, I'd sit tight for a month or two. Wait and see what's out this summer. I wouldn't trade a 15K scsi drive for ide/sata drive. Someone will come up w/ a good solution for pci-express scsi . Right now on my p4-3.3 all scsi system, I'm able to encode, web browse & program all at the same time w/ no lag.
And I don't even have a raid system only a 29160N w/ 4 scsi 36g drives.. (2 - 25k & 2- 10K)

Regards,
Jose

 

[MichaelD]

Thanks guys. Don't get me wrong; I LOVE my SCSI drives! :heart: I can run a full NAV scan on about 70GB of data in 11 minutes. And that's while surfing/emailing/photochopping/etc. Call of Duty levels load in about 5 seconds.

Try that w/IDE. :evil:

I wonder how these two systems would compare for gaming/encoding:


System 1: P4 3.2GHz, 1GB PC3200, 9800 Pro, 64-bit SCSI RAID

System 2: A64 2.0GHz, 1GBPC3200, 9800 Pro, 32-bit SCSI RAID

??????????

 

[beatle]

IMO, unless you're doing more than one thing at a time that's very disk intensive, you don't need scsi.

FWIW, encoding is not very disk intensive (some parts are, most parts aren't) web browsing isn't disk intensive, and programming isn't (at least the small-time programming I did wasn't). Virus scans are demanding, but I run them at night. Defragging is also heavy on the disk, but again, I do that at night). The only things I do during the day that require a lot of disk activity would be gaming, installing service packs, booting my system, and encoding. None of which run concurrently with another. For my $$, a fast SATA drive will win every time.

 

[mechBgon]

MichaelD, you heretic... For the home user who's not mining databases, or whatever it is that shuttleteam does , command queueing and 3.5ms seek times will help a lot more than a 120MB/sec throughput ceiling will hurt, is my position. And remember, there will be nForce3 250Gb Pro and Ultra. Ultra = dual, quad & 8-way Opteron support IIRC. So think about THAT. :evil:

And if you need more evidence of that, this could help illustrate it. I recently had to reinstall Windows and Office on our HR guy's nForce2 system. Dual-channel DDR, WD Special Edition hard drive, AthlonXP 2200+. Remember, the nF2 IDE controller is on the Hypertransport bus like the nF3 SATA controllers, NOT on PCI.

I moved our Office2000 Pro Administrative Installation Point files to the system and had it install Office2000 Disc 1 from these files. Time taken: about 2 minutes. Well that is a task that my Cheetah 15k.3 will hammer out in 45 seconds on an nF2 board with a 2500+ (fairly close). Now tell me who's wearing the pants in the family, the freed-from-PCI ATA setup or the PCI-bound SCSI setup :evil: Yes I know, it's just a WD SE and not a 74GB Raptor. Well, I may do a head-to-head comparison sometime in the next six months once I get my paws on an Asus K8N-E Deluxe.

Don't get me wrong, I'll look forward to the day that I can knock down that 120MB/sec barrier too. But I don't think straight-line sprint speed is nearly as important as the ability to seek quickly and intelligently. It really does amaze me that the industry hasn't made an effort to get command queueing working on SATA yet...

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I wouldn't presume to argue with these gentlemen, I'm taking notes myself I don't think it's nice to beat up on the nF3 250GB though. This isn't the greatest test suite, ect. but it does somewhat demonstrate what nF3 native SATA can offer over pci SATA link I will definitely be moving my Raptor to this chipset ASAP. So for all us Raptor owners using on-board SATA solutions ATM there is more performance to be gained from our drives and that's worth raising your :beer: over!

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Don't get me wrong, I'll look forward to the day that I can knock down that 120MB/sec barrier too. But I don't think straight-line sprint speed is nearly as important as the ability to seek quickly and intelligently. It really does amaze me that the industry hasn't made an effort to get command queueing working on SATA yet...

I'm pretty darn misinformed. I thought SATA was supposed to have command queueing...

 

[XBoxLPU]

IIRC, current SATA controllers do not have command queueing

 

[Pariah]

It was supposed to, but didn't. SATA II will support it within the spec, not quite to the level of SCSI, but some is a lot better than none at all. Seagate is going to release ncq Barracuda 7200.7 soon. The 2nd gen Raptor reportedly supports rudimentary ncq as well.

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: Pariah
It was supposed to, but didn't. SATA II will support it within the spec, not quite to the level of SCSI, but some is a lot better than none at all. Seagate is going to release ncq Barracuda 7200.7 soon. The 2nd gen Raptor reportedly supports rudimentary ncq as well.

I say we all just move to SCSI...

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42

Originally posted by: Pariah
It was supposed to, but didn't. SATA II will support it within the spec, not quite to the level of SCSI, but some is a lot better than none at all. Seagate is going to release ncq Barracuda 7200.7 soon. The 2nd gen Raptor reportedly supports rudimentary ncq as well.

I say we all just move to SCSI...

Just so long as there's a substantial group discount you can count me in

 

[MichaelD]

Thanks much guys. I'm going to wait this one out. Maybe we'll see some really awesome enthusiast boards. I'm still waiting for NF3250 boards to get to market for crying' out loud.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: MichaelD
Thanks much guys. I'm going to wait this one out. Maybe we'll see some really awesome enthusiast boards. I'm still waiting for NF3250 boards to get to market for crying' out loud.

Same here brudda! I won't buy MSI, and the Chaintechs aren't utilising the full chipset features so they are out.

 

[Markfw]

I am dying to let loose my 64 bit card with 128 meg ram and 5 drives on a 64 bit slot. I have the cpu and the memory, just no motherboard !! If an NF3 250 board comes out with 64 bit slots, I'll be on it like flies on sh!t.

Right now my only option is a dual opteron board, registered memory (1 gig won;t be cheap at todays prices) and at least one Opteron 244 or better. Not in ther budget right now, the son is graduating HS, and I have a big party to throw !

 

[MichaelD]

I am dying to let loose my 64 bit card with 128 meg ram and 5 drives on a 64 bit slot. I have the cpu and the memory, just no motherboard !! If an NF3 250 board comes out with 64 bit slots, I'll be on it like flies on sh!t.

Right now my only option is a dual opteron board, registered memory (1 gig won;t be cheap at todays prices) and at least one Opteron 244 or better. Not in ther budget right now

My situation exactly, Mark. I don't even know if the Optereon boards have 8xAGP slots. I want "an enthusiast board." *sigh* The closest thing I've found (Intel) is this bad boy right here. It's got no Firewire though. I could live w/o it...or just buy a card.