On-Board RAID or a RAID Card?

[ViperMagic]

I want a new computer running RAID 0. Im thinking of either getting that $57 ECS Motherboard + the $75 Promise RAID card, or the $161 Asus Motherboard that has onboard RAID.

Is there any advantage to either way of doing things? Would getting the card save my cpu a little work? Please help!

 

[RichardInLA]

I was about to purchase the Abit KR7A until I learned that it was likely to conflict with my SCSI card. Abit has since announced a fix, but before they did I bought a non-RAID m/b (Shuttle AK31A, which works fine).

I still wanted RAID, so I gambled on an ACard 6880 - much less expensive than Promise and also supports ATA 133. I've attached two 40GB Maxtor 7200rpm ATA 133 drives, and all works fine. The m/b BIOS, the Adaptec SCSI BIOS, and the ACard BIOS are, amazingly, co-existing. The m/b and the ACard total cost is about the same as the Abit KR7A, but this approach does cost you a PCI slot.

I benchmarked using the speed tester that is part of the Roxio CD burner s/w. The reported performance improvement is too big to believe. Can anyone recommend a good, free, disk benchmark program? Thx.

 

[Tsaico]

I personally like to keep everything seperate. That way if I ever want to change boards or controllers I can easily do it. It may cost a little more, but if you change options every few months it works out well.

 

[bacillus]

suggest you get a board & a seperate RAID card!