SAS- UPDATE! ::::::POLL ADDED-->>>

[ribbon13]

As far as I'm concerned, you started it : At least I tried to answered your question in the meantime.

 

[ElTorrente]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
At least I tried to answered your question in the meantime.

Well that was very big of you.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: ElTorrente

Originally posted by: ribbon13
At least I tried to answered your question in the meantime.

Well that was very big of you.

Boys behave! Ribbon First Posted at 5:25am and his Final Edit was a 5:42am, that equates to an elapsed time of 17minutes. As far as I am concerend neither one of you are correct. What does it matter if he edited his post to better express what he feels. Respect others and please forgive your fellow binary brother.

----We pardon the interuption and now bring you back to our regularly scheduled programing...........


http://www.tomshardware.com/business/20050318/cebit_2005-05.html
Look at the second to last picture on the bottom of the screen you will see a PCI-express version of a SAS controller in what else but an X8 form! Just as I had predicited x8 would be the minimum needed for this generation of high speed SAS. X16 Will be coming soon and chipset makers will take note and add the extra needed lanes to their future products. But I suppose we will not see them untill AMD's Socket M2 Processor arrives.

 

[imported_BikeDude]

Originally posted by: Googer
x8 would be the minimum needed for this generation of high speed SAS. X16 Will be coming soon and chipset makers will take note and add the extra needed lanes to their future products. But I suppose we will not see them untill AMD's Socket M2 Processor arrives.

My motherboard has two 16X slots already and I'm not planning to go SLI any time soon... (It also has PCI-X, so no worries there either)

One question though: The poll says "40-50% more". More than what? AFAICT the SAS drive costs about the same as its SCSI cousin?

 

[imported_Kensai]

Originally posted by: BikeDude
I'm nitpicking again, but if I'm missing something here I'd like to know:

Originally posted by: ribbon13
4x would be 2500MBps

"1x PCIe slots will support a bandwidth of 2.5Gbps (625MBps)

That site needs some serious number re-crunching AFAICT.

2.5Gbps / 8 = 320MB/s. Times four is 1280MB/s. (or rather, ten bits per Byte makes 4x = 1GB/s)

Further more: "and the 16x PCIe slot will support 80Gbps", but then links to a "Video bus through-put" page which states "Not shown is version II of the PCIe bus which increases the bus speed to 10GBps" and "Also the PCI-Express through put may be nearer 4000MBps".

It looks as if the article author confused PCIe version II with 16x (as well as using both 8 and 10 bits for conversion to Byte/s at various times).

8 bits per byte..
Too bad the (current) price would put it out of reach for most consumers.

 

[Pariah]

I already stated that the review I mentioned was for SCSI not SAS, and asked how the two would compare. I get no answer, just more condescending comments

That's because neither one of them actually knows anything about the technology being discussed here. For single drive configurations, the performance of SAS and P-SCSI should be pretty much identical. The additional cache on the SAS version may randomly boost performance a little. The drives are mechanically identical which is what dictates performance. SAS adds basically nothing performance wise to existing P-SCSI.

Nope, an X4 Slot would not have enogh bandwith to acommodate multiple drives. An X8 would be the minimum needed.

Are you retarded? How can you call other people beginners while posting junk like this? 4x is 1GB/s one way and 2GB/s full duplex. One way that's fast enough for ten of the above mentioned Maxtors running at peak sustained transfer rates assuming perfect scaling in the RAID array. Because of the full duplex nature of PCI-E, you could add a second 10 drive array on the same card and have one array reading at 1GB/s while the second array writes that same data simultaneously with no degradation in performance. Yea, that's real limiting, how would anyone be able to live with so little bandwidth.

 

[SonicIce]

so like whats the actual sustained transfer rate? is it a big improvement ove the 50-60MB/s of standard IDE hard drives?

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: BikeDude

Originally posted by: Googer
x8 would be the minimum needed for this generation of high speed SAS. X16 Will be coming soon and chipset makers will take note and add the extra needed lanes to their future products. But I suppose we will not see them untill AMD's Socket M2 Processor arrives.

My motherboard has two 16X slots already and I'm not planning to go SLI any time soon... (It also has PCI-X, so no worries there either)

One question though: The poll says "40-50% more". More than what? AFAICT the SAS drive costs about the same as its SCSI cousin?

What mobo do you have? Linkage? hehehehe.
Tas.

 

[imported_BikeDude]

Originally posted by: Kensai

Originally posted by: BikeDude
It looks as if the article author confused PCIe version II with 16x (as well as using both 8 and 10 bits for conversion to Byte/s at various times).

8 bits per byte..

Got a link that will back that up? According to that article on interfacebus.com each Byte has two control bits and so you have to take those two extra bits into consideration.

 

[imported_BikeDude]

Originally posted by: tasburrfoot78362
What mobo do you have? Linkage?

http://tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8we.html

 

[Pariah]

Originally posted by: SonicIce
so like whats the actual sustained transfer rate? is it a big improvement ove the 50-60MB/s of standard IDE hard drives?

98MB/s peak sustained

Got a link that will back that up? According to that article on interfacebus.com each Byte has two control bits and so you have to take those two extra bits into consideration.

8 bits by definition is a byte. Always.

SAS/SATA transfers data in 10 bit packets with 8 being data and 2 for interface/CRC data, but that doesn't change the fact that 8 bits is always 1 byte.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: Pariah

I already stated that the review I mentioned was for SCSI not SAS, and asked how the two would compare. I get no answer, just more condescending comments

That's because neither one of them actually knows anything about the technology being discussed here. For single drive configurations, the performance of SAS and P-SCSI should be pretty much identical. The additional cache on the SAS version may randomly boost performance a little. The drives are mechanically identical which is what dictates performance. SAS adds basically nothing performance wise to existing P-SCSI.

Nope, an X4 Slot would not have enogh bandwith to acommodate multiple drives. An X8 would be the minimum needed.

Are you retarded? How can you call other people beginners while posting junk like this? 4x is 1GB/s one way and 2GB/s full duplex. One way that's fast enough for ten of the above mentioned Maxtors running at peak sustained transfer rates assuming perfect scaling in the RAID array. Because of the full duplex nature of PCI-E, you could add a second 10 drive array on the same card and have one array reading at 1GB/s while the second array writes that same data simultaneously with no degradation in performance. Yea, that's real limiting, how would anyone be able to live with so little bandwidth.

I know a Sinlgle PCI-e x1 slot is plenty for a single drive. When I say x8 PCI-exppress would be the minimum needed I am refering to HBA's that support multiple drives. SCSI Systems can easily accomodate 32 Drives and sometimes more.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: BikeDude

Originally posted by: Googer
x8 would be the minimum needed for this generation of high speed SAS. X16 Will be coming soon and chipset makers will take note and add the extra needed lanes to their future products. But I suppose we will not see them untill AMD's Socket M2 Processor arrives.

My motherboard has two 16X slots already and I'm not planning to go SLI any time soon... (It also has PCI-X, so no worries there either)

One question though: The poll says "40-50% more". More than what? AFAICT the SAS drive costs about the same as its SCSI cousin?

What motherboard do you have?

When I say 40-50% more, I mean more than a Raptor Setup or equilvallant.

 

[Rubycon]

Too bad the choices of controllers is quite crummy right now but that will change shortly. Oh and that is way too expensive. Fools with their monies soon to be departed.

 

[Pariah]

I know a Sinlgle PCI-e x1 slot is plenty for a single drive. When I say x8 PCI-exppress would be the minimum needed I am refering to HBA's that support multiple drives. SCSI Systems can easily accomodate 32 Drives and sometimes more.

A 1x slot can comfortably handle two 15K II drives, and almost 3. Which part of 2 does not qualify as "multiple?" If a 1x slot can handle multiple drives, how is it possible that a 4x slot can't?

 

[natto fire]

Maxtor Atlas 15K II SAS 8E073S0 73GB 15,000 RPM 16MB Cache Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) Hard Drive - OEM (limit 9999 per customer)

Damn, and I really needed 10K of these, guess I will have to search elsewhere.

 

[imported_BikeDude]

Originally posted by: Pariah
8 bits by definition is a byte. Always.

IIRC there is one definition which says half a machine word or some such thing. But yeah, in the PC world you're correct.

However... When speaking of transfer speeds, you usually have to take control bits into account. That's why a 9600 bps link seldom managed more than 960 cps. (that's why they usually specified "characters per second" for that matter, to avoid discussions like this)

HTH.

 

[DaFinn]

Originally posted by: BikeDude

Originally posted by: tasburrfoot78362
What mobo do you have? Linkage?

http://tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8we.html

how do you like that board? I will propably upgrade to this myself.
My dual xeon 2,4Ghz setup is starting to show its age...

 

[Polish3d]

I'd love to have one but 700 bucks for 73 gigs if you include the cost of the card? eek

 

[eastvillager]

If you're going to pay for SAS, you might as well have been paying for SCSI the entire time.

SAS is being positioned in the server market as a somewhat cheaper alternative to traditional SCSI, with similar(not equal, not better, but similar, lol)performance.

Unfortunately, you won't actually see it being any cheaper until economies of scale and competition bring it out of "early adopter" status.

One last thought, just like traditional SCSI drives, the drive bios is optimized for server utilization patterns, not desktop patterns. If you buy drives, try to find somebody with a desktop-centric drive bios, or at least options. It makes a difference.

 

[imported_BikeDude]

Originally posted by: DaFinn

Originally posted by: BikeDude
http://tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8we.html

how do you like that board? I will propably upgrade to this myself.

It has been rock solid for me, albeit not everyone has been as lucky. Judging by the k8we.com forums, it seems the board might have issues with e.g. the Plextor SATA DVD burner (unable to install the OS from said device). But for me personally it has been a very pleasant experience! I've got 32-bit and 64-bit 2003 Server installed and both running without problems (just reached corporal in BF2 without any instability issues ).

The board is quite big and not all E-ATX cases will accomodate its SATA connectors placed on the board's edge. (I haven't checked if mine is reachable as I use SCSI, even for the optical drive units)

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Awwwwwwwww. I can only get 9999 of them. I need way more than that. I spendin mills.