SATA PCI vs SATA onboard?

[krazydave]

I'm running an Abit IC7 mobo which has two SATA connectors on it.
I need at least 3...

SO... I'm considering a PCI controller card to use my 3rd drive on, as I'd like to use the two onboard in a RAID 0 configuration.

Question is, would the PCI controller be noticeably slower than the onboard connectors?

And while I'm on the subject, would a RAID 0 using two Seagate 80gb SATA drives be noticeably faster for gaming? Or would that hurt performance?

 

[erikistired]

according to a few articles i've read (one of which quoted anandtech) in some games you actually take a slight hit from using raid 0 rather than just using one drive. otherwise there is no gain.

http://www.anandtech.com/stora...c.aspx?i=2101&p=10

 

[krazydave]

Well in that case I may just pipe it and deal with the single drive...

 

[erikistired]

it has other advantages i'm sure. read through the whole article. just for gaming you aren't going to see some huge boost.

 

[krazydave]

Thanks for the info! Reading these RAID threads can really put you to sleep at times. It's almost humorous how people argue over what is faster in what area, over and over...

So in the end, after reading everyones arguments, I've come to the conclusion that
1) RAID can be faster and slower depending on what you're doing or how much integrity you want.
2) The additional cost of a drive isn't going to effect my gaming speed enough to make it worth it.
3) RAID discussions are alot like political or religious debates



Thanks again!

 

[erikistired]

hehe yeah, that's about the conclusion i've come to as well. the biggest drawback to me is doubling your chance of a drive going bad and losing everything.

 

[imported_Phil]

I wouldn't worry about the onboard/PCI debate- the reason being is that the drive cannot transfer anywhere near 133Mb/sec anyway, so you'll never hit the PCI bus bandwith ceiling. Maybe with two drives running flat out at once, but that's fairly unlikely

 

[SUOrangeman]

It should also be mentioned that the onboard SATA is probably using the PCI bus anyway, UNLESS SATA is native to the chipset (nF3, and new Intel chipsets).

-SUO