Wat is the difference between onboard RAID and a RAID card?

[5489]

I need a few more raid ports to use as regular IDE ports because i ahve a couple of hard drives i would like to put to use. What is the performance difference between onboard raid, and raid cards, cpu usage, etc etc.

 

[Adul]

very little if any.

 

[Kingofcomputer]

big difference -
onboard raid is a chip on the motherboard,
raid card is a chip on a standalone controller card,
the chip could be different model/version.

 

[LordAccord]

well, you say big difference, but really, they are both a chip, they are both channeled through the PCI bus....they both have their own bios... ESSENTIALLY they should be the same.... but again that all depends on WHICH chip, which controller.....

I would say If you need to just plug in extra drives, just get a standalone ATA100 or 133 controller with 2 extra ports for you... you cant use a 2 channel RAID card for more than 2 hdds unless you plan on actually running a RAID array, at least not on my card...

LoRdAccord