which raid card?

[bwanaaa]

I have 4 ssd that I want to put in a raid - 0 array for a video editing station. It's going to be the work drive and so is intended for fast read/write of rather large files, but smaller assets will also temporaily reside on the array (like pictures) to facilitate the editing process.

I have an older 9650se-4lpml 3ware card (before they were bought out by lsi!) that has worked great for hard drives. but time marches on and a new video station demands new hardware. That card has 4 sata2 ports at 3gb/s. (Retail is still >400 but would be willing to sell for less!)

I cannot decide which raid card will best be suited to 4 ssds. This is not a server so an 8 port card is not really necessary. Tom's says 3gb/s is not enough
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-iops,2848-3.html

so that means I need a 6 gb/s raid controller card. mobo is asus maximus gen5 which has 2 pcie3.0 slots. one will be for the display adapter. I am rather confused over the proliferation of raid cards. LSI's website lists megaraid, megaraid value and regular raid.
http://www.lsi.com/channel/products/storagecomponents/Pages/6GBSATA_SASRAIDCards.aspx
These are all pcie 2.0

And then there are host bus adapters which typically do not have hardware raid firmware-however, some can be flashed with firmware that enables raid function
(http://thessdreview.com/our-reviews/sata-3/lsi-sas-9207-8i-pcie-3-0-host-bus-adapter-quick-preview/) There are few pcie 3.0 cards out but this one is LSI SAS 9207-8I PCIE 3.0,

Can someone help me understand the real differences?
the raid cards i have seen well regarded are: 9260-4i PCIE 2.0, 9750-4i but the pci3 3.0 card would seem to have higher throughput.

Should I go with the 9207 or one of the 'true' raid cards?

 

[Emulex]

for raid-0 unless you are buying the fastcache key , software raid-0 will likely be fastest.

 

[bwanaaa]

Fastcache key? Anyway I don't have enough Sata ports on the mobo. The station also has an ssd, an optical, an internal as well as two removable internal hds. I guess since I don't need raid 5 calculations, then a raid card with dedicated ram and a processor is uneccesary?

 

[greenhawk]

I guess since I don't need raid 5 calculations, then a raid card with dedicated ram and a processor is uneccesary?

correct.

Main thing is the connection from the motherboard to the card is of a good size as a good SSD can do more than a PCI-E x1 slot can handle, so 4 drives will need at least a PCI-E x4 slot, perferably a x8 slot.

Not sure on which card to recomment, but I was looking at a Adaptec 6805e that was to be just extra sata ports, but should do raid 0 fine. You will need to do some checking though as some full hardware raid cards actually hamper raid 0 use.

Also, the "e" is important in the name as it entails no raid 5 hardware supply so the card is cheaper.

Note: the card I mentioned is only a pci-e x4 so might not be best for full speed useage (but it is reasonablly priced locally and fitted the board I needed it for).