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MikeSM · 06-23-08, 04:14 PM

Well, a few updates for folks. I have a friend who got a new P45 based motherboard with the ICH10R southbridge on it to upgrade his linux based software raid server. After a lot of conversations with the linux programmers who write SATA drivers, it appears to be the case that despite telling everyone last year (http://www.dailytech.com/More+Intel+...rticle8077.htm) they were adding it and a bunch of other I/O features, Intel turns out to not have built in FIS switching support into the ICH10R after all! What losers. You have to plow through the datasheet for the ICH10 to figure out they made hardly any changes at all to the southbridge over the old ICH9R. Sigh.

I hope this news gets to anyone who was counting on this support before buying a P45 board for this purpose. Maybe in the ICH11...

The good news is that there is a pretty decent discrete PCI-E based solution that works very well in software RAID mode under linux, based on the Marvell 88SX7042 chipset. This is found in many 4 and 8 port PCI-E SATA II controllers, such as the Highpoint 23XX and 25XX series. It supports FIS switching using PMP's and is VERY fast, and supported very well in the most recent linux kernels. You can get them in X4 and X1 PCI-E controllers, and there are versions that are PCI-X flavored as well.

There is a pretty detailed review of the performance of this controller here: http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/am...es/sonnet/e4p/ . As you can see, it doesn't suffer from a 120 MB/s limit on throughput the way the SI3132 does.

One issue though, the Highpoint versions of controllers that use this chip seem to have a strange issue where they corrupt non-raid disks under linux when not using the proprietary drivers, probably due to the firmware onboard marking non-raid disks do their proprietary management software can index it properly. This does not appear to be present in non highpoint based 88SX7042 cards like the Adaptec 1430SA, or Rosewill RC-218. For linux, you can just use the builtin sata_mv driver and avoid all the proprietary stuff.

The adaptec 1430SA is available from newegg for about $105, and under $100 wholesale, and is an X4 card. My friend is going to get one and if it works well I'll upgrade my system to it as well.

That's a pretty decent price for a high performance SATA controller that can support 20 disks with PMP's.

06-23-08, 04:14 PM	#385 \| Link
MikeSM AVS Special Member Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 2,671	Well, a few updates for folks. I have a friend who got a new P45 based motherboard with the ICH10R southbridge on it to upgrade his linux based software raid server. After a lot of conversations with the linux programmers who write SATA drivers, it appears to be the case that despite telling everyone last year (http://www.dailytech.com/More+Intel+...rticle8077.htm) they were adding it and a bunch of other I/O features, Intel turns out to not have built in FIS switching support into the ICH10R after all! What losers. You have to plow through the datasheet for the ICH10 to figure out they made hardly any changes at all to the southbridge over the old ICH9R. Sigh. I hope this news gets to anyone who was counting on this support before buying a P45 board for this purpose. Maybe in the ICH11... The good news is that there is a pretty decent discrete PCI-E based solution that works very well in software RAID mode under linux, based on the Marvell 88SX7042 chipset. This is found in many 4 and 8 port PCI-E SATA II controllers, such as the Highpoint 23XX and 25XX series. It supports FIS switching using PMP's and is VERY fast, and supported very well in the most recent linux kernels. You can get them in X4 and X1 PCI-E controllers, and there are versions that are PCI-X flavored as well. There is a pretty detailed review of the performance of this controller here: http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/am...es/sonnet/e4p/ . As you can see, it doesn't suffer from a 120 MB/s limit on throughput the way the SI3132 does. One issue though, the Highpoint versions of controllers that use this chip seem to have a strange issue where they corrupt non-raid disks under linux when not using the proprietary drivers, probably due to the firmware onboard marking non-raid disks do their proprietary management software can index it properly. This does not appear to be present in non highpoint based 88SX7042 cards like the Adaptec 1430SA, or Rosewill RC-218. For linux, you can just use the builtin sata_mv driver and avoid all the proprietary stuff. The adaptec 1430SA is available from newegg for about $105, and under $100 wholesale, and is an X4 card. My friend is going to get one and if it works well I'll upgrade my system to it as well. That's a pretty decent price for a high performance SATA controller that can support 20 disks with PMP's.