Lab Tests: Dual PCI Ultra-Wide SCSI Controller Raid By Mike Breeden Published: February 1998
Intro | Cards Tested  | ATTO Benchmark | FWB Benchtest  | Time Drive | MacBench | Summary
Part 2 - Dual Card/Dual Drive Raid Tests.
FWB Benchtest Results with Dual Card/Dual Drive Raid 0 Array
The FWB BenchTest (p/o HDT/RTK 2.06) results are shown below for all combinations except the Initio Miles/ATTO Raid combination - which gave repeated "Unimplimented Trap" errors at the transactions/sec part of the test, crashing the system. I saw this error once with the 2940 w/bios rev 3.0 and the Jackhammer, but a 2nd attempt resulted in a completed test. This is apparently a issue with the ATTO Raid software, since I saw it at least once with 3 different cards.
FWB BenchTest Results - Dual Card/Dual Drive Raid Array PR = Peak Read, SR = Sustained Read, PW = Peak Write, SW = Sustained Write. All rates are in KiloBytes/Second. Red = Best Score,   Blue = Worst Score. Card Driver SR SW RT/sec WT/sec Adaptec 2940 Bios 3.0 Anubis Raid 12,025 23,403 1313 1066 Adaptec 2940 Bios 2.5 Anubis Raid 12,185 23,121 1328 1074 Adaptec 2940 Bios 3.0 ATTO Raid 1.1 12,494 23,455 1550 1557 Adaptec 2940 Bios 2.5 ATTO Raid 1.1 12,574 23,346 1560 1573 Adaptec 2940 Bios 3.0 Remus Lite 1.4 12,317 23,446 1139 1028 Adaptec 2940 Bios 2.5 Remus Lite 1.4 12,303 23,121 1133 1034 Adaptec 2940 Bios 3.0 SoftRaid 2 12,852 24,451 2959 1612 Adaptec 2940 Bios 2.5 SoftRaid 2 12,165 23,427 2686 1617 Adaptec 2940 Bios 3.0 RTK 2.06 12,559 23,261 1429 1300 Adaptec 2940 Bios 2.5 RTK 2.06 12,600 23,557 1528 1309 ATTO Anubis Raid 12,127 23,498 1488 1182 ATTO ATTO Raid 1.1 12,483 23,142 1554 1840 ATTO Remus Lite 1.4 12,485 23,366 1250 1142 ATTO SoftRaid 2 12,292 23,455 2854 1809 ATTO RTK 2.06 12,489 23,680 1527 1452 Initio Miles Anubis Raid 11,983 23,695 1614 1160 Initio Miles ATTO Raid 1.1 Bombed Bombed Bombed Bombed Initio Miles Remus Lite 1.4 12,366 23,291 1162 1035 Initio Miles SoftRaid 2 12,270 23,532 2953 2833 Initio Miles RTK 2.06 12,492 23,576 1484 1357 Jackhammer Anubis Raid 12,101 23,768 1447 1170 Jackhammer ATTO Raid 1.1 12,388 23,316 1429 1864 Jackhammer Remus Lite 1.4 12,353 23,210 1159 1052 Jackhammer SoftRaid 2 12,165 23,712 2973 4072 Jackhammer RTK 2.06 12,590 23,931 1534 1418 Stock SCSI IBM AV 7200rpm Dr. FWB 6309 6987 1021 870 BEST PERFORMERS: JackHammer Card and SoftRaid 2.0 View  Single Card/Drive Scores for this Test
There is another test which is often used for disk benchmarking, Time Drive v1.3 - a no-frills benchmark that also reports "typical" through the file system rates, which are generally very low. Based on my observations in the single card/drive tests, it seems very sensitive to cache state. For this series I rebooted before each run and used a smaller disk cache setting of 512k (vs. 4MB in the single card/drive tests). The results are shown on the next page.
Index of Dual Card/Dual Drive SCSI Raid Comparison Intro | Cards Tested  | ATTO Benchmark | FWB Benchtest  | Time Drive | MacBench = Results Summary =  |   Single Single Card/Drive Scores for this Test - or - Back to WWW.XLR8YOURMAC.COM
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