Lab Tests: Single PCI Ultra-Wide SCSI Controller RAID Tests By Mike Breeden Published: February 1998
Intro | Cards Tested  | ATTO Benchmark | FWB Benchtest  | Time Drive | MacBench | Graphs
Part 3 - Single SCSI Card/Dual Drive Raid Tests.
FWB Benchtest Results with One SCSI Card/Dual Drive Raid 0 Array
The FWB BenchTest (p/o HDT/RTK 2.06) results are shown below for all combinations except the ATTO Raid and ATTO, Initio and JackHammer combination - which gave repeated "Unimplimented Trap" errors at the transactions/sec part of the test, aborting the test. This is apparently a issue with the ATTO Raid software, since I saw similar problems with ATTO Raid in the dual card tests.
FWB BenchTest Results - One SCSI Card/Dual Drive Raid Array PR = Peak Read, SR = Sustained Read, PW = Peak Write, SW = Sustained Write. All rates are in KiloBytes/Second. (Numbers in parenthesis are dual SCSI card results.) Red = Best Score,   Blue = Worst Score. Card Driver SR SW RT/sec WT/sec Adaptec 2940 Bios 3.0 Anubis Raid 11,987 (12,025) 21,468 (23,403) 1289 (1313) 1055 (1066) Adaptec 2940 Bios 2.5 Anubis Raid 11,958 (12,185) 21,440 (23,121) 1310 (1328) 1064 (1074) Adaptec 2940 Bios 3.0 ATTO Raid 1.1 12,386 (12,494) 21,414 (23,455) 1571 (1550) 1567 (1557) Adaptec 2940 Bios 2.5 ATTO Raid 1.1 12,391 (12,574) 21,608 (23,346) 1525 (1560) 1613 (1573) Adaptec 2940 Bios 3.0 Remus Lite 1.4 12,007 (12,317) 21,975 (23,446) 1112 (1139) 1006 (1028) Adaptec 2940 Bios 2.5 Remus Lite 1.4 12,123 (12,303) 21,640 (23,121) 1156 (1133) 1028 (1034) Adaptec 2940 Bios 3.0 SoftRaid 2 12,537 (12,852) 22,128 (24,451) 2946 (2959) 1558 (1612) Adaptec 2940 Bios 2.5 SoftRaid 2 12,476 (12,165) 22,281 (23,427) 3110 (2686) 1569 (1617) Adaptec 2940 Bios 3.0 RTK 2.06 12,379 (12,559) 21,691 (23,261) 1464 (1429) 1257 (1300) Adaptec 2940 Bios 2.5 RTK 2.06 12,510 (12,600) 21,603 (23,557) 1514 (1528) 1288 (1309) ATTO Anubis Raid 12,037 (12,127) 21,829 (23,498) 1445 (1488) 1127 (1182) ATTO ATTO Raid 1.1 Errors (12,483) Errors (23,142) Errors (1554) Errors (1840) ATTO Remus Lite 1.4 12,243 (12,485) 21,974 (23,366) 1241 (1250) 1101 (1142) ATTO SoftRaid 2 12,505 (12,292) 22,237 (23,455) 2902 (2854) 1847 (1809) ATTO RTK 2.06 12,370 (12,489) 22,225 (23,680) 1576 (1527) 1426 (1452) Initio Miles Anubis Raid 11,947 (11,983) 21,979 (23,695) 1485 (1614) 1063 (1160) Initio Miles ATTO Raid 1.1 Errors (Errors) Errors (Errors) Errors (Errors) Errors (Errors) Initio Miles Remus Lite 1.4 11,926 (12,366) 21,687 (23,291) 1147 (1162) 1023 (1035) Initio Miles SoftRaid 2 12,464 (12,270) 22,312 (23,532) 2961 (2953) 2930 (2833) Initio Miles RTK 2.06 12,277 (12,492) 21,476 (23,576) 1503 (1484) 1392 (1357) Jackhammer Anubis Raid 11,982 (12,101) 22,199 (23,768) 1467 (1447) 1167 (1170) Jackhammer ATTO Raid 1.1 Errors (12,388) Errors (23,316) Errors (1429) Errors (1864) Jackhammer Remus Lite 1.4 12,272 (12,353) 21,087 (23,210) 1152 (1159) 1049 (1052) Jackhammer SoftRaid 2 12,640 (12,165) 22,314 (23,712) 2966 (2973) 4229 (4072) Jackhammer RTK 2.06 12,431 (12,590) 22,254 (23,9)31 1496 (1534) 1374 (1418) Stock SCSI IBM AV 7200rpm Dr. FWB 6309 6987 1021 870 BEST PERFORMERS: JackHammer Card and SoftRaid 2.0 It appears that with only two drives there is little to benefit typically with a dual SCSI card setup. I suspect the reason the single card scores are higher in some cases is merely a standard run to run test variation coupled with possibly slightly higher command overhead with a dual card system. 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 the Raid Test 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 One SCSI Card/Dual Drive Raid Comparison Intro | Cards Tested  | ATTO Benchmark | FWB Benchtest  | Time Drive | MacBench Graphs |  Go to Dual SCSI Card Raid Tests |  Go to Single Card/Drive Tests - or - Back to WWW.XLR8YOURMAC.COM
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