" Just installed a 2.66GHz Xeon Quad Xserve with a 15,000 RPM Disk (SAS) (They are just now shipping). This is our 12th Xserve. We have 5 Xserve Raids also. This unit also has a 7200 RPM disk in another bay.
I ran Xbench (1.3) disk benchmarks with the following results:

ST3808110AS (7200rpm) versus ST373455555 (15,000rpm)
(Single Drive compared to Single Drive)
(Note: I asked him if both drives were empty (as drives get slower as they fill up) and he said the 15,000rpm drive is 1/2 full. the 7,200 RPM drive was empty. Just a FYI.-Mike)

Sequential:
Uncached write (4K) 138.59 vs. 239.19
Uncached write (256K) 126.24 vs. 218.20
Unchached Read (4K) 100.64 vs. 101.61
Uncached Read (256K) 142.38 vs. 247.39

Random: (MB/sec)
Uncached write (4K) 14.20 vs. 27.99
Uncached write (256K) 101.88 vs. 307.66
Uncached read (4K) 93.34 vs. 205.29
Uncached read (256K) 140.17 vs. 291.50

Regards, Steve "

Update - I asked Steve to run the Kona2 Benchmark on the drives and have posted the results/screenshots on a separate page.

" I'm on my second PCI-Express based Mac, currently a 3GHz Xeon Mac Pro and have been frustrated by the lack of availability and price of firewire and USB expansion cards. (OWC has some listings of PCI express USB 2.0, Firewire 800, Combo FW+USB cards, SATA/RAID cards, etc.) Today I wandered into a Fry's and saw that they had the Belkin F5U602 PCI Express card which adds two external and one internal FW400 port. I had recently been on the Belkin site and they make no mention of Mac drivers for the card, nor does the packaging mention anything other than Windows.
I bought it and popped it in anyway. To my delight, it works just fine on my fully updated 10.4.8 system. I plugged a LaCie drive into it and did some read wrties and all worked well.
I now have a SCSI to FW adapter (I asked for the brand/model just for the record) plugged into it running out to a Sony DAT DDS drive (ripping audio from a flashed Sony 9000) . Previously I could not run that device AND a Firewire hard drive at the same time or bad things happened. Now I have it running to the card, and on the onboard FW800 port a daisy chain of 2 OWC RAIDs (Mercury Elites) and 2 OWC Mercury Elite Classics. Everything smooth so far.
Apple System Profiler shows it only as a PCI to PCI bridge, with no mention of Belkin, etc. Now I'm keen to try to the Belkin FW800/USB2 combo card. If I end up getting that, I'll report back what I find. (Update: the Jan 8th, 2007 news page had a Mac Pro owner report the Belkin FW800/USB 2.0 card didn't work in his system-Mike)
(he later wrote)
As for price, the card I bought was $99, a bit higher than a comparable $75 SIIG card from OWC.
Thanks, David "

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