nForce 3 SATA vs Silicon Image SATA

[pimzand]

My Epox motherboard has 6 SATA ports. Two are provided
by the nForce3 250GB chipset, the other four are provided
by an onboard Silicon Image PCI SATA controller.

I have three PATA and one SATA drive.

Currently, for SATA, I can only use the Silicon Image controller,
as there was no support for the NF3 250GB SATA function
in Linux.

But now that support is on its way (it's already in 2.6.7-bk8),
I will be able to choose.

Which one is expected to be better/faster?

Thanks,
Pim

[blueworm]

There are benchmarks... Iĺl look see if I can find you a link. IIRC nforce SATA was faster or atleast used less CPU resources.
GTG look for tha link.
I found this (http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/article.php?cat=storage&id=291&pagenumber=7) but it blows away my low cpu utilization theory.
I know it does not awnser your question but it is a reference.
Could you test them by runninghdparm -Tt /dev/sdaX
and post the results here.
BTW does the EPOX board have the 2 mounting holes connecting the CPU cradle to the mainboard?

[pimzand]

Now having two Hitachi 250 GB SATA drives and kernel 2.6.8-rc2,
I can test both SATA controllers at the same time.

sda is on the nv controller, sdb on the sil. These numbers suggest
the performance difference is negligable.


[root@rubens scsi]# hdparm -Tt /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 3024 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1511.47 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 176 MB in 3.01 seconds = 58.54 MB/sec
[root@rubens scsi]# hdparm -Tt /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 2984 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1491.48 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 176 MB in 3.00 seconds = 58.58 MB/sec
[root@rubens scsi]# hdparm -Tt /dev/sdb

/dev/sdb:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 2980 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1488.74 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 176 MB in 3.03 seconds = 58.00 MB/sec
[root@rubens scsi]# hdparm -Tt /dev/sdb

/dev/sdb:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 2940 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1469.49 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 174 MB in 3.00 seconds = 57.99 MB/sec


Pim

[snakedriver]

pimzand,
would you kindly share your 2.6.8-rc2 config file?
which kernel howto did you use for the recompile for your nforce3 board?
Snakedriver

8kda3+ nforce3-250Gb
AMD64 3400+
Suse x86-64 & xp64

[pimzand]

I would think you would be better off by starting
with the config file provided by Fedora as
/boot/config-<kernelversion>. This should
give you a kernel that is conigured similar to
the one you are running now.

Then, after applying the 2.6.8-rc2 patch, run
"make oldconfig". This will prompt you for
inclusion of all new drivers. There you will be
prompted to include the sata-nv driver.
The forcedeth driver should already be
included, as it existed before.

Once you boot off your new kernel, kudzu will
recognize the previously unused hardware
and configure sata-nv and forcedeth for you.

Having started with Linux some 10 years ago
with kernel version 0.99 (I think), I'm not
depending on howto's for kernel building
anymore, so I can't help you with that, sorry.

Oh, and all this is based on the assumption you
are using Fedora Core 2 for x86_64 architectures.

Pim

[snakedriver]

Pim,
Yeah, I think Suse works the same way. I'm new to kernel rebuilding and haven't tried make config yet -- but, will just as soon as I fix a partition table error, parted or partition magic caused. I'm almost there!
Thanks,
Snakedriver