[NTLUG:Discuss] Video card recommendations

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Mon, 2005-08-22 at 16:51 -0500, Jay Urish wrote:
> Well, I plan on 4 250GB SATA2 drives striped in a RAID with a 64M cache 
> controller.

RAID what?  RAID-10, RAID-3, RAID-5?

What controller?  What ASIC or microcontroller does it used?  There's a
lot of _old_ Intel i960/IOP30x microcontroller RAID cards that have
trouble breaking 50-60MBps.  Do _not_ buy anything with an Intel
i960/IOP30x -- they are 5 years out-of-date.

Furthermore, if you're going with a hardware RAID card, be sure to get
at least one 66MHz @ 64-bit PCI-X slot for the storage controller.
Otherwise your disk I/O is going to contend with audio and other PCI
I/O, as well as be limited to a realistic sub-100MBps.

BTW, there are no intelligent hardware RAID controllers available for
PCIe yet except the PCIe x8 LSI Logic MegaRAID 320-2E (400MHz XScale,
128MB, 2x U320 SCSI).  It's Intel IOP332 is basically an IOP331 with a
PCI-X to PCIe bridge (not ideal, but gets the job done -- and 5x faster
than an i960/IOP30x solution).

For desktops, I recommend the 3Ware Escalade 8506-4LP ATA RAID in a
RAID-10 configuration.  It is a "storage switch" with a 64-bit ASIC and
2MB of 0 wait state SRAM (like an ethernet switch, not slow/latency
[S]DRAM).  With 4 disks, you'll probably break 200MBps reading, over
100MBps writing.  3Ware (3w-xxxx) has been supported since the stock
2.2.15 kernel (yes, 2.2), and they have nice management tools.

I'm hoping the new ATA**/ID addition of the NetCell SR3x00/5x00 in
kernel 2.6.12-rc3+ means the NetCell SR5000 now works.  I have one, but
I haven't had the chance to play with it.  It uses a modified RAID-3
that uses a wide transfer (SR5000 = 64-bit card = 4 disks x 16-bit ATA =
64-bit + 1 dedicated parity disk) and seems to have the performance
crown for desktops.  No management tools, unfortunately.

[ **NOTE:  Yes, the NetCell uses the stock ATA controller, because it
appears as a dumb ATA device from the CPU standpoint.  But it's not done
in software -- it's on-board MIPS core ASIC makes it look like a single
ATA device in _hardware_.  It has 128MB of DRAM which is ideal for
buffering up RAID-3 XORs, which it surprisingly keeps up well with the
3Ware for desktops.  On a server, RAID-3 is not very ideal though, and
the 3Ware toasts it -- largely because it doesn't queue block I/O and
expects only one stream of wide data. ]

> I plan on having this thing sitting on my desk and serving HTTP and 
> doing email stuff using communigate pro.
> I also plan to use this jobby as my day-to-day workstation.. For surfing
>   and copying cd's/dvd's authoring dvd's etc...

Overkill.

> Nope.. .I need PCI express... I won't have an AGP slot.

The new nVidia GeForce 7800GT seems to be the "best band for the buck"
if you go the money, otherwise a GeForce 6600GT will do.

I just checked the latest nVidia 1.0-7676 README and it appears the
GeForce 7800GT isn't listed:  
  ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-7676/README.txt  

It might work because the GeForce 7800GTX is listed, but it might not.
Of course, you can plop down a few bucks more and go for the GeForce
7800GTX.  Or you can wait a bit and a 6600GT will do for now.

Or you can just get a cheapy card if you care less about 3D.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith     b.j.smith at ieee.org     http://thebs413.blogspot.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The best things in life are NOT free - which is why life is easiest if
you save all the bills until you can share them with the perfect woman