[NTLUG:Discuss] Video card recommendations

Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith at ieee.org
Tue Aug 23 09:47:34 CDT 2005


On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 08:50 -0500, Jay Urish wrote:
> That would explain why it is soo slow.

Yes.  Furthermore, Adaptec's i960 designs are largely former DPT
products.  Their newer StrongARM/XScale products are typically _not_
very Linux compatible.

LSI Logic's products have been extremely well supported in Linux, from
the old StrongARM DAC series (Mylex) to the latest "X" suffix products
with XScale.

But that's for RAID-5 considerations.

> I need SPEEEEEEEED! So I guess I am back to looking at the 3ware. I want 
> to stay SATA.

Correct.  SATA is non-blocking I/O and "commodity" drive capacities with
100GB/platter sweep out a large data transfer rate (DTR) over there
density.  In raw, desktop-like, sustained transfers, "enterprise" drives
with sub-36GB/platter densities cannot compete, not even at 15Krpm
(server is another story, or even workstation to a point).  A
microcontroller with buffering DRAM is the _least_ideal_ for these
operations.

A real-time ASIC with 0 wait state SRAM is most ideal.  That's why the
non-blocking 3Ware Escalade "storage switches" are most ideal for
RAID-0, 1 and 10 (which is a simultaneous, ASIC-driven RAID-0 and
RAID-1, not 0+1 or 1+0).  They also do RAID-5, but the lack of a large
cache (only 1-4MB SRAM are in the Escalades) easily overflows.

The 3Ware ASIC can queue up block operations like no other card, and
scales very well against an Intel 400MHz+ XScale.

The new 3Ware Escalade 9500S series adds 128MB of SDRAM for buffering
for far better RAID-5 performance, but they still have some bugs with
the various firmware releases.  9.2 is not recommended right now, 9.1.x
is the last recommended unless you need 9.2 features (long story).

Probably the most ideal desktop design is NetCell's SyncRAID
(SR3x00/5x000) RAID-XL which is a fixed disk -- 3-disc (SR3x00) and 5-
disc (SR5x00) -- RAID-3 implementation.  It bursts the 16-bit wide ATA
channels in 2 or 4 disc directly over the PCI[-X] bus, and then
calculates the dedicated parity disk (hence 3 and 5 disks, respectively)
with its MIPS-based ASIC engine in real-time (with 128MB of SDRAM for
buffer).  It appears, physically/hardware-wise (_not_ in a software
driver) as a single ATA with a single ATA disc, to the OS, but it's not
as flexible as the 3Ware.  There are no utilities for Linux yet, and the
ATA/PCI-ID just went in as of 2.6.12-rc3.

I have a SR5000 (64-bit PCI, 5 disc x Seagate 200GB in RAID-XL) but I
stopped playing with it months ago.  I'm going to start with the latest
Fedora Development (Core 5 Alpha) shortly as a MythTV box.

> My friend Craig recommended these Hitachi SATA drives with 2 platters.

200GB sizes I assume?  I don't know anyone with larger that
100GB/platter right now.

Hitachi "took a chance" by stuffing 5 platters in their new 500GB
drives.  Last time someone did that in 1" was IBM with their 75GXP (5
platters at 15GB/platter).

If you want response time like in a server, going with a Western Digital
"enterprise" Raptor

> too much... I am on a budget..

Then you're not going to find quality PCI-X for under $300.

So get a $100 Socket-939 nForce4 Ultra mainboard and use the 4 on-board
SATA with Linux LVM (RAID-0) and MD (RAID-1) organization.  The new
Athlon 64 x2 3800+ dual-core is approaching $300 and kicks the crap out
of anything Intel's got at ALU/FPU operations.  The only time Intel
competes is when "lossy" SSE is used, and even these latest Rev. E
Athlon 64 / Opterons have SSE3 microcoded in their FPU (just as fast,
better precision using the FPU, not a "lossy" SSE pipe).

One of the reasons why AMD is suing Intel is because the Intel compilers
bloat code with AMD detection logic and run a degrated set of code when
they detect an AMD processor.  That same code would run like crap on an
authentic Intel.  Let me say that again, it's not because AMD runs SSE
slower than Intel.  It's because AMD runs it just as good that Intel
compilers purposely has the software detect an AMD processor and run
piss-poor code that would also run piss-poor on a P4/Xeon too.

> I know that.. Its way above the lame p4 2.4 I am running now..

Ack, you'd be so much better off with a Pentium M or even an old 1.4GHz
Pentium 3 at times.

> Maybe I get on ebay and find an older used one..

What do you want to do with it?  You'll only get NTSC analog capture
(480i/p lines).

Understand that HDTV (720p and 1080i) is different.  It is 19.2Mbps
(2.4MBps) and delivered through ATSC (terrestrial braodcast) or QAM
(extra-terrestrial or terrestrial cable).

 
-- 
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





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