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StorageMark 2004 results
All benchmarks were performed on our StorageMark 2004-A test bed, which is powered by a MSI K8D Master-F motherboard, an 1.4GHz AMD Opteron 240 processor and 2GB PC2100 ECC Registered DDR SDRAM. The Raptors were driven by a Promise FastTrak S150 TX2plus that, as mentioned earlier, was installed on a 32-bit 33MHz PCI-slot since we couldn't get the adapter to work on the PCI-X bus. As a result, this was a little bottleneck which could limit the adapter from reaching its maximum performance. You will see however that there still was a remarkable increase when using RAID 0. The LSI MegaRAID SCSI 320-2X was installed on a 100MHz PCI-X-slot. This was not the best situation possible too though, since cache bandwidth is limited to 304MB/s instead of 406MB/s when installed on a 133MHz PCI-X slot. Therefore, in the B-edition of our testbed we changed the motherboard to a Tyan Thunder K8S with 133MHz PCI-X.
For means of comparison, in the tables below we have included results of the 3ware Escalade 9500S-8 with two and four disks in RAID 0. The Escalade 9500S-8 has 128MB cache memory and is provided with 64bit 66MHz PCI. The difference with the Promise FastTrak S150 TX2plus illustrates how both factors can have their influence on performance. Tests with the MegaRAID SCSI 320-2X were performed with 128MB and 512MB DDR cache. Since 18GB is too small to get some reliable measurements, we did not include results of our single Maxtor Atlas 15K. Our traces were created on a 36GB disk, which would cause requests higher than 18GB to be mapped to the inside of the disk. We did some tests with this disk in single placing, but it was performing worse than the Raptor WD360GD. A 73GB model of the Atlas 15K would certainly perform better.
We can see some excellent performance scaling of the Raptor WD360GD in the Desktop StorageMark 2004 Index. Striping the two dinosaurs increases I/O performance with almost 47 percent. The Raptor WD740GD disks are even faster when they operate independently, so they scale less since we have the PCI-bus as a bottleneck. On the other hand, an improvement of more than 36 percent is still a better result than what AnandTech and Storage Review were able to obtain. The 3ware Escalade 9500S-8 even adds 22,8 percent to those performance results.. When we add another two disks, the overall performance improvement even raises to 134 percent in comparison with a single Raptor WD740GD. The LSI MegaRAID SCSI 320-2X delivers some nice performance, a little better than the Escalade 9500S-8 with two Raptors in RAID 0. Raising cache size from 128MB to 512MB results in an improvement of 13.5 percents.
In the Gaming StorageMark 2005 Index, differences between RAID configurations are much less obvious. However, the difference between a Promise FastTrak S150 TX2plus with a stripe size of 64K (score: 170.5) and the same adapter with a stripe size of 128K (score: 157.3) is remarkable. The fact is that in the desktop and workstation tests, the FastTrak is a little faster with a stripe size of 128K. Other adapters were tested with their best performing stripe size from the desktop and workstation benchmarks. Therefore scores might have been better when we had optimized the settings for gaming benchmarks. Since there is hardly any data to be written during gaming tests, raising cache size on the MegaRAID SCSI 320-2X doesn't seem to affect the performance a lot.
Improvements in performance show up in every part of the desktop, gaming and workstation suites. The table below shows performance gains for each subtest of the desktop suite. Performance of the 3ware Escalade 9500S-8 was compared to those of the FastTrak S150TX2plus with one disk. The Raptor WD360GD in RAID 0 was compared to a single WD360GD. In one test (File copy B, a scenario where we copy from a network drive to the local hard disk) however, the FastTrak S150 TX2plus with two WD740GD's is slower than a single drive. In all other tests on the other hand, differences vary from eight to ninety percent. The 3ware Escalade 9500S-8 proves to be a lot faster than the FastTrak in most cases.
Best performance scaling is shown in the workstation benchmark. The Raptor WD360GD improves 62 percent and the WD740GD even manages to show 47 percent better performance than the FastTrak S150 TX2plus. Excellent performance also for the 3ware Escalade 9500S-8, which is 79 percent better than a single Raptor when it is provided with two disks and even 260 percent faster with four disks. The MegaRAID SCSI 320-2X performs somewhere between both 3ware configurations.
For means of comparison, in the tables below we have included results of the 3ware Escalade 9500S-8 with two and four disks in RAID 0. The Escalade 9500S-8 has 128MB cache memory and is provided with 64bit 66MHz PCI. The difference with the Promise FastTrak S150 TX2plus illustrates how both factors can have their influence on performance. Tests with the MegaRAID SCSI 320-2X were performed with 128MB and 512MB DDR cache. Since 18GB is too small to get some reliable measurements, we did not include results of our single Maxtor Atlas 15K. Our traces were created on a 36GB disk, which would cause requests higher than 18GB to be mapped to the inside of the disk. We did some tests with this disk in single placing, but it was performing worse than the Raptor WD360GD. A 73GB model of the Atlas 15K would certainly perform better.
294,1
238,4
171,1
147,1We can see some excellent performance scaling of the Raptor WD360GD in the Desktop StorageMark 2004 Index. Striping the two dinosaurs increases I/O performance with almost 47 percent. The Raptor WD740GD disks are even faster when they operate independently, so they scale less since we have the PCI-bus as a bottleneck. On the other hand, an improvement of more than 36 percent is still a better result than what AnandTech and Storage Review were able to obtain. The 3ware Escalade 9500S-8 even adds 22,8 percent to those performance results.. When we add another two disks, the overall performance improvement even raises to 134 percent in comparison with a single Raptor WD740GD. The LSI MegaRAID SCSI 320-2X delivers some nice performance, a little better than the Escalade 9500S-8 with two Raptors in RAID 0. Raising cache size from 128MB to 512MB results in an improvement of 13.5 percents.
In the Gaming StorageMark 2005 Index, differences between RAID configurations are much less obvious. However, the difference between a Promise FastTrak S150 TX2plus with a stripe size of 64K (score: 170.5) and the same adapter with a stripe size of 128K (score: 157.3) is remarkable. The fact is that in the desktop and workstation tests, the FastTrak is a little faster with a stripe size of 128K. Other adapters were tested with their best performing stripe size from the desktop and workstation benchmarks. Therefore scores might have been better when we had optimized the settings for gaming benchmarks. Since there is hardly any data to be written during gaming tests, raising cache size on the MegaRAID SCSI 320-2X doesn't seem to affect the performance a lot.
Improvements in performance show up in every part of the desktop, gaming and workstation suites. The table below shows performance gains for each subtest of the desktop suite. Performance of the 3ware Escalade 9500S-8 was compared to those of the FastTrak S150TX2plus with one disk. The Raptor WD360GD in RAID 0 was compared to a single WD360GD. In one test (File copy B, a scenario where we copy from a network drive to the local hard disk) however, the FastTrak S150 TX2plus with two WD740GD's is slower than a single drive. In all other tests on the other hand, differences vary from eight to ninety percent. The 3ware Escalade 9500S-8 proves to be a lot faster than the FastTrak in most cases.
Best performance scaling is shown in the workstation benchmark. The Raptor WD360GD improves 62 percent and the WD740GD even manages to show 47 percent better performance than the FastTrak S150 TX2plus. Excellent performance also for the 3ware Escalade 9500S-8, which is 79 percent better than a single Raptor when it is provided with two disks and even 260 percent faster with four disks. The MegaRAID SCSI 320-2X performs somewhere between both 3ware configurations.
