The
Abit KG7-Raid mainboard was chosen for this review because we wanted to compare
the FastTrak TX2000 to a very popular mainboard that has RAID already on it.
Would the add-on card be as fast or faster then the Highpoint RAID controller
ont the KG7? Is it better to purchase a mainboard with or without onboard RAID?
The
three Western Digital harddrives were used for the benchmarks. Two were used in
a RAID “0” stripe and the other drive was used on the standard IDE controller
for comparisons. The same drives were used on both the RAID controllers. The
only variable that changed was the controller. A fresh installation of Windows
XP was made for each benchmark as the RAID array was focused on performance
only. After all, the gamer wants speed.
LAN Addict recommends that all
important data and files be backed up before using RAID. Image software allows
for easy restoration of entire harddrives, making it for easy backups. People
have lost data using RAID “0”. With more harddrives RAID controllers can achieve
both speed and security. This can be taxing on both the gamer’s budget, as well
as the rest of their hardware. We recommend that your RAID “0” drive not be your
boot drive. Create an image of you RAID drive on your boot drive, then load all
you games on the RAID drive for superfast game and map loading.
First
we ran SiSoftware Sandra Professional 2003 tools file system benchmark tools on
the IDE controller and one Western Digital 7200-rpm drive. Then we examined the
KG7-Raid’s Highpoint controller using the same benchmark tools on two Western
Digital 7200 rpm drives in a RAID “0” configuation.
Notice how the
KG7-Raid is much faster than a standard IDE configuration. Yet, while these
scores are certainly respectable and the KG7-R has always functioned well for
us. The Fastrak was even quicker. Look at the difference. KG7-R scored a
respectable 19341, but the Fastrak came in at 34818 in the desktop mode. If you
think this is fast, the server mode was even quicker.
The
score of 37898 in the server mode was even faster than the Desktop mode. While
we expected to see a performance boost in the server mode, we were surprised the
card performed even faster in the audio-video editing mode. Coming in just over
40000 at 40400, the audio-video mode was the fastest under the RAID
configuration, twice as fast as the KG7-RAID scores.
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