[NTLUG:Discuss] Video card recommendations

[Jay Urish]

Bryan J. Smith wrote:
> 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?


Maybe 0+1

I have an adapter 2410SA, I know I will be limited right off the bat by 
the fact its a PCI-X card in a plain PCI slot.


> 
> 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 i960/IOP30x -- they are 5 years out-of-date.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.
> 

I guess since I wont be playing any games, I could go to a server board 
that HAS PCI-X and just get the best damn PCI video card I can find. I 
just want high res for video editing and the GUI(KDE)


> 
> 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.
> 
> 

-- 
Jay Urish	Systems Engineer
Unixwolf Enterprises LLC.
http://www.unixwolf.net
972.691.0125	972.965.6229