[svlug] Multi drive PCI SATA card or 6 port SATA motherboard

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Ivan Sergio Borgonovo (mail at webthatworks.it):

> Nvidia released open source drivers for agp and other stuff that now
> are integral part of the kernel.  nvidia should perform a bit better
> than sil on md.

That's possible, but historically differences in driver code maturity
have often produced performance differences that have swamped
theoretical hardware advantages -- not to mention that the bottleneck is 
usually physical disk access, anyway.  So, I'd test before rushing to that
conclusion.  (Preferably, test doing something _real_:  Most HD
performance tests have inadvertantly relied on test scenarios involving
quiescent systems doing sequential reads from adjoining cylinders --
which I call the "everyone's a DOS user" error.)

> What I mean is that if he is going to use md, onboard ctls work quite fast.

Good point.  I think he's stuck mostly because he wants a whole lot of
connectors -- and would prefer not to buy a new motherboard, if he can
help it.