.:. NCLV-D2/SATA, NCLV-DS2, PVL-D/SCSI, PVL-D, PVL-D/1U, NCL-DS, NCL-D, NCL-DR1, NCL-DE/SCSI, NCL-DE/1U Vender Samsung Samsung Samsung Hynix Elpida Elpida Kingston Samsung Samsung Samsung Apacer Apacer Corsair Kingston Apacer Samsung Trascend Wintec Wintec Apacer Apacer ATP ATP Apacer Apacer Nanya Nanya Nanya Trascend Trascend Trascend Apacer Apacer Kingston Trascend Trascend Apacer Unigen ATP ATP Trascend Trascend Viking Vendor P/N M393T6553BG0-CL3 M393T6453FG0-CL3 M393T2953BG0 HYMP564R728-E3 EBE10RD4ABFA-4A-E EBE51RD8ABFA-4A-E KVR400D2R3/512 M393T2950BG0-CL3 M393T3253FG0-CL3 M393T6450FG0-CL3 78.01068.461 78.91057.111 CM73DD1024R KVR400D2R3/1G P/N: 78.91057.461 M393T2953BG0 TS128MQR72V4K 39S931341A-L 39C921284B-L P/N: 78.91057.331 P/N: 78.01068.331 AH28K72M48BHC4S AH64K72M4BQC4S P/N:78.A1085.421 P/N:78.A1068.332 NT1GT72U4PA0BV-5A NT2GT72U4NA0BV-5A NT512T72U89A0BV-5A TS256MQR72V4T TS5QRT20900-8IA TS2QRK20900-7SC P/N:75.963A1.G01 (PbFree) P/N:75.072A1.G01 (PbFree) KVR400D2S4R3/1G TS64MQR72V5J TS128MQR72V5J P/N:78.A1069.112 UG64T7200L8DR-5AC AH64K72M4BQD5M AH28K72M4BHD5S TS6QRJ21400-7SC TS2QRJ20600-7SC VR5ER287218EBS (PbFree) Size 512MB 512MB 1GB 512MB 1GB 512MB 512MB 1GB 256MB 512MB 1GB 512MB 1GB 1GB 512MB 1GB 1GB 1GB 512MB 512MB 1GB 1GB 512MB 2GB 2GB 1GB 2GB 512MB 2GB 2GB 1GB 512MB 1GB 1GB 512MB 1GB 2GB 512MB 512MB 1GB 512MB 1GB 1GB Module Spec DDR2-400 512MB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 512MB ECC/REG (Dual Rank) DDR2-400 1GB ECC/REG (Dual Rank) DDR2-400 512MB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 1GB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 512MB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 512MB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 1GB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 256MB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 512MB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 1GB ECC/REG (Dual Rank) DDR2-400 512MB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 1GB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 1GB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 512MB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 1GB ECC/REG (Dual Rank) DDR2-400 1GB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 1GB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 512MB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 512MB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 1GB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 1GB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 512MB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 2GB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 2GB ECC/REG (Dual Rank) DDR2-400 2GB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 2GB ECC/REG (Dual Rank) DDR2-400 512MB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 2GB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 2GB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 1GB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 512MB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 1GB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-400 1GB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-533 512MB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-533 1GB ECC/REG (Double Rank) DDR2-533 2GB ECC/REG (Dual Rank) DDR2-533 ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-533 512MB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-533 1GB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-533 512MB ECC/REG (Single Rank) DDR2-533 1GB ECC/REG (Double Rank) DDR2-533 1GB ECC/REG (Double Rank)

Update Date : 05/11/25

Singe/Double S D D S S S S S S S D S S S S D S S S S S S S S D S D S S S S S S S S D D S S S S D D
Memory Chip Samsung / K4T51083QB-GCCC Samsung / K4T56083QF-GCCC Samsung / K4T51083QB-GCCC Hynix / HY5PS12821F-E3
Samsung / K4T51043QB-GCCC Samsung / K4T56083QF-GCCC Samsung / K4T56043QF-GCCC Samsung / K4T51083QB-GCCC Infineon / HYB18T512800AC-5
Samsung / K4T51083QB-GCCC Samsung / K4T51083QB-GCCC Samaung / K4T51043QB-GCCC Infineon / HYB18T512 400AF-5 Samsung / K4T51083QB-GCD5 Infineon / HYB18T512800AF-5 Infineon / HYB1875T512400AF-5 Samsung / K4T51043QB-GCCC Samsung / K4T56043QF-GCCC Elpida / EDE1104AASE-4A-E Infineon / HYB18T512400AF-5 Nanya / NT5TU128M4AE-5A Nanya / NT5TU128M4AE-5A Nanya / NT5TU64M8AE-5A Elpida / EDE1104AASE-4A-E Infineon / HYB18T1G400AF-5 Samaung / K4T51043QC-ZCCC Elpida / E5108AG-5C-E Elpida / E5104AE-5C-E Elpida / E5104AE-5C-E Samsung / K4T51083QB-GCD5 Samaung / K4T51083QB-ZCD5 Infineon / HYB18T512400AC37 Elpida / E5108AB-5C-E Micron / 4XB42 D9CHK Samsung / K4T51043QB-GCD5 Samsung / K4T51083QC-ZCD5 Samaung / K4T51083QC-ZCD5 Infineon / HYB18T512800AF37

P R O D U C T

R E V I E W
Excerpts from Toms Hardware review of the

3ware 9690SA-8I

AMCC, Areca & LSI Serial RAID Controllers

hardware

Patrick Schmid, Achim Roos November 30, 2007
Other tested controllers include: Adaptec 3805 Areca ARC-1680ML Atto R348 ICP ICP5085BL LSI MegaRAID SAS 8888ELP RAIDCore RC5252-8

AMCC 3ware 9690SA-8I

3ware became popular by offering the first ATA RAID controllers with multiple channels and decent performance. Nowadays, 3ware is part of AMCC and still offers a powerful lineup of SATA RAID controllers for PCI-X (9550SXU) and PCI Express (9650SE). The latter also supports RAID 6 with double redundancy. For this review we received the 3ware 9690SA, which is a low-profile x8 PCI Express card using the eighth generation StorSwitch architecture. For the first time, AMCC is offering a SAS controller card. It carries an integrated hardware XOR engine not specified in detail by AMCC, and an integrated 512 MB DDR2-533 memory with ECC. Most other vendors use DIMM sockets to allow users to select their own memory size. Memory speed is almost irrelevant, as even old DDR1 memory would be fast enough. The card has two multi-lane ports, each of which is capable of running four SAS or SATA drives directly, or up to 64 disk drives using multiple SAS expanders. The interface bandwidth of 2 GB/s upstream and downstream is high enough to support RAID arrays with lots of hard drives. Our test sample was the 9690SA-8I, which has eight ports for internal use. Model -8E has two external connectors with four ports each, and -4I4E offers an internal and one external multi-lane connector. All 9690SA cards support RAID 0 and 1; RAID 10, RAID 5 and 6 and the nested RAID mode 60. There is an optional BBU (battery backup unit), which we strongly recommend, because it will retain the cache content in case of a power outage. A UPS unit (uninterruptible power supply) would, of course, be a more prudent purchase, though. This controller provided high I/O performance across all benchmark patterns, and it was easily capable of moving more than 400 MB/s during out tests. The measurements with the Atto disk benchmark and h2benchw werent very reproducible most likely because of the cache memory which is why we did not include these results. While many controllers provide similar performance in RAID 0, 3wares card is slightly faster than the others in most RAID 5 tests and especially in RAID 6. The feature set is very comprehensive and includes handling of multiple arrays, write journaling, hot-swap and hot spares, emergency flash recovery to prevent failed firmware updates, email notification, drive activity LED support, enclosure management via I2C or SES 2.0 and RAID features such as Online Capacity Expansion and RAID Level Migration.

Conclusion

The two clear performance winners in this review are AMCC with the 3ware 9690SA and also LSI Corporations MegaRAID 8888ELP. Both delivered higher I/O performance across all four benchmark patterns. Both AMCC and LSI Corporation provide better performance, which will still be available for less-powerful host systems.
System Hardware Processors Platform RAM
2x Intel Xeon Processor (Nocona core) 3.6 GHz, FSB800, 1 MB L2 Cache Asus NCL-DS (Socket 604) Intel E7520 Chipset, BIOS 1005 Corsair CM72DD512AR-400 (DDR2-400 ECC, reg.) 2x 512 MB, CL3-3-3-10 Timings Western Digital Caviar WD1200JB 120 GB, 7.200 U/Min, 8 MB Cache, UltraATA/100 Intel 82801EB UltraATA/100 Controller (ICH5) Promise SATA 300TX4 Promise FastTrak TX4310 Driver 2.06.1.310 Broadcom BCM5721 On-Board Gigabit Ethernet NIC On-Board Graphics ATI RageXL, 8 MB Atto Diskmark IOMeter 2003.05.10 Fileserver-Benchmark Webserver-Benchmark Database-Benchmark Workstation-Benchmark Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition, Service Pack 1 Intel Chipset Installation Utility 7.0.0.1025 Default Windows Graphics Driver

System Drive Mass Storage Controller
Network Interface Graphics Benchmarks Performance Measurements I/O-Performance
System, Software & Drivers OS Platform Driver Graphics Driver

RAID 5 Benchmarks

RAID 6 Benchmarks RAID 5
IOMeter 2003.05.10 using File Server Benchmark Pattern I/O operations per second at a given command queue depth

RAID 6

AMCC 9690SA RAID 5 LSI MegaRAID SAS 8888ELP RAID 5 ATTO R348 RAID 5 Raidcore RC5252-8 RAID 5
Areca ARC-1680ML RAID 5 Adaptec RAID 3805 RAID 5 ICP ICP5085BL RAID 5
AMCC 9690SA RAID 6 LSI MegaRAID SAS 8888ELP RAID 6 ICP ICP5085BL RAID 6
Areca ARC-1680ML RAID 6 Adaptec RAID 3805 RAID 6

RAID 5

IOMeter 2003.05.10 using Web Server Benchmark Pattern I/O operations per second at a given command queue depth

Q1 Q2 Q4 Q8 Q16 Q32 Q64

AMCC 9690SA RAID 5 LSI MegaRAID SAS 8888ELP RAID 5 ATTO R348 RAID 5 Raidcore RC5252-8 RAID 5 Areca ARC-1680ML RAID 5 Adaptec RAID 3805 RAID 5 ICP ICP5085BL RAID 5
IOMeter 2003.05.10 using Database Benchmark Pattern I/O operations per second at a given command queue depth
IOMeter 2003.05.10 using Workstation Benchmark Pattern I/O operations per second at a given command queue depth

400 200