Irinikus wrote on 2022-10-02, 17:40:

Here's a comparison between the drive performance of an IDE drive (on the left-hand side) and a 10K RPM SCSI drive (on the right […]
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Here's a comparison between the drive performance of an IDE drive (on the left-hand side) and a 10K RPM SCSI drive (on the right-hand side) in this system:

what's interesting to note is that the IDE drive outperforms the SCSI drive slightly in some cases, when dealing with smaller files (the first three rows), but the SCSI drive then dominates from there!

Another interesting thing to note is that the IDE drives's read speeds seem to be much faster than it's write speeds and in the SCSI drive's case, its write speeds are slightly better than its read speeds!

I can't wait to see how the U160 SCSI RAID card performs with two 15K RPM drives in a RAID 0 configuration!!!

I recently grabbed a pair of Sata300 PCI cards so I'm going to see how a pair of Velociraptors in Raid 0 perform on my Socket 8, I could go Ultra320 with a pair of 15k SAS drives but I dont have a PCI card that supports them I only have a PCI-X based U320 card. It should work in PCI but it would revert to compatibility mode speeds.

I also love how Velociraptors sound and them 15k SAS drives are hot little Bastards.

IDK if there would be a noticeable difference between that and 2 late 8MB cache PATA drives on a ATA-133 RAID card in RAID 0 since PCI is gonna bottleneck you to 133MB/sec, and with overhead maybe 120.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-10-03, 00:30:

IDK if there would be a noticeable difference between that and 2 late 8MB cache PATA drives on a ATA-133 RAID card in RAID 0 since PCI is gonna bottleneck you to 133MB/sec, and with overhead maybe 120.

I do have both a ATA-133 card and a pair of WD 8mb cache pata drives, might be fun to test. I feel the faster 10k Velociraptors should beat the pata drives for seek times which might translate to slightly better transfer speeds for small files.

I'm aware that the PCI Bus is limited to 133MB/sec, and only hope to get about 100MB/sec out of the RAID 0 setup. (As you never seem to get the full theoretical performance out of these systems!)

But because the drives will be spinning @ 15K RPM, the seek times should be drastically reduced, offering the system superior page file performance, and better responsiveness overall.

Slightly off topic:

I fitted a Fusion-io ioDrive 2 Duo 2.4TB MLC Flash SSD PCIe Accelerator Card into my Alienware Area51 7500 (EVGA nForce 680i SLI board)

Here are the system specs:

* EVGA nForce 680i SLI Motherboard
* QX6850 @ 3.67GHz
* 8GB Patriot DDR2 @ 800MHz CL 4-4-4-12
* Quadro Plex 1000 Model IV (Dual Quadro FX 5600)
* Two Kingston 240GB A400 SATA 3 2.5" Internal SSD SA400S37/240G - HDD’s in RAID 0
* Fusion-io ioDrive2Duo 2.4TB MLC Flash SSD PCIe Accelerator Card

This is the result: (Just remember that this is a machine from the 2006/2007 era!)

This is the speed of the RAID 0 setup that I'm using as the system disk, as the ioDrive isn't bootable:

In my opinion, the hard drive is the slowest component of any computer system, making it the lowest common denominator when it comes to overall system performance. Hence I always like to have a sturdy base when it comes to system drive performance!

The RAID card and drives have arrived in country, but still need to be delivered to me (The snail-mail is taking forever!), and I'm in the process of purchasing this brand new Pentium II Overdrive chip for this system: (So I'll have a proper sticker to stick onto the front of the system! 😀 )

beautiful P2OD

Thanks Man! 😀

The RAID card and drives arrived today, and I've just finished installing WindowsXP!

Here's what the system currently looks like internally:

Here's the ATTO disk benchmark result:

Not quite as fast as I'd hoped for, but still twice as fast as the previous drive configuration!

Here's the current system configuration:

Irinikus wrote on 2022-10-12, 16:58:

I'm in the process of purchasing this brand new Pentium II Overdrive chip for this system: (So I'll have a proper sticker to stick onto the front of the system! 😀 )

There's a P2OD sticker?

The only thing that find when I search is this custom sticker:

Well that's a bummer!

It's a pity Intel didn't produce an official one!

The PII overdrive is already a fancy thing.

I would like to note that your system will ultimately be a FSB66 PII without AGP - yes, the PII Overdrive has an L2 cache with full CPU clock (like PII Xeon) in contrast to the Slot PII. This is almost common then, a Pentium II.

A PPro system is rather something special and original.

PC-Engineer wrote on 2022-10-13, 16:25:

The PII overdrive is already a fancy thing.

I would like to note that your system will ultimately be a FSB66 PII without AGP - yes, the PII Overdrive has an L2 cache with full CPU clock (like PII Xeon) in contrast to the Slot PII. This is almost common then, a Pentium II.

A PPro system is rather something special and original.

For this reason I'll definitely be keeping my Dual Pentium Pro build as a Pentium Pro!

It will be interesting to see the Dual Pentium Pro face off with this system!

Here's the CrystalDiskMark result, confirming the ATTO result:

Do any of you know if this type of RAM will work in this machine? (It would allow me to load the machine up with 1.5GB of memory!)

They are 256MB EDO ECC server modules, and the Pentium Pro motherboard does support ECC.

Supporting more than 128mb per slot isn’t normal for simms. Those may be some sort of special pinout

Someone perform the ritual of luckybob summoning, I'm sure he will have notes.

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-10-15, 18:02:

Supporting more than 128mb per slot isn’t normal for simms. Those may be some sort of special pinout

The seller says that he’ll test them on Monday!

It’s form factor seems to indicate that it fits into a standard 72-pin SIMM socket.

Proprietary pinouts usually feature proprietary sockets, so I’m hoping they’re compatible!

They appear to have an imbedded VRM.

here's a similar module for sale, stating that it's a SIMM:

I found the module that these memory modules fit into, and they appear to be "double SIMMS", so they definitely won't be compatible with this motherboard!

So I was wrong, as they are proprietary!

My apologies @Sphere478

Irinikus wrote on 2022-10-15, 22:06:

I found the module that these memory modules fit into, and they appear to be "double SIMMS", so they definitely won't be compati […]
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I found the module that these memory modules fit into, and they appear to be "double SIMMS", so they definitely won't be compatible with this motherboard!

So I was wrong, as they are proprietary!

My apologies @Sphere478

I too have a Socket 8 Server setup, its a NEC Express 5800/110A Pro which also uses NEC EDO ECC sticks, while the board supports 1gb of memory finding 256MB EEDO ECC modules was going to be a very expensive exercise and eventually I lowered my bar a little and settled for 512MB and grabbed 128MB Modules. 128MB Modules are far easier to find in the right configuration without all the proprietary crap and IIRC I went with come nice Compaq modules that could be used in any socket 8 system.

I'm still on the look out for some 256MB modules and will eventually find some compatible ones that wont cost me my first born but at least I do have half a gig of working memory. (System originally came with 32mb which made the system practically useless)