Promise FastTrak TX4650

Zitat: If you´re looking to use the Promise Fastrak TX4650for a high-performance storage array, don´t because it´s not up to the job. In almost every situation the Promise card was 2-5 times slower than the on-board Intel ICH10R RAID controller of our motherboard. We suspect the card is limited by the 1x PCI-E 1.1 connector, as a 250MB/s connection (with CPU overhead further slowing things down) looks far too skinny. Even with our disks organised in RAID 0 didn´t offer much more speed than when they were configured in a RAID 5 layout, which has to deal with the extra redundancy calculations. The other big limitation of the Promise card is the fact the chunk sizes cannot be changed in its BIOS. Everything is set to 16KB and the cursor simply flicks over this option. Compare that to Intel´s onboard RAID in the ICH10R Southbridge, and it offers anything between 4KB and 128KB for RAID 0, 10 or 5. Couple that with the fact Intel´s most recent Rapid Storage software now also offers online RAID migration and expansion, and it leaves very little reason to buy the Promise Fastrak TX4650 for £100 when your motherboard likely has a superior RAID controller for free. In fact, for £100, why not just buy a new motherboard? Any decent Intel P55, H57 or X58 or even a P45 motherboard has superior RAID technology to this card. While the Promise card was stable throughout testing, and was easy to use, the same can be said of our motherboard’s RAID controller. All of which means that the Promise TX4650 is a pointless purchase if you already have a halfway decent motherboard with a built-in RAID controller.