Returning back to the distinguishing features of the RAID controller integrated into the ICH5-R South Bridge we can’t help mentioning one very important detail. Intel’s engineers took advantage of their position and connected the controller directly to the chipset South Bridge, instead of the PCI bus. This way, the maximum data transfer rate of the controller doesn’t depend at all on the PCI 32/33MHz bus, which theoretical bandwidth is equal to only 133MB/sec. the North and South Bridges of the chipset are connected with one another via the Hub-Link bus with the bandwidth of 266MB/sec. And even though there are other devices implemented in the South Bridge besides the RAID controller, which also tend to use some of this bandwidth, the RAID controller should feel much better, than incase it were connected to the PCI bus. In fact, we are going to connect all other RAID controllers to the PCI bus today :)

Promise FastTrak S150 TX2Plus

The controller card from Promise can be easily recognized even without any marking: the PCB color is distinguishing:

However, what do we see between the two SATA connectors? This is the good old Parallel ATA connector!

Yes, Promise offers such a hybrid, which should become a handy solution for easier transition from PATA to SATA drives. In fact, this seems to be a great idea: you can keep your old drives with Parallel ATA interface and even unite them into a RAID 0 array (unfortunately, you will not be able to build a RAID 1 array).

HighPoint RocketRAID 1520

We received the HighPoint RocketRAID 1520 controller thanks to our sponsor ATACOM Company. The controller was packed in a nice-looking colorful box:

Inside the box we found a set of pretty standard things: a user’s manual, a disk with the drivers and two SATA-cables.

Just like 3ware controller, HighPoint RocketRAID 1520 is not a native SATA controller. As you can clearly see from the picture above (especially if you click to view a large picture), it is based on HPT372 chip all of you are already familiar with (see our HighPoint RocketRAID133 Controller Review). As you can also notice the work with SATA hard disk drives is carried out via the Marvel 88i8030 bridges. It is hard to say whether this is good or not, whether the converters have had any negative effect on the performance. As we will see later in this article, the major problem of this controller is connected not with the converters…

SiliconImage SATARaid

The second controller-on-a-chip, which will participate in our test session, is Sil3112 – a reference controller from SiliconImage!

If you looked at the pictures attentively enough, you have already recognized the controller, which participated in all our tests of SerialATA hard disk drives. It is SiI CP3112SATA150. Although CP3112SATA150 is just a SATA controller, but not a RAID controller, it is not a problem. It appeared very easy to change into a RAID controller :)

As I have already mentioned in the beginning, the RAID function on SiliconImage controller is implemented via software that is why if you want to convert the controller type, all you need to do is to reflash the BIOS and install the appropriate drivers.