Maximum PC did a review on a SATA raid card that has a 1.2GHz dual core processor!

I can't remember the name and model though

Well it looks like pretty much everyone agrees that this review could really have used more drives (to see how it scales and where the limits of the card are) and a comparison of other drives. However, the review really was quite long as it was, and I don't think it's necessarily feasible to have a 30-page or whatever review. Plus if you look at some of the charts that reviews on tomshardware sometimes have, there's like 20 lines on the same graph and it really can be difficult to tell what's what - so an interactive chart (like say the disk head-to-head comparison feature at StorageReview) would be fantastic.

On a side note, the 3ware cards really don't perform that well lately it seems. I think this would have been even more evident in say a 10+ drive comparison of RAID5 on this 3ware and equivalent generation LSI/Adaptec/Areca. One really good thing about 3ware is the support and KB though, a lot of tuning tips here:
http://www.3ware.com/KB/article.aspx?id=15244

Can get very much improved *streaming* speeds from that - IOPs improvement is more marginal. RAID5 12-disk on a 9550SX for example, without tweaks gets 142mb/s sequential read. After the blockdev command alone - 406mb/s (keep in mind my PCIX is limited to 533mb/s theoretically and even lower in practice). I'm sure the 9650 can do much better, at least for the sequentials.

If I typed any more, I'd have to make a whole article on the subject :p