sil3114 versus sil3114a

[Gary D. Margiotta]

On Fri, 14 Oct 2005, Vladimir Konrad wrote:

>> if you are planning to use the Sil3114 in a raid, I don't recommend it. I've
>> been using it a while, but FreeBSD doesn't support the raid that you create
>> using the bios. Thus, if you're planning to do a dual boot (ie. Windows),
>> it's a bad idea because you can't use the raid features then. Besides, I've
>> noticed (from using it myself for half a year), that it's stability isn't
>> really that good.
> i am not planning using a raid in bios/harware, but raid5 using vinum.
>
> so the sil3114 raid is flaky but no raid sata channels are stable?
>
> also, are sil3114 and sil3114a both supported? (the one i am thinking of
> using is sil3114a).
>
>> What I propose is to check whether the motherboard has some other raid
>> controller (i.e. for a NForce4 motherboard, the Nvidia Raid) that is
>> supported and use that one.
>
> this is not on-board chip set but an add-on PCI card (4 port serial
> ata). basically, i need 4 serial ata ports in an older intel machine and
> could not find info on a 4 port non-raid sata card supported by FreeBSD.
> The one i found uses the sil3114a chip set.
>
>> If, on the other hand, you don't need raid features, it should work without
>> problems.
>
> with the sil3114a chip?
>
> vlad
>
> ps: i know that the description of the chip set is only different by the
> letter "a" but in principle the hardware could differ significantly.
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The Silicon Image controllers are some of the worst out there, according 
to our ATA maintainer, and I have stayed clear of them because of this. 
If I were you, I would as well, as if the hardware is already marginally 
supported, it can most likely only get worse.

I would highly recommend the HighPoint 18x0 series of controllers.  I 
believe the 1810 is a 4-port, and the 1820 is an 8-port SATA card.  I just 
installed an 1820 (just over $200 at NewEgg) on an old PII-400 dual cpu 
machine, and it is insanely fast.  I have 4 320GB WD drives attached to it 
in RAID5 config.

The HPT card was detected by 5.4-RELEASE right out of the box, no 
tinkering needed.  I installed the OS onto the RAID5 volume, and was up 
and running in under an hour.

Did I mention it's insanely fast?  It's running in a standard PCI slot, 
since my motherboard is old, and doesn't have any 64 bit PCI slots, but 
the card is OK with that, it's backwards compatible to normal 32 bit slots 
for folks like me.  IF you have a new motherboard with 64 bit slots, I can 
only imagine how fast it would be with > 6 year old hardware.

For the price, camparitively to a 3Ware card, I think it's one of the 
absolute best value/performance cards I've seen out there so far.

-Gary