Tom's Hardware > All Reviews > Storage > Storage Solutions > Adaptec's Series 5 Unified Serial Controllers Dissected

Test Setup

05:30 - Tuesday 8 April 2008 by Patrick Schmid

System Hardware
Processor(s)	2x Intel Xeon Processor (Nocona core) 3.6 GHz, FSB800, 1 MB L2 Cache
Platform	Asus NCL-DS (Socket 604) Intel E7520 Chipset, BIOS 1005
RAM	Corsair CM72DD512AR-400 (DDR2-400 ECC, reg.) 2x 512 MB, CL3-3-3-10 Timings
System Hard Drive	Western Digital Caviar WD1200JB 120 GB, 7,200 RPM, 8 MB Cache, UltraATA/100
Test Hard Drives (8x)	Seagate Savvio 10K.2 ST973402SS 73 GB, 10,000 RPM 16 MB Cache, SAS
Mass Storage Controller(s)	Intel 82801EB UltraATA/100 Controller (ICH5) Adaptec RAID 5805
Networking	Broadcom BCM5721 On-Board Gigabit Ethernet NIC
Graphics Card	On-Board Graphics ATI RageXL, 8 MB
System Hardware
Performance Measurements	c’t h2benchw 3.6 PCMark05 V1.01
I/O Performance	IOMeter 2003.05.10 Fileserver-Benchmark Webserver-Benchmark Database-Benchmark Workstation-Benchmark Streaming Read and Write Benchmarks
System Software & Drivers
OS	Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition, Service Pack 1
Platform Driver	Intel Chipset Installation Utility 7.0.0.1025
Graphics Driver	Default Windows Graphics Driver

Test Hard Drives: 8x Seagate Savvio 10K.2

Once again we used Seagate’s 2.5" SAS hard drives. The Savvio 10K.2 runs at a quick 10,000 RPM and provides a storage capacity of 73 GB.

Benchmarks Results: Sequential Throughput (MB/s)

This is the first time we are using our new throughput test, which we assembled by creating a new IOMeter benchmark pattern. It includes 64 kB, 128 kB and 256 k