I am using the onboard NVRAID controller. It has to be configured in the BIOS and windows needs a raid driver at install to even see the raid drive. But the onboard controller still utilizes system resources. So it is not a "pure" software raid, but a mix of hardware (controller) / software I guess. But I don't really know a whole lot about it. -----Original Message----- From: Mark Kirkwood [mailto:markir@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Sunday, April 30, 2006 7:04 PM To: Gregory Stewart Cc: Theodore Loscalzo Subject: Re: [PERFORM] Performance Issues on Opteron Dual Core Gregory Stewart wrote: > Theodore, > > Thank you for your reply. > I am using the onboard NVidia RAID that is on the Asus A8N-E motherboard, so > it is a software raid. > But as I said, the CPU utilization on that machine is basically 0%. I also > ran some system performance tests, and the machine flies including the HD > performance, all better than the dev machine which doesn't use raid. > (Ooops sorry about so many mails), Might be worth using Google or Technet to see if there are known performance issues with the (NVidia?) SATA controller on the A8N-E (as there seem to be a lot of crappy SATA controllers around at the moment). Also (I'm not a Windows guy) by software RAID, do you mean you are using the "firmware RAID1" from the controller or are you using Windows software RAID1 on the two disks directly? Cheers Mark -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.5.1/327 - Release Date: 4/28/2006