"Steve Baker" said:
Thanks.
I don't THINK this one supports either RAID-5 or SATA-II, but the details
aren't clear. Anyone know.
I think the new Asus board (P5B-V DH Deluxe) is what I'm after, but I've no
idea when it will be available and I can't find the manual for it anywhere
to confirm functionality in detail, particularly around the Intel Matrix
Storage, for the RAID-5 from the ICH8R chipset.
Steve
This is the master list for Asus. There is a P5B-V in the list
but no P5B-V DH (yet).
http://www.asus.com/products2.aspx?l1=3&l2=-1
If you click the enlargement button, you can see a picture
of the P5B-V motherboard:
http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=1314&l1=3&l2=11&l3=332
There is a picture of the P5B-V DH here. Note that tradeshow
pictures of motherboards are extremely unreliable, and I've
seen pictures of boards that don't even resemble the final
retail product. But in this case, the P5B-V DH bears a
close enough resemblance to the P5B-V, to trust that this
is what the final board will look like.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=102246
http://www.iamxtreme.net/andre/ASUS Core 2/965-1.JPG
If you compare the P5B-V to the P5B-V DH, you'll notice a
couple of interesting things. I had heard that the ICH8 was
supposed to have six SATA2 ports. If you download the
Intel datasheet for ICH8, there are four different models
of the ICH8. Three versions of the ICH8 have six ports,
while the "base" ICH8 has only four. Both P5B-V boards seem
to be using the base ICH8, since only four connectors are
soldered into the six possible locations.
(PDF page 49 contains the table of ICH8 models)
http://developer.intel.com/design/chipsets/datashts/313056.htm
Now, the P5B-V has a familiar twist on it as well. There is
an IC site next to the Southbridge, for a fairly large chip.
Notice on the P5B-V DH, there are only three SATA connectors
on the Southbridge, and the large chip next to the Southbridge
is populated. That means the board has a SIL4723 two port
RAID chip connected to the Southbridge. And that means the
P5B-V DH Southbridge situation looks like this:
Hub_bus
|
|
Southbridge "Base" ICH8 has four SATA2 ports.
| | | \ The picture of the P5B-V DH suggests
Sata Sata Sata \ one port is sacrificed to connect
1 3 4 \ the SATA connected hardware RAID
Silicon controller SIL4723. The SIL4723 is
Image limited to about 110MB/sec transfer
4723 rate (of 300MB/sec available on the
| | connection to the Southbridge).
Sata Sata
RAID RAID
The Intel datasheet table on PDF page 49 says Matrix RAID is
not supported on the "base" ICH8. AFAIK, chips like this are
soft raid, and I don't see a reason why a RAID5 could not be
supported, unless this is just a marketing scheme. I suggest
waiting for the downloadable manual, to see what claims are in
there in terms of whether RAID modes are supported or not. I
notice there is no mention of RAID modes on the P5B-V web page,
which suggests in fact what the Intel datasheet claims is true.
In that case, the only way to get RAID5 on the Southbridge,
would be via the Windows RAID5 hack (as shown on Tomshardware).
According to this blurb, there is yet another version -
the "P5B-V DH DELUXE/HDMI". The table here says that board
uses ICH8R, which would have six SATA2 ports and officially
supports Matrix RAID. I suppose being "DELUXE" and all, they
spent the extra $2 and got the ICH8R with six SATA2 ports.
http://www.asus.com/news_show.aspx?id=3932
While the picture of the P5B-V DH DELUXE/HDMI on that page
is pretty tiny, it looks like you get 5 ports on the
Southbridge, plus that SIL4723 chip again. The two orange ports
are supported by the SIL4723. Three red SATA and two black
SATA ports are connected to the Southbridge. So you could
have RAID5 with up to five drives, plus a sixth if you use
whatever is connected to the SIL4723 as well.
Have fun waiting :-(
I hope the performance level of this Southbridge RAID5
is worth all the fuss. Designs without cache DIMM and XOR
chip, tend to be on the mediocre side.
Paul
