LSI MegaRAID 9260-8i Review – Benchmark Protocol

This is The SSD Review Test Bench with the LSI 9260-8i installed along with a number of other storage favorites.  A quick click on the photo will bring it up full size for closer inspection.

TEST PROTOCOL

• Our main goal in testing is to ensure that all test results are as accurate as they can be and no anomalies slip through. We conduct all tests three times and, if necessary, we may conduct specific tests in Windows 7 ‘safe mode’ to ensure the OS has little to no influence on the end result.
• We prefer to use as many benchmark programs as possible to assist with confirmation of results and provide the reader with the actual tests as received to avoid any confusion when unexpected test benchmarks are received.

BENCH CONFIGURATION

MOTHERBOARD: Gigabyte P67A-UD7 ATX LGA 1155 Intel SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0

CPU: Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor

RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR3 1600 SDRAM

GPU: MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II OC Edition 1024MB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0

POWER: Corsair Professional Series AX850 850W ATX12V v2.31 / EPS12V v2.92 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply

CHASSIS: Fractal-Design Define XL ATX Mid Tower Silent Computer Case

CPU COOLER: Corsair H50 High Performance Water CPU Cooler

NETWORK: DiLink Powerline AV Network With D-Link DIR 655 Wifi N Router

DVD: Sony Black 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA 24X DVD Writer

STORAGE: 3 x Icy Dock 4×1 SSD Racks for 5.25? Device Bay

STORAGE MEDIUM

We have to give full credit to Micron for their loaning of 8 x Micron C300 SATA 3 SSDs as well as to OWC for their loaning of 8 x OWC Mercury Extreme Pro RE (RAID Enhanced) SATA 2 SSDs for our testing.  As we can imagine, it took some convincing even at their level to allow for such and we think that showing what 8 SSDs can do in the LSI 9260 controller will prove to be a worthwhile venture that we can repeat in the future.

BENCHMARK SOFTWARE

Software used for testing by The SSD Review consists of Crystal Disk Mark, HDTune Pro, ATTO Benchmark,  AS SSD along with FutureMark PCMark Vantage.

The first four do a great job of showing us the numbers that we want to see, or don’t want to see in some cases, while PCMark Vantage x64 is an excellent program which recreates tests that mimic the average users activity, all the while providing a medium to measure each.

ADDITIONAL

I am also going to take the opportunity in this review to give credit to Icy Dock, a company that was more than willing to assist in setting up our Test Bench for just this type of review.  Installed in our bench is 3 x  4 in 1 SAS/SATA SSD RAID Cages (NB994SP-4S) that allow us to hot swap 12 SSDs at any given time. To clarify, this allows for the hot swapping of four 2.5″ HDD/SSDs in a single 3.5″ enclosure.  In our scenario here, the top two are utilized for SATA 3 via the Intel P67 chip of our motherboard, next two via the Marvell SATA 3 chip and then the next 8 are used specifically for our LSI 9260-is MegaRAID SSDs.

I know that Jeff at Icy Dock is going to be looking at the rear photo and thinking that I pulled the fans out and he would be exactly right.  For those not aware, even pulling speeds in excess of 2GB/s with 8 SSDs in RAID 0, there is no need for additional fans whatsoever.

PG 1 – Introduction & Physical Composition

PG2 – Test Protocol & Bench Configuration

Pg3 – Premium Add-Ons

Pg4 – ATTO Disk Benchmark

PG5 – HDTune Pro Benchmarks

PG-6  PCMark Vantage Comparisons & Conclusions

JOIN THE FORUM DISCUSSION!!