Best AIC raid card vs Intel 905P

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davidm71

[H]ard|Gawd
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Feb 11, 2004
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Hi,

Would like to improve file operations on cad cam dental scanning system to get best possible performance stuck on an old X99 rig. Considering maybe the WD AN1500 vs Intel Optane 905P. Is there a better option to max out the x8 slot? Which way would you go?

Thanks
 
I presume the software uses large size files? otherwise standard 4k random read/writes wont see a massive improvement on performance over I presume your SATA2 SSD ?
 
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The transfer size, read/write distribution, and random/sequential access type would determine your best upgrade path. For random small operations the Optane drives will do well. Large sequential activity a typical NVME drive would be better. I'm a fan of Primo Cache and run it on my home server. It's situational though and there are certain configurations I'd avoid on certain datasets. I don't run it in a business with expensive data.
 
Well I'm not exactly sure what the file sizes are in the operation of processing dental scans. I do know that each patient case folder can be between 1 - 3 GB in size. I already had upgraded the SATA SSD to NVME but chose poorly going with a Samsung 980 (Non Pro). The system is a X99A MSI Raider 5820k 2133 mhz ram. The scanning software used a RX470 AMD Gpu to do the rendering and processing of data. Was very gpu limited. Put in a Vega 56 as both official driver releases the company put out support it and that upgrade really speeded up the processing. Only thing is opening files can sometimes be a killer. Want to speed that up. Tried a ram drive and that was great but only could spare 4gb. Have 32 gb total ram and max 16gb is being used.

Thanks
 
Did you see a big difference going from SATA to NVME? Try reaching out to the software company and ask if they can provide guidance on hardware sizing for the workload. Perhaps they can tell you drive A can deliver ?? scans per hour or something. I would normally ask if they had any other customers with a similar workload that you could talk with. To see what they are using. It's often better if you don't have to engineer every solution, no need to reinvent the wheel if it already exists.
 
ochadd said:
Did you see a big difference going from SATA to NVME? Try reaching out to the software company and ask if they can provide guidance on hardware sizing for the workload. Perhaps they can tell you drive A can deliver ?? scans per hour or something. I would normally ask if they had any other customers with a similar workload that you could talk with. To see what they are using. It's often better if you don't have to engineer every solution, no need to reinvent the wheel if it already exists.
Click to expand...

Hard to say if there was a big difference going from SATA to NVME. Been a year since the NVME upgrade. I want to say that possibly Windows load times improved but the same bottlenecks were still in place. As far as the company that built it is concerned their solution is to buy the newer version that goes for like $60,000 new and still only comes with a RX570 card! Also since I did this mod my warranty is null and void and they wanted me to pay like $300 a month to keep the warranty current and I would have had to pay like $4000 to bring it up to date. Not going to happen.

They also did offer a performance update if you were on the warranty plan though according to the machines repair history that was already done a few years ago. My girlfriend who is in the same line of work also owns one and went through the performance upgrade few months ago bringing her up to a Z370 8700 32 gb nvme rx570 machine. I probably wouldn't have qualified twice.

I spoke with the guy who sold me the unit, as I bought it used, and he's been advising me on the hardware configuration side of things. Though he was very curious to see if my Vega 56 upgrade would work which as far as I am concerned did work. Only thing is that there was a once time warning that the installed videocard may be incompatible and cause quality issues but considering I found the hardware IDs in the drivers I am not too sure its anything to worry about.

My next step is to overclock the cpu a little. They were good enough to put an aftermarket custom cooler on the cpu. Going to get 2666 mhz ram with tighter timings next. Then upgrade the monitor.

Fun stuff
 
What kind of delays are you experiencing? I mean are you sure they are file access related? How big are the files?
 
This company sounds like a total scam....lol
The usual, we will not fix our old versions, you got to buy this new version that has a couple changes we wont tell you about really. I understand not supporting old out of date products, but if newer hardware did not solve the issue, it is certainly to be software, poorly coded software
 
No they’ll fix it but you have to pay $300 a month. The other reason why the tech is old I think is because it takes a few years to get fda approval and validation or patent related reasons. I can only imagine they must have to buy video cards in lots and store them away for the long haul so they have adequate inventory for replacement parts. However there are a couple of third party sellers that will update the tech at like a cost of $8000. The other side of the coin is software licensing which adds to the cost and restricted to the use of a ‘Codemeter’ usb security dongle without it the software poorly written as it is wouldn’t run. The other kicker is that they placed an x1 video capture card into an x16 slot. They also mixed two different types of ram on a quad channel setup. Not good.
 
two types of ram on a quad channel setup isn't the end of the world. But a ram upgrade and primocache could be a simple way to fix the problem, rather than spending up big on the other parts...
 
Keljian said:
What kind of delays are you experiencing? I mean are you sure they are file access related? How big are the files?
Click to expand...
Basically for each patient there are about a dozen files opened ranging in size from like 1000kb to 500 mb to at least 1 GB . Tried using a ram drive and definitely was faster but using ram drive not ideal.

Did some research and found that Gigabyte sells a raid on an AIC card that looks promising maybe with a couple of Sam 970 Pros just for data. Leave the OS on the 980.

Thanks
 
davidm71 said:
Basically for each patient there are about a dozen files opened ranging in size from like 1000kb to 500 mb to at least 1 GB . Tried using a ram drive and definitely was faster but using ram drive not ideal.

Did some research and found that Gigabyte sells a raid on an AIC card that looks promising maybe with a couple of Sam 970 Pros just for data. Leave the OS on the 980.

Thanks
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Make sure your motherboard supports PCIe bifurcation. The thing that allows a x16 slots to break down to 4x4x4x4 so all SSDs can be addressed. Otherwise you'll probably only get one SSD presenting itself. They do make cards with a controller onboard but they are spendy, several hundred dollars.
 
Think Western Digital makes a two disk raid card using a marvel controller chip. The AN1500. Goes for $250. Its marketed towards gamers with LED which I do not care for as will be hidden from view. Wonder if there are other raid chip cards out there.

Anyhow don't think the motherboard supports bifurcation though I am sure I can mod it if I wanted to but really don't have time or desire.

Thanks
 
davidm71 said:
Basically for each patient there are about a dozen files opened ranging in size from like 1000kb to 500 mb to at least 1 GB . Tried using a ram drive and definitely was faster but using ram drive not ideal.

Did some research and found that Gigabyte sells a raid on an AIC card that looks promising maybe with a couple of Sam 970 Pros just for data. Leave the OS on the 980.

Thanks
Click to expand...

a single 970 evo will be more than fast enough - the problem isn't the speed of the drive. It's the speed of the processor imo
 
davidm71 said:
Think Western Digital makes a two disk raid card using a marvel controller chip. The AN1500. Goes for $250. Its marketed towards gamers with LED which I do not care for as will be hidden from view. Wonder if there are other raid chip cards out there.

Anyhow don't think the motherboard supports bifurcation though I am sure I can mod it if I wanted to but really don't have time or desire.

Thanks
Click to expand...
This would be the type of controller needed to run multiple NVME drives on a single PCIe x16 port without bifurcation. For large sequential workoads you would see a benefit. For small random operations it's probably slower than a single drive.

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Thanks for the recommendation! Will consider it based on dollars. Also if its the processor which it may very well be why dont all the cores go to full load? Barely goes over 40% per core.

Thanks
 
After considering all the options including an Intel 900P + 905P, the WD AN1500, The Highpoint and Sonnet cards, and a Samsung 983zet think that the Western Digital is the best deal considering for $250 dollars you kind of get the controller card thrown when you look at the price of the Highpoint card but I really like the Intel Optane cards as well in respect for overall performance and endurance. So if I go Western Digital the LEDs got to be turned off as this is business not for gaming. Otherwise probably Optane if price is right.

Tough choice.
 
Ack I thought I responded! You’re right, it’s either storage or memory, I doubt it is memory related (unless there is not enough) which leaves storage.

That said, a single fast NVME should be more than capable.. pcie 2.0 is going to be your bottleneck 500Mbit per lane means your maximum transfer will be about 1.2Gig a second.
 
Well I have an 8x slot free. The WD AN1500 looks priced right. Only thing is would have to mod it with a custom heat sink with fan as I have read it gets very hot you can burn your finger on it!
 
Wish someone would invent a PCI-E x8 card that would take a PCI-E 4.0 NVME card and allow full pci-e 4.0 speeds on the 8X bandwidth through a marvel controller chip or something.
 
Prime-o-cache is probably the fastest way to make tens of gigabytes go *poof* in an instant without any warning at all. Think you're safe with a UPS? All it takes is some system instability, BSOD, et-al. The 905p is an excellent choice with best endurance and sizzling fast iops. Even the fastest nvme can't really compete where it matters.
 
What about Samsung Magician in Performance mode? Think that also removes the safety on write cache for the sake of performance.
 
Magician works on Samsung SATA SSDs and is a memory cache like Fancy Cache/Prime-O-Cache. It will accelerate things alright but the risk of loss is real and using it on any kind of server or critical business application would not be recommended. Unless you like tickling a dragon's tail! ;-)
 
Primocache, if set to read cache only, will not make gigabytes go poof..
 
Write cache is everything. That's why mid grade and up hardware controllers had it for years along with a battery back up module to keep uncomitted writes intact for up to 72 hours. Delayed writes helped enormously as long as the risks were known and properly mitigated, worth it.
 
Looked at the Samsung Magician settings and no where could I find any 'disable write cache' option. Their performance mode utilizes overprovisioning to cache the data at a cost of 10% drive capacity.
 
So was able to order a "new" Highpoint Ssd7202 raid card for $85 through mercari. Usually retails for $300. So now got to select two m.2 ssds and not sure if I should go with Samsung 970 EVO plus vs Pro?

Thanks
 
Finally got my HighPoint SSD7202 and paired it with two SK Hynix Gold P31 500gb drives in Raid 0. Each drive was like $65 on Amazon. Performance is even better than the AN1500. Took some initial benchmarks to share:

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