sil3114 versus sil3114a

[Gary D. Margiotta]

[snip]

> Highpoint has some reasonable RAID and multiport IDE and SATA cards, and I´d 
> bet the 18x0 series would be a good shot, since I already work with them. 
> It´s natively supported by FreeBSD 5.4, and has additional support from 
> Highpoint, what I consider a great thing, specially for management features.
> But if you´re going with 1820, I suggest you to get a 1820A, ´cause it has 
> an onboard XOR processor which speeds up things a bit AND frees some CPU 
> usage on RAID5 (important on not-so-new CPUs). ;).
> However, if you don´t need RAID5, there are other options from Highpoint 
> itself, but I don´t have a clue about prices. I  would only not suggest vinum 
> on RAID5 unless you have a really good machine (at least hyperthreaded), 
> because it drains quite a bit from the CPU, but if it´s for personal use, or 
> a low-end server, that could fit.
>

Actually, you are correct about the 1820A, I made a typographical 
mistake... I do have an 1820A, and the reason I chose that over the 
standard 1820 was the onboard processor.  Sorry about the confusion.

[snip]

>
> In a last thought, speed will greately depend on the hardware you´re using 
> (mobo, CPU, disks etc.), but they´re indeed quite good. I really hadn´t 
> noticed the backwards compatibility in the specs, but it´s a nice feature - 
> you´ll really like it if someday you can afford a 64bit, 133MHz motherboard. 
> :)
> And, as for reliability, i have two 1820A running rock-solid, 24/7, beside 
> me, on 2 HP ML110 machines. It´s too early to say, since it hasn´t been yet 6 
> months, but we haven´t had a single issue, even when we decided to play with 
> hot-swap. :)
> Have luck,

Good luck with your set, I'm already very impressed with the performance 
of it (for the price), and I do plan on upgrading to a newer board/CPU one 
of these days.  My problem is that I can't just throw something out if it 
still works, so I try to make use of it until it dies, and then I can 
justify buying something new (however, by the time this board dies, I'll 
most likely have inherited some other slightly newer still working board 
without 64-bit PCI, and I'll be forced to use that until it dies... :) ). 
That's the primary reason I went with this board, that it would work in 
what I already have, and should work for a time to come with whatever I do 
end up getting.

I did splurge on a new Dual Xeon setup which will be for video encoding, 
but I have a SCSI subsystem for that machine, and I needed the horsepower.

>
> Tulio G. da Silva
>

-Gary