8.0-RELEASE/amd64 - full ZFS install - low read and write disk performance

[Stefan Esser]

Am 26.01.2010 00:15, schrieb Daniel O'Connor:
> On Tue, 26 Jan 2010, Dan Naumov wrote:
>> CPU-performance-wise, I am not really worried. The current system is
>> an Atom 330 and even that is a bit overkill for what I do with it and
>> from what I am seeing, the new Atom D510 used on those boards is a
>> tiny bit faster. What I want and care about for this system are
>> reliability, stability, low power use, quietness and fast disk
>> read/write speeds. I've been hearing some praise of ICH9R and 6
>> native SATA ports should be enough for my needs. AFAIK, the Intel
>> 82574L network cards included on those are also very well supported?
> 
> You might want to consider an Athlon (maybe underclock it) - the AMD IXP 
> 700/800 south bridge seems to work well with FreeBSD (in my 
> experience).
> 
> These boards (eg Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H) have 6 SATA ports (one may be 
> eSATA though) and PATA, they seem ideal really.. You can use PATA with 
> CF to boot and connect 5 disks plus a DVD drive.
> 
> The CPU is not fanless however, but the other stuff is, on the plus side 
> you won't have to worry about CPU power :)
> 
> Also, the onboard video works well with radeonhd and is quite fast.
> 
> One other downside is the onboard network isn't great (Realtek) but I 
> put an em card in mine.

If neither an Atom 330 nor a cheap Athlon 64 do not offer sufficient
performance, the new i3-530 and H55 chip-set may be a much faster
alternative (with lower power consumption than the Athlon 64).

This combination is more expensive (official CPU list price $113)
but a CPU plus uATX mainboard should still be under $200 (e.g. the
MSI H55M-E33, or if you want an ITX form factor mainboard, the
Zotac H55-ITX).

Idle power of a small system (incl. 2.5" disk) has been reported
as low as 20W (primary power, efficient 120W power supply), with
throughput near that of low end quad CPUs.

Regards, STefan