[mythtv-users] Asus Pundit vs. Shuttle XPC SK41G

mediaserver mediaserver at itestsolutions.com
Thu Jul 24 15:55:00 EDT 2003


For a performance comparison on SCSI versus Serial ATA (Serial SCSI is not
covered), take a look at the July 21 2003 (Issue 28) issue of InfoWorld,
pages 28-32.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/07/18/28TCsatadrives_1.html?s=tc

The magazine article contains a chart that the online version of the article
does not contain.  Compared to the four SATA drives tested, the
representative SCSI drive, a MAS3735NP, bested all of the serial ATA drives
in I/O operations per second for each of the tests conducted.   Only under
sustained moderate and high loads did the SCSI drive show a price advantage
however, with the higher IOPS capability lowering it's overall cost per I/O
operation.   The SCSI drive did have the highest sustained throughput of all
the drives.  But for those of you thinking a SCSI drive would help to fill a
Gigabit pipe, the Max Transfer rate of the SCSI drive was still only around
600Mbit/Sec.   The reference SCSI drive also had the highest price per
megabyte of all the tested drives.

Given the single user defintion of most of our entertainment systems the
price premium for a SCSI drive just doesn't make sense.   It is a little
less I/O intensive on the main CPU than is IDE, but not enough that most of
us would realize it, given some of the other bottlenecks that we have to
deal with on the CODEC encode/decode front.

'Pulley

-----Original Message-----
From: mythtv-users-bounces at snowman.net
[mailto:mythtv-users-bounces at snowman.net]On Behalf Of Lan Barnes
Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2003 2:21 PM
To: Discussion about mythtv
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Asus Pundit vs. Shuttle XPC SK41G


On Thu, Jul 24, 2003 at 11:00:36AM -0700, Chris Petersen wrote:
> > In this context, I have wondered, is there any advantage in going SCSI
> > for mythtv?
>
> Honestly, there's no advantage of going with SCSI for anything these
> days.  I work for a company that builds high-end servers, and the SCSI
> systems give us WAY more trouble than the IDE ones.  Speed advantages
> can be overcome by the new 10krpm ide drives, and though the drives
> themselves may be more stable (it's arguable), scsi controllers
> (particularly the u320 ones) are not.  And then you have the whole cost
> thing...   If you want to get the "good" (ie. fast) system, go for the
> 10krpm SATA drives.
>
> I'm still wary of the single-channel IDE.  I experienced quite a bit of
> video skipping when my optical drive was plugged in (never used), and it
> went away as soon as I unplugged it.
>

Thanks for the reply. Sometimes I wish (fervently) that I had a deeper
understanding of HW issues. What I hear you saying (you may correct me)
is that modern IDE is fully as fast as SCSI for mythtv (appliance) use,
but to get a multichannel MB and hang the drives on different channels.

Good to know.

--
Lan Barnes                    lan at falleagle.net
Linux Guy, SCM Specialist     858-354-0616

Building tomorrow, the night before, with yesterday's technology.
                        - Motto over frustrated engineer's desk




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