Test System Setup

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 @ 2.66GHz (266MHz FSB x 10) (Supplied by Intel)

Motherboard: Gigabyte P965-DQ6 (Supplied by Gigabyte)

Memory: 2x 1GB Kingston DDR2-1000 Hyper-X @ DDR-800

Hard Disk: 2 x Seagate 7200.10 320GB SATA II (16MB cache buffer) in RAID 0 and single

Graphics Card: XFX GeForce 7900GS (Supplied by XFX)

Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP SP2

Drivers: Latest XP updates, RocketRAID 2340 v1.01, Intel INF 8.1.1.1010 and Jmicron R1.17.08

Now that we have covered the package, card and installation of the HPT RocketRAID 2340, it's time to move onto the benchmarks and check out what type of performance is on offer.

Gauging the performance of the HPT controller, we have put it up against the impressive Intel ICH8R Southbridge on the Gigabyte DQ6 motherboard along with the two port Jmicron JMB36x controller chip also found on the same board. The ICH8R has an advantage in that it communicates directly with the CPU via a fast link, data from the HPT controller first needs to travel along the PCI Express bus, through the Southbridge and then on to the CPU. The ICH8R has already proven to be a very good chipset in terms of SATA performance, so it will be interesting to see how the HPT controller performs against it, considering it has some added latency involved in its data process.

We have used a whole bunch of different tests - using a couple of Seagate's impressive 7200.10 SATA II hard disk drives (which I reckon offer unbeatable performance for the price), we've tested in a RAID environment using RAID 0 arrays and in non-RAID with single drive. We've used a range of different applications and benchmarks which should adequately demonstrate the performance of the RocketRAID 2340 controller against other modern controllers that are featured on many recent motherboards.

We already have established that the HPT 2340 RAID controller is one of the best we've ever seen in the features department but all of that doesn't mean jack if performance is sub-standard. Let's get this show on the road and see how this thing performs!