Final Thoughts

 

While PCI-X has been given its final marching orders, it still has some life left to it for the server markets over the next 2-3 years as it is slowly phased out. PCI-X has served its purpose as the high speed PCI bus of the past, but now must pass the torch over to PCI Express and its ability to deliver far greater bandwidth at a much more sensible price.

 

Highpoint has been a PCI-X fan with quite a few offerings to the server market in the past, and the RocketRAID 2220 offers nothing but the best in features. The idea behind the span linked controller cards is also a first, while nVidia offers something similar with allowing IDE and SATA to be RAID'ed together, it cannot offer 16 drive compatibility with the redundancy that this controller has to offer.

 

Overall the setup procedure was as simple as 1-2-3. Windows was able to detect it, install the drivers flawlessly and continue on it way without any problem or hiccups that we have experienced with other controllers in the past.

 

- Pros

 

Fast

 

Supports 16 drive span with two identical cards

 

Redundancy with RAID 5

 

Supports backwards compatibility with 66MHz and 100MHz PCI-X slots

 

Audio alarm of drive failure

 

- Cons

 

PCI-X only on servers, not available for desktops

 

PCI-X is an aging standard

 

Rating - 9 out of 10 and TweakTown's "MUST HAVE" Best Performance Award