My last box with a 3ware I simply had it in jbod mode and used sw raid and it smoked the hw.
That is often the case no matter which hardware controller you've got, particularly in more complicated RAID setups.You might want to consider that a larger lesson rather than just a single data point.
Yeah, it'd be fun to run more benchmarks, but the beefy box, for some reason, is a prod box busy 24/7. no time to nuke it and fidgit :)
Check out the pages starting at http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/SERIAL-RAID-CONTROLLERS-AMCC,1738-12.html for example, where the newer Areca 1680ML card just gets crushed at all kinds of workloads by the AMCC 3ware 9690SA.I think the 3ware 9600 series cards have achieved or exceeded what Areca's 1200 series was capable of, while Areca's latest generation has slipped a bit from the previous one.
It does look like the 9600 series fixed a lot of the 9550 issues.
(and for the record, yes, either card I get will have a bbu. tis silly to get a controller without one)
