Difference between LSI SAS 9300-16i and LSI SAS 9305-16i?

Anyone know the difference between these two cards? The LSI SAS 9300-16i and the LSI SAS 9305-16i?

The 9305 seems to be a newer card, but the 9300 is still being sold for ~$40 more on average. They look very similar to me.

I'm planning on using them in a FreeNAS build.

 

05 optionally Low-Profile other not

 

Thanks! That was the main difference that I saw too. They seem to use different processors, but from what I can see in the data sheets, the performance numbers look the same. Do they have feature parity as well?

If the 9305 is cheaper and smaller and otherwise identical, why continue selling the 9300?

 

The 9305 is build using new silicon. It is a new chipset, only marginally related to the original 9300 series chips. It is, in theory, same to higher performance and lower power. Plus it natively supports up to 24 lanes per chip, where the 9300 was pretty much limited to 8 lanes and the 16 lane part was really two chips etched on the same die and tied together with a PCIe switch - and the really rare 24 port cards were really a 9300-8i + an LSI expander chip bolted together.

All that said - the 9305 ought to be the more expensive chip.

But in the server marketplace 'newer' is not always better. A lot of purchasing gets done based on what is proven and tested. So the 9300 series boards still have most of the market space. It's also not clear what driver bugs may exist for the new boards, etc. As the new boards get through various peoples qualification testing the market for 9300-8i/16i boards will shrink and prices will come down. The 9305 series boards should stay about where they are for now as they are basically selling at the manufacturers reccomended range.

Persaonally, I would really prefer the 9305 boards right now. 33% lower power for 16 ports - and 24 port version is selling for only about $100 more. If you have a 24 drive chassis getting the 9305-24i would be a much better approach than getting a 9300-8i + expander or 3x 9300 cards.

 

Any reason not to get the 9305 for a FreeNAS build? I know it probably isn't well tested, but do you know if the card and firmware version are supported?

Edit: I'm using a U-NAS NSC-800 case (Xeon-D 1541) with space for 8 3.5" hot-swap bays and (depending on creativity) maybe 4 SSDs, so I don't think the extra $120 for the 9305-24i over the 9305-16i is worth it. I do wish they had an 16i8e card though.

 

Theres no battery backup or cache protection for the 9305... So if you dont have someway to backup your card info and suffer an outage... You lose your cards config. I think thats pretty much worth not getting it...

 

9305-16i will consume about half the power of the 9300-16i (~10w vs ~20w). Otherwise there is very little difference. 9305 silicon uses the same drivers as 9300 and works great with FreeNAS.

 

To hijack a little, does this mean the 9305-16i is more or less efficient as a 9311 ?
Looking for the lowest power (and heat) HBA to drive some SAS 12g SSD's. 8 ports is enough (even 4 ports is ok)

 

Yeah I think I am running into IO issues on a Lenovo workstation using the onboard controller to run ZFS. I am looking to get at least an 8i or 16i controller.