Question : Problem: IDE / SATA RAID - Which is faster / better onboard or PCI expansion card?

I am working on building a couple of machines that will use a IDE RAID or SATA RAID controller.  I have two PCI ATA IDE RAID  cards a 3Ware Escalade 4LP and a Rocket RAID 404 card.  Also avaiable to me is a ABIT NF7-S v2 motherboard with a(n) onboard SATA RAID controller

I am looking for the following;

+ speed
+ notifications (heat, failure, ect)
+ anything that I may not have considered already.

I plan to use the machines as a workstation by day, and as a backup solution at night after the employees have gone home.

Will I be better served by using the expansion card, or by going with the controller that is in place on the system, and why?
Please advise.

Answer : Problem: IDE / SATA RAID - Which is faster / better onboard or PCI expansion card?

I strongly suspect the 3Ware Escalade 4LP and the Abit NF7-S motherboard will give you the fastest solutions, as the 3Ware cards are high performance cards.  If you go with the motherboard solution, you will likely be limited to RAID-0 and RAID-1, because motherboard RAID doesn't have the expensive hardware to compute parity for RAID-5.  All in all, the 3Ware cards are more expensive, but will provide the most features.  There was a discussion on this in a previous question: http://www.experts-exchange.com/Hardware/Q_21790692.html