Which is funny because Intel's SASUC8i (rebranded LSI3082E-R) is true hardware RAID which I recently picked up*new* for $150. They don't do RAID-5/6 or have a BBU but IMO you don't need a BBU for RAID-0/1/10.
you want BBU (or flash-backed cache) if you want write-back cache, and not mandate write-through. This is quite independent of the RAID type. It greatly speeds up 'committed' random writes such as are generated by a transactional database.
I stand corrected in that area. Tho, even upgrading to a LSI MegaRAID 9260 w/ BBU only brings you into the $1000 price range so unless you're buying $1000 pizza boxes from Supermicro (not knocking the brand, I use their kit at home ) that's still not even close to the price of a decently spec'd IBM or HP server. Of course our spec comes in around $6k per box. ;-)