Raid 0 setup

[dreinert]

I guess I was just wondering what kind of performance gain you get get from a raid 0 setup vs non raid.

I have a 500GB Samsung Spinpoint 7200rpm SATA 3.0. I was thinking of getting another but want to know if its worth it. I have a ASUS 680i mobo and a Q6600 with 2GB DDR2-800 memory using XP Pro if any of that matters.

I play games (Flight Sim, Far Cry, ect) and do 2-3D modeling. How much faster would XP load, games?

Thanks for any help,

dreinert

 

[OdiN]

Marginally faster level loads. Nothing to write home about.

You would see performance increases with video editing or anything that has a lot of file I/O. But for games...probably wouldn't notice it much.

 

[Blain]

Listen to me...
You will see a FSP performance boost from a RAID array, especially RAID 0 with 4 Raptors.

 

[Roguestar]

Originally posted by: AnandTech HD Review
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast loading times
The results speak for themselves with the RAID 0 setups offering extremely minor performance improvements in actual game load testing. You will likely not be able to notice any differences during actual game play with a RAID 0 setup. We know it was impossible for us.

BF2 Daqing Oilfields loading times
Once again we see a minimal difference between our RAID 0 and single drive configurations in this benchmark with only a one second difference in load times. In repeated testing it was difficult to discern any differences between the RAID 0 and single drive setups.

Nero Recoding
If you do a lot of video encoding then RAID 0 could end up saving you some precious minutes each day. Is it worth the cost or effort? Probably not, but it is one area besides benchmarking where RAID 0 actually made a difference. Of course, if you don't already have the fastest CPU for encoding available, that would have a far greater impact than RAID 0.

File Copying
We finish our tests with a benchmark that should have favored the RAID 0 setups due to a pure write scenario. Unlike our iPeak test (and for that matter a similar test in PCMark05) where the largest differences in scores between setups were generated, we have RAID 0 making no difference in this test and actually scoring worse than a single drive setup in two instances.

Final Thoughts
If it is not obvious by now, RAID 0 will provide outstanding results in synthetic benchmarks but really does nothing in actual applications.
RAID 0 sounds impressive in a system configuration and provides a performance placebo effect when viewing synthetic benchmarks. However, RAID 0 is just not worth the trouble or cost for the average desktop user or gamer, especially with the software RAID capabilities included on most motherboards.

 

[Papercup]

I was just buying a new system and looked into 2xRaptors in a RAID 0. Then i found a review of a 250Gb Samsung Spinpoint (like yours i guess) which was the first of the SATA2 drives. Just one of them was quicker than the RAID setup.

RAID 0 has always been about bragging rights at consumer level. Factor in twice the chance of losing your data and its just a silly idea for most people.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

0 real world permance gains from first hand experience