RAID in a gaming system

[Martyuk39]

Take a pretty beefy game - what does RAID 0 do for...

1. loading times
2. frame rates

Are NCQ-enabled disks better?

What impact would RAID 5 have on gaming performance? (I'm just curious - I'm not going to go down this track, it's just the board I'm considering has a built-in controller).
Anything else to consider?

 

[dguy6789]

Raid has its uses, but it offers no real benefit for gaming.

Your loading time may drop by 1 to 2 seconds, your framerate will not change at all.

 

[Martyuk39]

Thanks - and I think I should have searched first - a popular topic!

 

[Doctorweir]

Speaking from own experience: Yes...helps the excessive loading demand of todays games big time
RAID5 is IMHO overdoing for gaming and impacts performance when not using a dedicated hardware controller for the parity calculation...

 

[Reapsy00]

I find I can get into a multiplayer game a few seconds faster with raid 0 setup. The main benefit is my machine feels more responsive in windows, and anti virus and ad aware scans are quicker. This is using 2 160gb PATA WD drives on a highpoint 404 pci controller.

 

[racolvin]

I use RAID 5 with a hardware raid controller and I can tell you for sure that my level load times are faster. I play EQ2 and my "zoning" is much faster than most everyone I game with. Makes zero difference in actual game play for something like Doom 3 but I'm impatient, so lowering the load times is fine by me