which Raid method is best for games and photoshop (p5ad2) raptors and maxtor 250gb??

[psykik]

I'm building a new pc for games and photoshop

I have the following hd's and mobo

3 x raptor 72gb sata

2 x maxtor 250gb 16mb cache sata

asus p5ad2 premium

There appear to be two sata raid options:

(i) the Silicon Image 3114R RAID controller, and
(ii) the Intel ICH6R South Bridge:

what is the best configuration for XP installation, Games and Photoshop?

For instance I was thinking

2 x raptor raid 0 for XP on Sil 3114
1 x raptor for swapfile on Sil 3114
2 x maxtor raid 0 for apps and games on ICH6R

Questions:

Which sata raid controller is best for which purpose?
Can I put 2 x maxtor (raid 0) AND 2 x raptor (raid 0) on the same sata raid option? Any disadvantages?
Which sata raid option is more stable?
Is matrix raid on the ich6r reccomended?

Is there a guide anywhere to correctly connect the hd's? I have tried to boot from sil 3114 with XP loaded on 2 x raptors in raid 0 but I experience XP gets to the XP splash screen and keeps rebooting itself. What might I be doing wrong? (all default settings)

Many Thanks in advance

 

[edelbrock]

I would definately put the maxtors on the ICH6R and enable NCQ. Those maxtors appear to be NCQ capable.

 

[Skoop]

There is no significant advantage to using RAID for gaming. Performance advantage is gained with lots of high quality and fast RAM, and a fast video card, also with lots of RAM. Any benefit of RAID is in installing programs, not running them. You have a boatload of storage there. RAIDing really won't help you much gaming. Now data crunching is another matter. Moving lots of files around quickly makes RAID shine. Gaming doesn't.

Disk benchmarks show huge transfers and fast rates with RAID. It's just that games don't work that way.

 

[Thermalrock]

3 raptors one raid 0.

 

[psykik]

thermalrock 3 raptors in one raid zero wont work on the ich6r.

My other questions remain unanswered.

I have today thought about

2 x raptor in raid 1 on ich6r for xp
2 x maxtor in matrix raid 1 (50GB) for apps and raid 0 (the rest) for games etc.

1 x raptor on sil344 (no raid)

Is this making the best use of the resources I have?

thanks

 

[samuraijake]

Your last suggestion seems to be the best bet. Unless you can run two matrix arrays on the ICH6R, then I'd run both the two Raptors and the two WDs in Matrix and the third Raptor on the Sil3114R. Just make sure you get your swap file, scratch disks, etc. on a RAID 0. That's where you'll see the most benefit. Good luck.