Does Gaming Get Much Benefit from RAID 0 ?

Flight

Flight

Flight

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I've picked up a couple of 1Tb Spinpoint F1's, for a new game coming out called Age of Conan. Its an MMORPG, with very long loading times for areas, which you move between constantly. Pretty much no graphics apps or anything like that will be used on this machine; its jst for that game.

How much difference would putting the drives into RAID 0 make over just using the 1 drive for it ?

Thanks
 
The long loading times in AoC were mostly due to it being beta code, and having issues generating the shaders for your graphics card. I've been playing with the Vista Performance and Reliability monitor open on my second monitor, and there havn't really been any times where it's tried to do sustained transfers, there are just occasional spikes in activity of up to 40-50mb which is easily within the grasp of a single Samsung F1.

In the big picture all i can say is that having my two Raptors in RAID0 feels a lot faster than when i used a single 7200rpm drive for loading most games, but expect Conan loading times to drop more dramatically with improved code than with RAID.
IMO Spend the money on your RAM/CPU/GPX, you could probably go up to 8GB for around the price of a F1 nowadays, and having 2TB worth of storage in RAID0 isn't a particularly sensible idea.
 
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I have found RAID-0 really does speed up game loading times noticably.

I wouldn't however RAID-0 two 1TB drives, as if the array dies thats 2TB of data down the drain.
 
Yes to RAID-0 that much data is a VERY bad idea, just 3 weeks ago a dodgy SATA cable trashed my RAID0. I didnt however loose anything, since I only used it for the OS. Keep your 1TB for data, and raid-0 a pair of cheap small drives for you OS.

Raid0 Will definitely make your system more nippy. But as long as you have 8GB games, it doesnt matter how good your code is, there is still 8GB of compressed/uncompressed data to parse at some point with todays games.

If you want a REAL performance boost wait for SSD to come down in price, its the way of the future. Mechanical drives are just 1950's technology.
 
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when i first had my raptors in raid0, i could guarantee that i'd be the first 'in' when playing CS and the server changed map, my ping was about 60-80 at the time too, on my mum's dodgy isdn line
 
I raided the exact same drives (1.86TB formatted) 3 weeks ago in my new rig, and it's awesome, 143MB/s read speed average over the whole disk... come on ;-) I'd never have it any other way... I backup my important files, but if you want the best performance that's not the latest Rapters then these are the drives to RAID0 :eek:;)

Cheers
Pug
 
pugheaven said:
I raided the exact same drives (1.86TB formatted) 3 weeks ago in my new rig, and it's awesome, 143MB/s read speed average over the whole disk... come on ;-) I'd never have it any other way... I backup my important files, but if you want the best performance that's not the latest Rapters then these are the drives to RAID0 :eek:;)

Cheers
Pug
Click to expand...

Totally agree pugheaven.;) Got 2 HD501J's in raid0 with 1 120gig partition for the os and over 800gig for dumping stuff on. that array averages 140 meg per sec. and 2 740GD raptors in a raid 0 just for swapfile and cache's. 4gig ram Vista64 and boy does this machine fly:D. Raid 0 rules just sync ** files on another machine incase the array dies
 
Most games for me - even the massive ones e.g. Crysis etc., took very little time to load up. I haven't anything to compare it to, but it wasn't an inconvience or "pause" while changing levels.
 
HERE'S MY HDTACH BENCHMARKS

Samsung Spinpoint F1's in RAID0
 http://www.pugheaven.co.uk/benchs/hdtach.jpg

Maxtor 120GB IDE
http://www.pugheaven.co.uk/benchs/hdtachmaxtor.jpg

Western Digital 120GB IDE
http://www.pugheaven.co.uk/benchs/hdtachwd.jpg




HERE'S MY HDTUNE BENCHMARKS

Samsung Spinpoint F1's in RAID0
http://www.pugheaven.co.uk/benchs/hdtune.jpg

Maxtor 120GB IDE
http://www.pugheaven.co.uk/benchs/hdtunemaxtor.jpg

Western Digital 120GB IDE
http://www.pugheaven.co.uk/benchs/hdtunewd.jpg

Cheers
Pug
 
The problem with using multiple partitions on very large disks to make up various system disks, is random access time.

It stands to reasons that the more tasks (Vista, games, page file, anything) you have reading from the same physical disks, random access time will bring your disk throughput screeching down to single figure MB/Sec, more so if your disk is very fragmented.

Its best to split your data accross various physical disks, i.e vista on one, games on another, page file somewhere else etc.
 
pug, trim the screenshots mate!

good way to pre-trim them, is hold the left Alt key -when you're in the active window that you want to cap, then tap print screen

when you paste into paint.net or paint, it'll only be that window then (hdtune)
 
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I myself like to have multiple Partitions for each job...

I have my PCs in this way :-

C: = Windows
D: = Apps & Games
E: = Media
F: = The rest / scraps etc

Now, thats how I have all my PCs.
F: is also used to keep a backup of My Docs, Emails etc


Now, on my No1 PC, I am using a Raptor for C:, a WD500 for D: ( 400GB ) and F: ( the rest ) and another 500GB WD for E:
and I also have another drive M: which is my download drive for torrents etc.

I find that a seperate drive just for torrents helps speed things up

Now, my No2 Drive is currently using a pair of 320GB WD SATAII Drives in RAID0 and sure enough its quick as you like, but then, the speed benefits are only there if the PC is doing nothing else.

I mean, on my No1, I regularly convert 4 AVI Movies from E: and the outputted DVD Format VOB fiels are then stored onto D:. ( Yes, all legal stuff, home videos etc ) and at the same time, I can burn 4 DVDs at once from F:, and defrag C: and M: while also downloading half a dozen Linux ISOs onto M: and at the same time I might be playing UnReal Tournament 2007, or Dawn Of War or whatever???

This I can do with no noticable slowdown on my No1 PC, but my No2 PC has not got a hope in hell of even tryign to do all that. The speed benefits of RAID0 will be there for any one and maybe even 2 tasks at once, but even considering it is a stupid thing, and its not like I have not tried.

Only time I would get true benefit is if I had at least 2 raid arrays consisting of obviously at least 4 drives.
 
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