raid ssd or raptor

slim01

slim01

slim01

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Which you guys think will be better for gaming? Baring in mind the SSD will prob only fit a few games on lol

2xSamsung f3 1tb in raid +£35

OR

1x 64gb real ssd SATA 3 SSD +£100

OR

1x 300gb raptor +£160

REALLY CANT DECIDE, hard to find proper results on the RAID of the f3 sammys, but heard theyre good cause of burst speed?
 
oh and my budget is as low as possible, more i can spend, more chance ive got of gettin another GPU
 
If gaming is the only concern, go for the F3's in RAID ... Or even better use 320GB F4's, they're faster.

If you spend much time working/multitasking on your comp or have a particular game that you play a lot of or which might benefit from an SSD (large RPG's and MMORPG's usually) Then an SSD is still worth considering - you just keep the games that benefit form fast storage on the SSD and others on a mechanical drive.

There's no real cut and dry answer, It's all about individual circumstances.
 
Zarf said:
If gaming is the only concern, go for the F3's in RAID ... Or even better use 320GB F4's, they're faster.

If you spend much time working/multitasking on your comp or have a particular game that you play a lot of or which might benefit from an SSD (large RPG's and MMORPG's usually) Then an SSD is still worth considering - you just keep the games that benefit form fast storage on the SSD and others on a mechanical drive.

There's no real cut and dry answer, It's all about individual circumstances.
Click to expand...

i see what you m,ean.
so f4s are faster, and almost cheaper? dont get that... considering thyre less than half the size lol

i wanna try raid anyway although im a little worried about what happens when one fails.

will the data still be acessable if i plug the hdds into another computer? ike save games and files and stuff. dosent raid just mirror the drives?
 
do pretty much all sandybridge mobos have raid?

also does anyone kn if using raid puts any stress on cpu or mobo? ive heard there is 2 different types - hw and sw. im assuming with a mobo that supports it thats hw based right? which is good, my new i5 (when i get it) wants to focus on what its good at - the gaming
 
i do like the look of the sata 3 real ssd drives, but the write speed is terrible, slower than my current HDD. i do a bit of writing with backups so i dont want it. shame
 
slim01 said:
i see what you m,ean.
so f4s are faster, and almost cheaper? dont get that... considering thyre less than half the size lol

i wanna try raid anyway although im a little worried about what happens when one fails.

will the data still be acessable if i plug the hdds into another computer? ike save games and files and stuff. dosent raid just mirror the drives?
Click to expand...

Different types of RAID do different things. RAID1 mirrors the drives, so if one dies the other has all the data. RAID0 splits data across both drives, so you double the speed and get the full space of both. However if either drive dies all the data is lost.

Whether you'll be able to move the drives over to other PC's is a trickier question. Going from an Intel controller board to an Intel controller board shouldn't be a problem, but mixing RAID controller vendors might not work.
 
only real advantage a raptor will have over the F3's is quicker reads but if there in raid 0 then that will narrow the gap.
If can afford go SSD as will wipe the floor if not RAID the F3's or as said go for F4's.

on another wouldn't WD blacks outperform the sammys?
 
If its just for gaming, I would do the cheapest option and just backup the save game files often to another source. This means then if you need to transfer to another PC, format the games drive for any reason or even if you setup raid and it fails, then as long as you have backed up your saves, you havent lost that much. Does that make sense?
 
I have been looking at the same sort of thing comparing 600gb raptors in raid0 with a crucial c300, but then i read a test on the 2 Terabyte WD Blacks and it is a hair's breathe away from the raptors but with considerably more Gigabytes available for 1/2 the price.

So for me now it is a c300 or 2x 2 Terabyte Blacks, i think the Blacks have it until the cost comes down per Gig of SSD.
 
To be honest it depends entirely on your specific circumstances. I have both and SSD and a raid 0 setup, and tend to just keep my OS and programs such as Maya on the SSD and use the raid for installing games. The reason I personally don't install many games on the SSD is because I tend to play games with my friends such as Dawn of War where I have to wait for them to load in anyway, so the extra speed is irrelevent.

An SSD is amazing for boot times though, and the OS feels much more responsive and much quieter due to much less HDD scrubbing.
 
My choice would be the SSD for the operating system and games you play mostly and 1 F3 for other things. For me the Raptor is out because it's very noisy, expensive and not much faster then a good 7200RPM drive like the F3 in real terms.
 
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