just thought i would post this... the posted benefits of raid 0 seem to fall in line with whats 'generally' experienced in game loading times, for the reasons listed in the article (contrasting whats stated by most people who think otherwise about raid 0)...
if anyone cares to verify this, using two or more different cpus, but identical setups otherwise, both in raid 0, and single drive configurations, theyre welcome to...
http://faqs.ign.com/articles/606/606669p1.html
EDIT: hm... apparently this is very true... theres a much easier way to test though than switching out cpus... ...the easiest way is if you have dual core cpu, and a game that supports multithreading, such as quake 4 (it tends to use upwards of 70% of both cores when theyre in use, sometimes as high as 100%, though less often), so, its a good game to test... havent checked other games though... but, setting your cpu affinity from both cores, to only 1 core, will drop the total processing capability up to half... ...i also have 4*36GB raptors (3 of which are in raid 0, for hosting my OS and various applications, and a 4th non raided which is being used for the pagefile, and to keep a few files as an extra backup, in addition to other backups)... i copied quake 4 over to the 4th raptor though
i dont have a watch to time the loading with, so i just had to go by how long it seemed to take to load each level... where the pauses in loading happened, guaging the difference between just one core, and both cores in use, and the difference between 3 raptors in raid 0, and the single raptor... ...apparently the only real difference in loading times, was when i switched the game over to just 1 core, instead of using both cores... ...the 3 raptors in raid 0 had very little impact (compared to the single raptor), or not that i noticed really anyhow...
but, thats an inexpensive way to test; if you already have a dual core cpu on hand, and a game that can take advantage of the second core (which is why i used quake 4, though oblivion is also multithreaded too, as are quite a few other games)... ...and, goes to show, that i guess if you want to load games faster, instead of investing in raid 0, just get a faster cpu/memory configuration (because memory speed also affects overall cpu processing speed)... ...overclocking your existing cpu and memory should help here also... ...thats not to say either, that you should just forget about hdd speed entirely, hdds are slow enough as it is, compared to every other major speed based component lol... so, speed and capacity is definetly the way to go for general use when it comes to hdds...
as far as the raptors i have, yes, i did purchase them a few years ago to benefit game loading times, among other things, such as just helping my computer to be more responsive, lol... but, i never saw much change for games, even when i had all 4 in raid 0...
now, for older games, i suppose this might not quite be the case, because the game levels might not take that much processing and decompressing to load, and raid 0 may benefit better there... but for current games, a faster processor/memory configuration definetly seems to help speed things up, such as this...
anyhow, yeah... this definety is the case so far... have to test some other games though too sometime, just to see if its not just isolated to quake 4 (i wouldnt think it would be, but just to see)
if anyone cares to verify this, using two or more different cpus, but identical setups otherwise, both in raid 0, and single drive configurations, theyre welcome to...
http://faqs.ign.com/articles/606/606669p1.html
EDIT: hm... apparently this is very true... theres a much easier way to test though than switching out cpus... ...the easiest way is if you have dual core cpu, and a game that supports multithreading, such as quake 4 (it tends to use upwards of 70% of both cores when theyre in use, sometimes as high as 100%, though less often), so, its a good game to test... havent checked other games though... but, setting your cpu affinity from both cores, to only 1 core, will drop the total processing capability up to half... ...i also have 4*36GB raptors (3 of which are in raid 0, for hosting my OS and various applications, and a 4th non raided which is being used for the pagefile, and to keep a few files as an extra backup, in addition to other backups)... i copied quake 4 over to the 4th raptor though
i dont have a watch to time the loading with, so i just had to go by how long it seemed to take to load each level... where the pauses in loading happened, guaging the difference between just one core, and both cores in use, and the difference between 3 raptors in raid 0, and the single raptor... ...apparently the only real difference in loading times, was when i switched the game over to just 1 core, instead of using both cores... ...the 3 raptors in raid 0 had very little impact (compared to the single raptor), or not that i noticed really anyhow...
but, thats an inexpensive way to test; if you already have a dual core cpu on hand, and a game that can take advantage of the second core (which is why i used quake 4, though oblivion is also multithreaded too, as are quite a few other games)... ...and, goes to show, that i guess if you want to load games faster, instead of investing in raid 0, just get a faster cpu/memory configuration (because memory speed also affects overall cpu processing speed)... ...overclocking your existing cpu and memory should help here also... ...thats not to say either, that you should just forget about hdd speed entirely, hdds are slow enough as it is, compared to every other major speed based component lol... so, speed and capacity is definetly the way to go for general use when it comes to hdds...
as far as the raptors i have, yes, i did purchase them a few years ago to benefit game loading times, among other things, such as just helping my computer to be more responsive, lol... but, i never saw much change for games, even when i had all 4 in raid 0...
now, for older games, i suppose this might not quite be the case, because the game levels might not take that much processing and decompressing to load, and raid 0 may benefit better there... but for current games, a faster processor/memory configuration definetly seems to help speed things up, such as this...
anyhow, yeah... this definety is the case so far... have to test some other games though too sometime, just to see if its not just isolated to quake 4 (i wouldnt think it would be, but just to see)