sure, but it was a very, very, very long post... but i agree with all he said.
The point is, i work at as a system administrator and we dont use raid arrays here. Mainly because they are complicated to setup, but also if a machine fails, we cant take the disk out and put on another machine and just turn it on and run. If we had raid, we would have to put 2 disks in another board which is exactly the same as the original, or else it wont work. Also, if one disk fails, you lose your entire data. Unless you use some raid1 or 0+1, even 5, which will need more disks. Raid 1 increases read speeds and add security, but as you said you're looking for pure speed, that genereally leads to thinking of RAID 0, which i dont recommend at all.
Like i said, if you put 2 disks with no raid, install OS/games/apps and your files and the page file to another one will give more safety, more speed than a single disk, without the risks of RAID0. You can even backup your files to both disks, so if one disk fails you dont lose your important data. Also, if something goes wrong you can boot from a recovery disk, mount your disk to another computer, etc, etc.
Like someone said that just because consumer motherboards are shipping with raid controllers it means that raid is not restricted to server environments, but i think it is... putting a raid chip adds value to the board, but that does not mean it's really necessary or useful. Raid is kinda like SLI.. it does not double your fps, but if you have the money, go for it.