Should I upgrade my first Gen raptors?

[dermotti]

I have 2 x 36g of the first gen raptors, not running raid.

Will i see any real world difference in performance if i upgrade to one of the latest raptors?

In real world performance, i mean:

Will battlefiled 2142 switch maps siginificantly faster?
Will World of Warcraft Zoning be siginifcantly faster?
Will EverQuest 2 Zoning be siginificantly faster?
Will Windows boot up signifacantly faster?

 

[Codesmith]

Probably only the boot up time.

Hard drive isn't the bottle neck in gaming since everything is so compressed its CPU/GPU limited.

Unless something is trying to request data faster than the hard drive can provide it, a faster hard drive will do nothing.

 

[dermotti]

"Will battlefiled 2142 switch maps siginificantly faster?
Will World of Warcraft Zoning be siginifcantly faster?
Will EverQuest 2 Zoning be siginificantly faster?
Will Windows boot up signifacantly faster?"

All the above involve heavy Hd usage.

I have a 3.2 ghz C2D, 2gb ram, and ati 1950pro. It sure feels like a hardrives are a huge bottleneck right now. Im wonding if upgrading my raptors will improve load times that involve heavy Hd usage.

 

[Synergy6]

Faster? Yes. Significantly? Probably not.

"Significantly" is a subjective term, so it's hard to say. My guess would be no, but perhaps you're more perceptive to small changes. The cost/benefit ratio is decidedly low, whatever the case.

Synergy6

 

[russki]

I guess the real question is fi there is a significant (measurable) performance improvement between the first and second generation Raptors, enough to justify upgrading. I'm actually curious myself.

 

[bweir]

You could reformat both drives into a RAID 0 config, which would yield some fairly robust performance increases in HDD intensive benchmarks. I've had 2 of those 36Gb 1st gen raptors in this type of config for 2-3 years now, and I'm still one of the first people to load into a Multiplayer online game (granted, I also have 2Gb of RAM), giving me a slight edge in BF2 when starting a map.

Not much else is going to change though, unless you are moving some huge files from disk to disk, or generating multi-gigabyte files in Photoshop or DVD-Authoring programs. Maybe Vista will boost those results as well, by taking advantage of some of the obscure features on the newer Raptors, like NCQ, etc.

 

[monkeymanuk]

If you employ raid 0 you should get faster reads but obviously you lose 36gig which is likely an issue. Maybe get a new 76Gig raptor for your main drive and then raid 0 your old ones.

 

[loxPL]

If you employ raid 0 you should get faster reads but obviously you lose 36gig which is likely an issue. Maybe get a new 76Gig raptor for your main drive and then raid 0 your old ones.

Since when do you lose any storage space in raid 0?

 

[russki]

Since when do you lose any storage space in raid 0?

You don't. The guy is either an idiot or confused. I'm going to go with the benefit of the doubt and say confused. I fear I may be mistaken, though.

PS. RAID 0 is not a good idea for a casual user. There's an active thread on the subject.

 

[choirbass]

you wont lose any space going raid 0, since it just takes the capacity of the smallest hdd in the array, and multiplies it by the amount of hdds in the array, to get the total capacity of the array... 2*36GB raptors, in raid 0 = 72GB raid 0 array

contrary to popular belief though (as a side note), load times for most games will not improve by having raid 0 anyhow

 

[chuckshissle]

Between your 36Gb and new generation raptors with 16mb buffer and other minor advancement, at raid 0 you won't be seeing any big difference. You'll be better off configuring that 2x36Gb Raptors of your to raid 0. Use another seperate 7200rpm for backup and storage.

I use my 2x74Gb Raptors Raid 0 for gaming and yes it gives me faster loading times on my games like 2142 and BF2 and FEAR, etc. With raid 0 you can definitely see some several seconds shaved off during load times and boot, depending on the system.

For I use 124K stripping size for large gaming application and gives me the fastest loading times overall.

Also here's some tips you can make loading faster on Bf2 and 2142.

Make sure you have only one cache folder in your game document. This is used in optimizing the game's graphics according to the graphics card setting. Make sure you have only one setting.

You can check this by:
1. Start
2. My Computer
3. My Document or (your name) document
4. Open the game BF2 or 2142
5. Mods
6. BF2
7. cache

There you should see the cache, and if there's many of them then delete them all. When you play the game again, it will optimize again and will save the cache once more. Finished the loading and exit the game and check to see if it's only one. Defrag the drive.

Another way is to set the game application priority to high. You can do this by running the game. While the game is running, Ctrl + Alt + Delete, this will minimize the game screen and go to main window and the Task Manager should be open.

Now at the Task Manager, click on the Process tab. Locate the game application and right click on it. At "Set Priority" select high. It should give you better performance and faster loading. But this will not work on all computers and even slows down some. So if it doesn't work then just set it to it's original setting.

I don't think this priority setting will be save and you may need to set the "Priority" every time you run the game.

Also at gaming, higher quality and resolution setting will increase the loading times.

Now as for my system:

2x74Gb Raptor Raid 0 124K stripping
2Gb ram
3.8Ghz Pentium D
and using them tips above for gaming

With 1280x1024 high settings at BF2 I get about 20seconds first load and about 15 seconds on following loads on maps. For the comparison on my regular Western Digital 7200rpm 300Gb Caviar SE hard drive, it gives about over 1 minute first load and 50 seconds seconds following loads.

So for you, configure that raptors to raid 0 and see if you have good loading times. And do the tips above and run some tests.

 

[loxPL]

you wont lose any space going raid 0, since it just takes the capacity of the smallest hdd in the array, and multiplies it by the amount of hdds in the array, to get the total capacity of the array... 2*36GB raptors, in raid 0 = 72GB raid 0 array

Yes, I know that, I was just trying to be sarcastic

 

[choirbass]

ok lol

 

[chuckshissle]

You'll just lose really tiny space for mapping but very insignificant.

 

[monkeymanuk]

Just keeping you on your toes

Sorry, I was megatasking again and suffered a data corruption in my left memory bank.

Raid 0 will provide a speed boost especially in transferring large amounts of data. Whether it will be noticeable in your games can only really be answered by someone that has done a similar upgrade. The drawback is redundancy or lack thereof.

Raid 0 and 1 is probably your best choice as you get the striping and mirroring but there is a hefty price tag. I have heard that mirroring can also provide a speed boost. Raid chipset could be a factor also.

Maybe, sell the old raptors which I imagine will still fetch a tidy sum.