Harddrive performance for gaming PC

[masken]

Is there any SATA RAID cards that delivers more end-performance than your average good harddrive (like the Maxtor MaXLine III for example)?

Ie; is it worth getting RAID (RAID0 or 0+1 for example) from a performance perspective?

What would you recommend? Should I get SCSI, which has less CPU overhead? Were talknig about economically motivated solutions here, for home usage.

I feel that it's disk performance more than anything today, that limits overall perfomance on a good gaming system.

 

[kobymu]

SCSI and low budget dont go in the same line.
the cheapest in newegg only 36GB
/edit
not including scsi controller

 

[AristoV300]

Your better off just buying a good 7200RPM 8mb cache SATA drive, RAID 0 provides no real performance boost. If you really have to have faster than go with a 74Gb Raptor, that is probably the fastest SATA drive available. In my opinion the price/performance isn't there. For gaming you are better off getting more RAM and better graphics card, that makes the biggest difference as well as a good CPU like an A64.

 

[CalvinHobbes]

SCSI wouldn't be the cheapest way to go. You could do two SATA drives in RAID 0 or two SATA Raptors. There should be plenty of info on running RAID 0 and the possible benefits.

check out http://www.storagereview.com for reviews of drives

 

[Doctorweir]

Originally posted by: AristoV300
Your better off just buying a good 7200RPM 8mb cache SATA drive, RAID 0 provides no real performance boost.

Huh? For me it's 53mb/sec vs. 93mb/sec, which is indeed a noticeable performance boost...and it translates 1:1 to the real world...XP booting incredibly fast, games loading, etc...
So: Performance+on budget=go for RAID0, but make sure you have a good backup solution in place and do it regularly, as RAID0 puts your data at 2xloss risk in exchange for the performance... I for my part use the third "standard" hdd for regular images and file backups, as well as DVDs...

 

[masken]

RAID indeed has the theoretical option to make systems faster. On servers that's the de-facto case using controllers that off-load the CPU and have high through-put etc, and RAID 0 (striping) or RAID 0+1 (strpingi + mirroring) is the fastest configuration. All basic knowledge.

The problem with most IDE/SATA RAID cards is that they're not really fast.

And SCSI isn't as expensive as it used to be; you get a SCSI U320 controller with a 10k rpm drive for around ~ ?/$ 400.

But can anyone speak from experience? Are there any controllers out there that's not "too expensive" that will actually do some performance difference?

@AristoV300, if you have a failry new pc, with a decent amount of RAM (1Gb+), a decent CPU and graphic card, disk speed is what's most important, it is most often the bottleneck.

@Doctorweir, what hardware are you using?

 

[The Boston Dangler]

SCSI is a total waste for game use, and I doubt you would see any benefit from a RAID array.

This Anandtech article shows there is almost nothing to gain. IMO, get a 75G Raptor and a big (250+) HD for stuff like movies, tv, music, etc.

 

[masken]

Originally posted by: The Boston Dangler
SCSI is a total waste for game use, and I doubt you would see any benefit from a RAID array.

This Anandtech article shows there is almost nothing to gain. IMO, get a 75G Raptor and a big (250+) HD for stuff like movies, tv, music, etc.

Yeah, no surprise that the on-board Intel RAID chipset gave no performance benefits... I hadn't counted on that either The onboard chipset RAID is just a way for mobo-manufacturers to tick another feature in their list.

But there must med RAID cards for SATA that DOES increase performance? Or is it just available on the server side?

No tests of RAID-cards anywhere?

 

[imported_Kensai]

SCSI actually does increase performance with it's nice seek times. (15k SCSIs at least)

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

As sexy as 2 raptors are.... gosh I just can't resist them.

I really need to throw the 2xraptors out of my system plan =P

 

[Doctorweir]

For me it works fine with the Nforce4 onboard controller...RAID0 is IMHO not the big CPU load producer, as the data is only split and reassembled evenly...should be no big deal compared to checksum calculation in e.g. RAID5.
For me the impact was a really nice increase in HDD perf without noticeable CPU performance drop

 

[ksuWildcat]

I have to disagree with the earlier statements that said RAID0 offers no performance increase. I have an Asus P4C800-E Deluxe with ICH5R and two Maxtor 120 GB SATA w/ 8 MB cache hard-drives. As an experiment, I tried non-RAID first, installing the OS on one drive and apps on the other. Then I tried RAID0 using the ICH5R native RAID controller. After taking some quantifiable measurements (mostly load times for Windows XP and games), I found that my load times were reduced significantly, on average between 50-75%. That is a big difference if you ask me. Now Windows boots in about 6 or 7 seconds and most game levels load in about 4-5 seconds typically.

Although there is an increased probability of failure, I prefer RAID0 since all I really do is game on that box anyway. All of my important data is on other machines and backup drives.

Now, I don't know about the Promise controller, but most people seem to believe that it is inferior to the Intel solution. But ICH5R makes a tremendous difference on my machine. For gaming, I believe that RAID0 is a good choice.

 

[lansalot]

No fancy disk subsystem will help you in gaming. Period. If you are waiting for the screen to redraw and the limit is your IO, then you are somehow in very serious trouble.

Levels loading a bit quicker won't help you get a higher score.

 

[Arcanedeath]

The only thing raid 0 will get you is higher STR and a bigger chance of losing your data. higher STR gets you better load times in gaming and most likely faster boot up speeds and it's also useful for scrach disks or capturing A/V stuff. But the cardinal rule w/ raid 0 is backup your data. For a gaming system IHMO it's prob. not really worth it.

 

[ksuWildcat]

Originally posted by: lansalot
No fancy disk subsystem will help you in gaming. Period. If you are waiting for the screen to redraw and the limit is your IO, then you are somehow in very serious trouble.

Levels loading a bit quicker won't help you get a higher score.

Sure it will. The levels load faster on my machine, hence I am the first person in the game. I can get set up and pick ppl off as they enter LOL. That only works for certain FPS games, of course. Once a level is loaded, almost everything the game is using is in memory, so of course RAID won't help there. I just stated that it helps with load times. I like being the first person to enter the game.

 

[masken]

@lansalot and Arcanedeath, this discussion isn't aimed at FPS in some game.

It's about general system performance tuning with the help of disk systems. Faster disk WILL lead to a much faster system. Not in some FPS game where the area you're at is already loaded into memory, everyone understands that, just like ksuWildcat mentioned.

Again, what I'm after is experiences from different RAID systems, and if they've enchanced performance significantly, compared to single-disk solutions.

@ksuWildcat, is that an onboard chipset or a separate card?