Gaming Drives, lots of questions

[Circaflex]

Ok so I had another thread but it went to the gutter. I have a lot more options now and want more advice. I am building a 24/7 gaming rig. I'm looking for a setup just for the os/games/programs. So here are my choices, any advice is welcome but please don't turn this into a knowledge war like my last thread, save it for PM's.

Raptors:
2 x Raptors - RAID0
4 x Raptors - RAID0
4 x Raptors - RAID5
2 x Raptors - RAID0 WITH Raid Card, areca?
4 x Raptors - RAID0 WITH Raid Card, areca?
4 x Raptors - RAID5 WITH Raid Card, areca?

Seagate
2 x 7200.10 - RAID0
4 x 7200.10 - RAID0
4 x 7200.10 - RAID5
2 x 7200.10 - RAID0 WITH Raid Card, areca?
4 x 7200.10 - RAID0 WITH Raid Card, areca?
4 x 7200.10 - RAID5 WITH Raid Card, areca?

SCSI
2 x ??? - RAID0 WITH SCSI Card?
4 x ??? - RAID5 WITH SCSI Card?

Now if you think one with a separate card is faster, which card should I go for? This will be a gaming rig and I don't really want to spend 600 on a card, Ive seen a few for 400 and less. SCSI I haven't looked into, which drives or cards would be nice. Again any helpful information would be great. Ill be asking a mod to watch this thread this time, so no flaming starts again.

[Serra]

Budget?

[afireinside]

I'd say raid 0 + 1 on raptors would pwn :D

[LuckyNV]

personally leave the HDDs till the end, there is little difference in games between a modern 7200rpm 16MB cache SATA-II drive and a SCSI setup. You might load up a map a few seconds quicker perhaps but its certainly not going to increase your fps or anything like that.

Definitely invest more into the CPU/mobo/RAM, I'd definitely go 4GB ram over a SCSI setup.

At most Raptors in RAID 0 should be sufficient.

[Drag]

4 x Raptors - RAID5 WITH Raid Card, adaptec.

but if you have a bigger budget then buy a serial attached scsi card.

[uOpt]

The primary access pattern is the key to pick the RAID level. RAID-0 for example doesn't speed up a pattern of nothing by small reads after random seeks. You stay at single-disk performance and have nothing but the higher risk for that pattern.

That pattern is very common for startup of programs that don't write temporary files and don't cause swapout (but Windows startup seems to write quite a bit, so it speeds up under raid-0 somewhat).

While most application start won't speed up from raid-0, some games actually do, because they are smart enough to store huge amounts of data in big files that they read linearly. But there is no way to tell which games does what.

Similar with large video files: of course you can read and write them much faster under raid-0 - when you do read and write individually. If you copy, do read and write simultaneously without large buffers in between, then you are not faster.

Lacking better data on your access pattern, here is what you want to do:

Get more memory first
If you, like 99% of people and companies, have no idea about what you exact access pattern is, do not fiddle with RAID. Get faster harddrives instead.
And not all 7200 drives are fast, Seagates are usually slower than other 7200s. Granted, they hold your data when other's might not but people should be aware of this.
RAID-0 is a good start for speed, but it doesn't do all access patterns well.
RAID-1 can speed up patterns like reads after random seeks, but it is questionable whether that works with the onboard SATA raid junk (why anybody uses that is triple beyond me).
raid-10 probably has the best performance overall and good safety but is very inflexible.
raid-5 require a beefy CPU or a controller with processor. But it is doable on core-2 or AMD64s with 2.6 or more with software raid.


Also, separating OS and games for speed-reasons is the dumbest thing I have heard about. The OS disk is mostly inactive during game start, you through that data delivery power right out of the window.

Unless you only have paging space on the OS disk, which you shouldn't. Paging space should always be on all drives and not raided at all (raw partitions), unless you want true hotswap, in which case your raid-1/5/6 should apply but not your raid-0 (if you do raid-10, raid-50 or somesuch).

[lionel57000]

if you have no budget limit, why not iram in raid ? or another ramdrive

it s faster than all hard drives you can find ....

[lionel57000]

like that :banana: :eek: :woot:


http://kiti.main.jp/Report/Waller/Waller1.htm

[uOpt]

if you have no budget limit, why not iram in raid ? or another ramdrive

it s faster than all hard drives you can find ....

Conventional RAID levels generally don't make sense for non-conventional storage that doesn't have moving heads.

[lionel57000]

just to have a bigger drive

one iram card = 4 gb max

good to install xp , but not enough to play
a raid is good to have a 8gb storage to install a game

[Drag]

just to have a bigger drive

one iram card = 4 gb max

good to install xp , but not enough to play
a raid is good to have a 8gb storage to install a game
No budget :eek:

get sas drives

[Soulburner]

Also, separating OS and games for speed-reasons is the dumbest thing I have heard about. The OS disk is mostly inactive during game start, you through that data delivery power right out of the window.

Unless you only have paging space on the OS disk, which you shouldn't. Paging space should always be on all drives and not raided at all (raw partitions), unless you want true hotswap, in which case your raid-1/5/6 should apply but not your raid-0 (if you do raid-10, raid-50 or somesuch).
I don't agree with this. I run my OS/Drivers/Page File on a 36gb Raptor and games and appliations off of a 74gb Raptor. This is a tried and true setup that is very fast and responsive. There is no reason to have your page file spread over all your drives.

[uOpt]

I don't agree with this. I run my OS/Drivers/Page File on a 36gb Raptor and games and appliations off of a 74gb Raptor. This is a tried and true setup that is very fast and responsive. There is no reason to have your page file spread over all your drives.

How much page file usage do you have over your usage day?