Optimizing Dual Core potential with Hard Drive Setup?

[keichan82]

Hey all. I'm setting up my opt system and wanted some suggestions.
My system will be :
Opteron 175 or 170 or 165 (2 are on the way, i will keep the best overclocker)
ThermalRight SI-120
DFI Expert Beta Bios 12/07
2 x 1GB OCZ Platinum 2-3-2-5
2 x eVga 7800GTX ACS3 SLI
2 x 74Gb Raptors
2 x 400Gb WD 16MB SATA2
2 x NEC DVD DL...
6 x Thermal Take Smart Fan
Sound Blaster Audigy 2
OCZ 520w PowerStream

I read that with dual core, you can be limited or bottlenecked by the hard drives. So it is better to run OS and programs in one and games in another.
How should I install my HDs?
Raid 0 Raptors for OS and Programs
Raid 0 WD for Games
or
One Raptor for programs and One Raptor for Games
or
Any other suggestions. Thanks.

[fullup3]

not sure about your question, .....but that is going to be a nice machine!

[IvanAndreevich]

Dual core performance doesn't have anything to do with hard drives. You are bottlenecked by your harddrives with any CPU, basically.

I'd use Raptors in Raid for OS and for games and the 400GB drives for storage

[Mr_Slinky]

yeah one raptor for os and a few files/ a little storage
the other for apps and if editing video files do that there but put them in raid since the nf4 on the expert takes advantages of it and the sata II
other then that it is good but what monitor are you going to use?

[One_Hertz]

I'd use Raptors in Raid for OS and for games and the 400GB drives for storage

what he said.

[keichan82]

I have the Dell 2005fp but I am trying to get the 2405fpw.
I think I am going to raid the raptors and the 400Gb.
Will the games and the programs run smoothly if they are all running from the raptors raid 0? Or should I run the OS and programs on Raptors and the games on raid WD 400Gb?

[chew*]

On my dual core setup I use a raptor for boot and a seagate 250 gig for applications games etc. The seagate will beat the raptor hands down loading apps and games. the raptor will beat the seagate in boot time hands down. Not many people realize it but raptor sata technology is old and shear rpm's dont outweigh new technology especially when the raptor uses a Bridge if you want to call it that since it was never really native sata to begin with.

[keichan82]

What hard drive do you think would load the games levels the fastest? In raid?
The WD 400Gb that I have is not that bad
http://anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2628&p=9
maybe if I raid it, it will be comparable to the 250GB?
If not please suggest. I want a fast loader.
I will use Raptors in Raid 0 for OS like you mentioned.
Do you think it will be fine running apps or will it be faster if I ue a different HD?
Thanks

[fhpchris]

I would use Raptors @ os and 400GBs @ everything else.

[mesyn191]

On my dual core setup I use a raptor for boot and a seagate 250 gig for applications games etc. The seagate will beat the raptor hands down loading apps and games. the raptor will beat the seagate in boot time hands down. Not many people realize it but raptor sata technology is old and shear rpm's dont outweigh new technology especially when the raptor uses a Bridge if you want to call it that since it was never really native sata to begin with.

SATA2 offers little to no performance benefits over SATA1.

The bridge has little to no effect on performance at all as well.

Performance in loading games and apps is still unparalleled against everything but the high end SCSI drives.
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200512/WD740GD-00FLC0_4.html

[stu_allen]

Do what i did, stick the raptors in raid 0 for your os, apps, games.
the 400gb drives in raid 1 for your data.

[chew*]

SATA2 offers little to no performance benefits over SATA1.

The bridge has little to no effect on performance at all as well.

Performance in loading games and apps is still unparalleled against everything but the high end SCSI drives.
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200512/WD740GD-00FLC0_4.html

HD tach tells all

Seagate random acess 15.3ms
average read 56.8mbs
Burst speed 135.1 mbs

raptor random acess 8.7ms
average read 49.7mbs
burst speed 107mbs

moral of the story raptor is not god. And thats not a sataII seagate either,but it loads games alot faster. Also WD is coming out with a new version of the raptor which i find funny if its supposed to be the best why update it.

"Hardware sites are buzzing today with news that Western Digital plans to announce a new version of its 10,000RPM Raptor Hard Drives in the new year. Rumored features of the WD1500AD (Server) and WD1500AH (Gamer) versions include: SATA-II Capabilities w/ NCQ, 16MB Cache, 4.5ms Seek Time, 1.2 million hours MTBF."

[mesyn191]

HD tach tells all

Seagate random acess 15.3ms
average read 56.8mbs
Burst speed 135.1 mbs

raptor random acess 8.7ms
average read 49.7mbs
burst speed 107mbs

1)HD Tach tells fairly little, you want IPEAK results if you want to tell all.

2)Your avg. read results are not typical for the Raptor, something funny is going on there as they usually do around 60MB/s. avg. or so:

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200512/WD740GD-00FLC0_str.png

Burst speed is irrelevant BTW, hard drive cache is tiny.

Note the random access time though, 8.7ms vs 15.3ms. Roughly half of the Seagates', yet you still tell me it slower?


moral of the story raptor is not god. And thats not a sataII seagate either,but it loads games alot faster. Also WD is coming out with a new version of the raptor which i find funny if its supposed to be the best why update it.

The Raptor is the god of consumer level single drive performance. They're coming out with new versions because the newer ultra high density platter hard drives with 16MB cache's are starting to get pretty close to it in performance and eat up sales.

[manomanx2]

what he said.

What he said about what the other guy said.

[chew*]

1)HD Tach tells fairly little, you want IPEAK results if you want to tell all.

2)Your avg. read results are not typical for the Raptor, something funny is going on there as they usually do around 60MB/s. avg. or so:

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200512/WD740GD-00FLC0_str.png

Burst speed is irrelevant BTW, hard drive cache is tiny.

Note the random access time though, 8.7ms vs 15.3ms. Roughly half of the Seagates', yet you still tell me it slower?



The Raptor is the god of consumer level single drive performance. They're coming out with new versions because the newer ultra high density platter hard drives with 16MB cache's are starting to get pretty close to it in performance and eat up sales.

yep you said it random acess is the only important factor on a HD. I guess the tests i ran myself are a figment of my imaginama. I guess fear doesnt load faster nor do most other games. O well GG. I love talking to fanboys on this forum.

[mesyn191]

yep you said it random acess is the only important factor on a HD. I guess the tests i ran myself are a figment of my imaginama. I guess fear doesnt load faster nor do most other games. O well GG. I love talking to fanboys on this forum.

:rolleyes:

Pretty much all the websites that reviewed the Raptor get higher transfer speeds then what you're getting, and seek times play an important role in data transfer speeds. Having a almost 2 to 1 advantage usually counts for something performance wise...

I'm not a fanboy BTW, (LOL) I've currenty got 4 of the Maxtor MaxLineIII's in my system.

[chew*]

:rolleyes:

Pretty much all the websites that reviewed the Raptor get higher transfer speeds then what you're getting, and seek times play an important role in data transfer speeds. Having a almost 2 to 1 advantage usually counts for something performance wise...

I'm not a fanboy BTW, (LOL) I've currenty got 4 of the Maxtor MaxLineIII's in my system.

well maybe my raptors are tired or need firmware upgrades I dunno I've had them since the day they were released to the public. Whatever the case the seagate still loads games faster according to most reviews i read and does so In real life on my machine.

[stu_allen]

36 gig raptors are slower than the 72's.

Zero chance a 72gb raptor is slower than your seagates, in benches or real world.

[drunkenmaster]

:rolleyes:

Pretty much all the websites that reviewed the Raptor get higher transfer speeds then what you're getting, and seek times play an important role in data transfer speeds. Having a almost 2 to 1 advantage usually counts for something performance wise...

I'm not a fanboy BTW, (LOL) I've currenty got 4 of the Maxtor MaxLineIII's in my system.


m8 if you install a game then defrag your drive then when you load a map or game it RARELY seeks so that doesn't mean it is twice as fast, it will simply take half as long to find the BEGINNING of the sequential data, at which point the ONLY important factor to trasfer speed is the DENSITY of the platter, when you want to move 1 gb of game data into memory a 7200rpm drive with a 100gb platter WILL, without any question transfer Sequential data faster than a 10k rpm drive with a pretty damned poor 37gb platter density, it has to move the platter 3 times further to move the same amount of data, simple as that no other possibility. its NOT moving 3 times faster, so as long as you keep relatively defragmented data(which you should) then most likely load times on anything big will be better on a drive with decent density platters.

i've had raided old skool IBm'sgxp 120's, 180's, dm8+, dm9+, dm10+, raptors, laughed at work when i tried seagates raided, normal wd's. ibm just make the best firmware and their raid simply works best, raided, errm forget the name, sata 2 hitachi drives freaking fly, i mean FLY. on my main rig i've got 2x dm9+ 200gb's raided still and it feels a LOT better than raptors for me.

most home use is on defragmented data, large data loading, raptors, and every single benchmark show for very random data, IE multiple users accessing a server all wanting diff data the raptor screams ahead because its normally small file access and very often in different area's of platter, seek time kills of the competition. for 99% of home users, loading apps, loading games, transfering files from one drive to another raptors are simply no better at all.

ibm and maxtor drives have ALWAYS given the biggest boost in drive performance when raided, seagate are notorious for horrendous raid performance. WD were pretty poor but have raid versions with i assume diff firmware(something seagate did a while back), not tried them though but assume there is an improvement. samsung are supposed to be ok but i haven't tried them at all.

the link you showed puts the hitachi drive ahead in several benchmarks and behind in all server style tests, theres a reason for that. quite frankly the raptors are a complete rip off. hell with current motherboards with 4 raid ports you can buy 4x hitachi/maxtors and raid 4 drives for LESS than the price of raptors in raid(tried 4 dm 9+'s briefly, bloomin' fast, but went back to 2 raid 2 storage single drives for a little more backup factor).

EDIT:- not tried the newer seagates in raid, but in single drive, with 133gb platters there is a LOT of potential there, they often come with performance mode set to quiet though. can't remember if they are still doing that or not.

[mesyn191]

m8 if you install a game then defrag your drive then when you load a map or game it RARELY seeks so that doesn't mean it is twice as fast,

Didn't say it was, just said that a 2:1 seek time advantage counts for something...

I've already mentioned that the newer higher density platter drives are catching up to the Raptors.


i've had raided old skool IBm'sgxp 120's, 180's, dm8+, dm9+, dm10+, raptors, laughed at work when i tried seagates raided, normal wd's. ibm just make the best firmware and their raid simply works best, raided, errm forget the name, sata 2 hitachi drives freaking fly, i mean FLY. on my main rig i've got 2x dm9+ 200gb's raided still and it feels a LOT better than raptors for me.

If you RAID 0 just about anything it'll be faster than a single Raptor, as I said before Raptors are the god of consumer level single drive performance ATM.


most home use is on defragmented data, large data loading, raptors, and every single benchmark show for very random data, IE multiple users accessing a server all wanting diff data the raptor screams ahead because its normally small file access and very often in different area's of platter, seek time kills of the competition. for 99% of home users, loading apps, loading games, transfering files from one drive to another raptors are simply no better at all.

Raptors also have very high sequential read/write speeds, usually around 60MB/s or so avg.


ibm and maxtor drives have ALWAYS given the biggest boost in drive performance when raided, seagate are notorious for horrendous raid performance. WD were pretty poor but have raid versions with i assume diff firmware(something seagate did a while back), not tried them though but assume there is an improvement. samsung are supposed to be ok but i haven't tried them at all.

Dunno about all of this. Plenty of servers I've seen at work and school using nothing but Seagate Barracuda's in RAID5 arrays, performance was usually bottlenecked by the hard ware RAID5 controller, not the hard drives themselves. Dunno about WD's older drives in RAID either but thier warranty sure seems impressive (5 yr. 100% seek) on the RE series. Only reason I've got the Maxtors is because of the bang vs. buck ratio myself and the fact that I was counting on RAID for performance, otherwise I'd be looking at the Raptors instead.


the link you showed puts the hitachi drive ahead in several benchmarks and behind in all server style tests, theres a reason for that. quite frankly the raptors are a complete rip off. hell with current motherboards with 4 raid ports you can buy 4x hitachi/maxtors and raid 4 drives for LESS than the price of raptors in raid(tried 4 dm 9+'s briefly, bloomin' fast, but went back to 2 raid 2 storage single drives for a little more backup factor).

Price vs. performance ratio on the Raptors has indeed gone down over years, remember, WD has made little changes to it for the past 2 years. It still has great performance though and that is what we were arguing, not price vs. performance which is a whole other argument altogether (in which case I would've suggested one of those 400GB WD or a MaxLineIII). I'd suggest not using motherboard RAID though with 4 HD's, from what others have posted it seems a waste to go past 2 with NVRAID (don't even mention those crappy Promise, Highpoint, or SilImage controllers....).

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=82299