Raptor or 7200.7 NCQ better to reduce game load times?

[Karma]

The 7200.7 w/ NCQ sure is good, but does it effect game load times?

or

Is the Raptor still the best for gaming?

[SirKenin]

The 7200.7 w/ NCQ sure is good, but does it effect game load times?

or

Is the Raptor still the best for gaming?
The Raptor is still the best drive out there for the home level user, period. :) One or two are gaining ground rapidly, but if money is no object then Raptor it shall be.

[Karma]

Thx, any idea when/if the Raptor will get NCQ?

[SirKenin]

Thx, any idea when/if the Raptor will get NCQ?
No, I have no idea. I am sure there is some smart person in here that is on top of their game though.

[serbiaNem]

I'm really looking hard at NCQ drives for my next build using dual-core. Anands saw a significant multitasking improvement with NCQ.

Any manufacturers up for making a 10,000RPM 16MB cache 500GB NCQ SATAII drive?

[Order]

That.....would be pricey. :)
RAID up some nice SATA 7200rpms with a high end LSI or 3Ware controller and you'll save yourself the wait and the money.

[DougLite]

Game level loading = frequent localized seeks = Raptor still rules the roost. (Is that the 3 R's of hard drives? :D ). NCQ does boost performance on broader long stroke seeks, such as what you found in the Anandtech article, but for single task performance, stick with Raptor. Also, a second (independent) spindle for the second task will be a bigger boost than NCQ.

As for the 500GB 10K drive, don't look for it any time soon. The Big Iron makers have had enough hard time delivering swift seeks on 73GB platters - don't look for it on 125GB platters, as more density requires more precision, working against the higher actuator speeds necessary to make <5ms seeks that really make 10K/15K drives shine.

[Zardoz]

The 7200.7 w/ NCQ sure is good, but does it effect game load times?

or

Is the Raptor still the best for gaming?

NCQ can make any load times better it's a over all increase.

NCQ allows the host to issue multiple commands to the device (up to 32 commands) without having to wait for the device to complete any commands. Queuing of commands allows the drive to look ahead at what data has been requested or needs to be written, thereby allowing the drive to optimize the order of the commands and maximize data throughput efficiency, providing significant performance improvement.

You can also say that NCQ logically can improve performance, to where the raptors improve performance by horsepower (speed.) if NCQ was added to raptors it could logically again improve performance of the drive.

[DougLite]

NCQ can make any load times better it's a over all increase.

NCQ allows the host to issue multiple commands to the device (up to 32 commands) without having to wait for the device to complete any commands. Queuing of commands allows the drive to look ahead at what data has been requested or needs to be written, thereby allowing the drive to optimize the order of the commands and maximize data throughput efficiency, providing significant performance improvement.

You can also say that NCQ logically can improve performance, to where the raptors improve performance by horsepower (speed.) if NCQ was added to raptors it could logically again improve performance of the drive.

However, NCQ also imposes an overhead on transactions between host and disk - take a look at the SR benchies for both the 7200.7 and MLIII - many of the single user scores drop with NCQ enabled. Once again, NCQ does not help (indeed hurts) typical single user access patterns of frequent localized seeks, but does help high queue depths (XP Bootup) and large sweeping actuator movements (disk intensive multitasking). However, you're not going to have either of these conditions when gaming, at least I hope not.

[Zardoz]

However, NCQ also imposes an overhead on transactions between host and disk - take a look at the SR benchies for both the 7200.7 and MLIII - many of the single user scores drop with NCQ enabled. Once again, NCQ does not help (indeed hurts) typical single user access patterns of frequent localized seeks, but does help high queue depths (XP Bootup) and large sweeping actuator movements (disk intensive multitasking). However, you're not going to have either of these conditions when gaming, at least I hope not.


I understand where NCQ has a better chance of helping where the disk is intensive multitasking. that's where it shines, and I agree that in gaming it might not be all that helpful because the disk is generally not intensive multitasking. All I was stating is that NCQ is a over all improvement where is in some situations it's not going to be that grate but in others it will.

I also believe that horsepower will yield you better performance then NCQ on average, but a drive without any of these features will be slower on average.

[azzkikur]

All I really know is that my two 74gb Raptors in RAID 0 are amazingly fast. So if you have the money, get them.

[ashmedai]

Ugh, another Raptor RAID 0 advocate. Not even gonna bother, just go fricking read up on what RAID 0 actually does and is intended for, instead of trying to see who has the biggest electronic penis over something that won't actually help your system when there are perfectly good things to have spent the money on.

[DougLite]

Ugh, another Raptor RAID 0 advocate. Not even gonna bother, just go fricking read up on what RAID 0 actually does and is intended for, instead of trying to see who has the biggest electronic penis over something that won't actually help your system when there are perfectly good things to have spent the money on.

QFT.

[azzkikur]

Ugh, another Raptor RAID 0 advocate. Not even gonna bother, just go fricking read up on what RAID 0 actually does and is intended for, instead of trying to see who has the biggest electronic penis over something that won't actually help your system when there are perfectly good things to have spent the money on.
Ugh, another know-it-all who thinks he's a genius. Shutup.

[ashmedai]

Read this (http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki-index.php?page=SingleDriveVsRaid0) and become enlightened. There's much more to know about the topic, but it's a good starting point.

[rayman2k2]

Ugh, another know-it-all who thinks he's a genius. Shutup.



yeah dude, RAID-0 really doesnt provide that many real world benefits when it comes to Raptors


unless of course, you were to run benchmarks all day


p.s. benchmark does not include games

[USMC2Hard4U]

I ran 2 raptors in Raid 0 as well as 2 200GB Hard Drives in Raid 0 and it was outstandingly fast. But I do alot of work with Media files and have Many DVDs ripped and encoded to DIVX and what not. I really dont play games save for CS of course :)

[DougLite]

I ran 2 raptors in Raid 0 as well as 2 200GB Hard Drives in Raid 0 and it was outstandingly fast. But I do alot of work with Media files and have Many DVDs ripped and encoded to DIVX and what not. I really dont play games save for CS of course :)

I and the other people with cool heads about RAID-0 have never disputed that it has a place and can deliver good size performance boosts in certain tasks, but gaming is not one of them. I just cannot stand ignorant (or possibly apathetic) posts to the effect of "RAID-0 is fast" when the individuals making those statements have no idea what RAID levels should be used for what situations, let alone the reasons why.

I am not trying to start a flame war here. All I'm trying to do is battle misinformation about all RAID levels where I can. There are users who implement RAID-1 and RAID-5 every bit as poorly as the users that I decry for misusing RAID-0, they are just not as numerous. If you remember my OP in The Truth about RAID I gave both a good use and a bad use/myth for all of the common RAID levels. I don't have anything particularly against RAID-0, and I still suggest it to some users. But there is an erroneous perception that it is universally faster/better than single drive setups, which is simply not true.

[ashmedai]

I have a Raptor, and a RAID 5 (easiest way to put some failure-proofing on a big array) and even a RAID 0 (came out the rear end when I switched from a small number of 160s to a larger number of 200s).

RAID 0 = pagefile, and temp space for XviD encoding. Not much else.