Do burst speeds really matter?

[Blazestorm]

Raid-0 with 2 36.7 raptors... they're not actually identical though, one has support for NCQ and one doesn't... not sure if that makes a difference...

But I changed the onboard cache setting in the intel storage manager and my burst speeds went up to... that...

First one is 8mb, second is 32mb zones

 

[EnderW]

No. Burst rates mean nothing and even sustained transfer rates don't directly measure performance.

http://www.storagereview.com/ST3750640NS.sr?page=0,1

It is important to remember that seek time and transfer rate measurements are mostly diagnostic in nature and not really measurements of "performance" per se. Assessing these two specs is quite similar to running a processor "benchmark" that confirms "yes, this processor really runs at 2.4 GHz and really does feature a 400 MHz FSB." Many additional factors combine to yield aggregate high-level hard disk performance above and beyond these two easily measured yet largely irrelevant metrics. In the end, drives, like all other PC components, should be evaluated via application-level performance.

 

[Blazestorm]

Well that benchmark really didn't list burst rates... but that's what I figured, I just thought it was odd my burst rates grew 10x after changing 1 setting... "Volume Write-back cache"

 

[drizzt81]

nope