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RAID 0 = Faster Gaming?

K

Keith130

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 17, 2003
Messages
378
If I was to buy this cheap £15 raid card and put two 80GB drives in a RAID 0 then install my games on it would it improve the gaming?
 
would it improve the gaming?
Click to expand...

Not by much. If your moving large files around the higher transfer speeds of a Raid setup is good. But for small files which games are based on. Most likely the longer access times would hurt you.
 
What he said. RAID 0 makes a huge difference in huge transfers. Like unraring/unzipping huge files, building files, moving files, etc.

If you want to improve your game performance, tweak your settings. Try using different graphics drivers to see which yields better results. A powerful processor always helps.

Just to give you an example, a coworker of mine has UT2003 on his new iPod. We connected it to a computer at work through the 1394 interface, and it ran like any other game would run on a system.
 
So to improve my gaming a better graphics card would help more. Would a RAID array help for working in Flash and Photoshop?
 
Would a RAID array help for working in Flash and Photoshop?
Click to expand...

I have not worked with flash so I don't know. Photoshop if your working with movies it would. Just normal pic's no.

The thing to remember about Raid 0 is there is no data security at all. If you loose a drive or have a power failure during a write to disk. You loose everything with little chance of recovery. If you go with Riad 0. Backup at least once a week anything you do not want to loose.

So to improve my gaming a better graphics card would help more
Click to expand...

It could if your running a older card the upgrade would help. A list of your hardware would give use a better idea of what might help you better.
 
OK,

EPoX 4G4A Mobo
Pentium 4 2.0GHz A Chip
No-name 512MB PC2100
Twinmos 128MB PC2100 (Not in use)
GeForce 440MX SE 64MB
Seagate 40GB HHD
Samsung 16x DVD Drive
LG CR-RW 48x/16x/48x
Some 5.1 Sound Card and Creative P580's
10/100 Network Card
Panasonic 15" Monitor
Chic Wireless Keyboard
Chic Optical Mouse

Thats it really, did I miss anything?

After I have bought a new amplifier for all my speakers (old one broke darn it) I was planning on buying a RAID array, but now Ill prob get a 128MB Card and some decent RAM.

Movies in photoshop!? I have only edited/created stills!
 
RAID 0 does nothing for framerates, but it can improve game loading times slightly. I've never played a game with unacceptable loading times, so RAID 0 has never been an enticing alternative since the time when I was young and ran RAID 0 because it was "the cool thing to do."
 
Geforce4 MX? Now there is your problem. The rest of your system will be fine if you added a newer 9800 or 5900 (way too many options which card to chose...). RAID-0 might help, as said above, with level load times, but most games might take, what, 10 seconds MAX? Graphics card upgrade all the way
 
I would put a better video card into it. I wouldn't install any card that has MX in the title.

The HDD is that a 2 meg cache model drive? If it is I would step up to something with a 8 meg cache. Run HDTach on the drive you have and post the results.
 
OK, I start saving for one of those cards, yeh I guess the most I have had to wait for a game to load is about 20 secs. Ill go get that software and post the results. Knowing PC world being the "consumer" shop where everything is over priced and under spec'd it'll prob be the 2 mb one.

EDIT : Random Access Time = 15.2 ms
Burst Speed = 2.9MB/s max, 2.7MB/s min, 3.0MB/s avarage
 
That is some bad readings. It is way low for that drive. That drive should be arond 25 or so meg per second transfer rate. If you have another 80 wire cable handy I would try it.

What OS you using?
Does it have the correct chipset drivers installed?
 
i find raid to be useful for folders you use a lot, for example you can set your desktop folder to be on your raid array and temporary internet files etc. basically stuff that you hate, but you want it to load fast if your system needs it.
 
Im using XP, ill need to check what my IDE setup is, I think the drive is on its own cable and the CD-RW and DVD drive are on a seperate one, if that wasnt the case what should I do about the IDE cables and what goes on where? Im looking on the EPoX webiste for updated drivers right now.
 
You need to go START>settings> control panel> system> hardware> device manager>

The click the + sign beside the IDE ATA controllers. Then find your primary IDE controller and right click> properities. The click the advanced tab. See if the controll is showing DMA or PIO mode. Do this with both controllers.

If it is in PIO mode you have a problem.
 
OK I got al the way to the Device managers property pages but I have no advanced tab on the primary IDE channel.

I got this info from the intel software mentioned below, its about DMA's and PIO's.

PIO Mode Support : 0 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4
DMA SW Mode Support : No Support
DMA MW Mode Support : 0 - 1 - 2
UDMA Mode Support : 0 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5

I dont know if thats of any use? Any other ideas of how to check the mode?

FYI : To get the the device manager quickly in XP (dont know about others) you can go

right click on "My Computer" > properties > tab "Hardware" > button Device manager

Just in case you didnt know.

EDIT: Just looked on my motherboard drivers disk and found I hadnt installed "Intel Apps Accelerator", I installed it and it let me edit the primary and secondary IDE channel settings, so I changed my hard drive from "Minimum Acoustic Output" to maximum performance. I have scored on HDTach as follows.

Random Access Time = Vairies from 13.5 - 14.1
Read Burst Speed = 21.7MB/s max, 10MB/s min and 16.8MB/s avarage.

The CPU utilization is now 5% down from 99.8% before.
 
Let me change that. In the Primary IDE controll properities page. You want the "Advanced settings" page. The mode the controller is running under will be listed there.

I knew about the my computer trick. But seeing as how I have about 3 or more windows open. I usually think other people do to. So I do not close all windows down to get to my computer.
I just give the route to it threw the start button. :D
 
Im using the cable that came with the motherboard on my hard drive, its a normal calbe like one of the wide ones, I have another round cable coming on wednesday-thursday sometime.

Im lost, can you give me a full menu/button route to the thing im looking for, when I ran a linux Live Eval it said it was running a DMA mode, i'll check.

EDIT : Intel Apps accelirato says that all my drives are running in UDMA-2, also it says that the host cable is a 40 pin one, hopefully the new cable is an 80 pin.
 
EDIT : Intel Apps accelirato says that all my drives are running in UDMA-2, also it says that the host cable is a 40 pin one, hopefully the new cable is an 80 pin.
Click to expand...

UDMA-2 would be about right for a 80 wire 40 pin cable. When you get your new cable installed rerun HDtach and let us know what it shows.

Also run the mfg's ulities disk on it and make sure the drive has no problems.
 
Originally posted by Philip
. Just normal pic's no.
Click to expand...

by that Id assume small jpegs ect.

If your working with large graphics files (highres, .tif for example) and especially if your employing lots of effects and history in Photoshop, your employing all you RAM memory space and your swapfile (pagefile\virtual memory\scratchdisk) then RAID 0 will benefit you quite a bit, but more RAM would be a better initial investment ;)


Originally posted by Keith130
Intel Apps accelirato says that all my drives are running in UDMA-2, also it says that the host cable is a 40 pin one, hopefully the new cable is an 80 pin.
Click to expand...

DMA mode 2 is fine for an optical drive, but your HDDs should be running in mode5 (if they arent antiques)

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/modes.htm
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/modesUDMA-c.html

as mentioned 80 wire cables still are just 40 pin

SATA and the 7 Deadly Sins of Parallel ATA
ATA Not So Frequently Asked Questions
 
Ok, I got the new cable today, first I ran HD Tach, scores are :

Random Access Time : 13.7ms
Read Burst Speed : 42.5MB/s Max, 23.4MB/s Min and 35.3MB/s avarage.

So that looks better. I also ran the intel programme and found that the hard drive is now running UDMA -5. I guess that thats about the most I can expect from the HD then?

Yeh its just small .jpeg's I work with doing funny edits and touching up digital photos.
 
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