RAID 0 question

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Riddleofsteel

[H]ard|Gawd
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Would two Caviar Black 640 drives in RAID 0 be good for storing games on, especially the ones with texture pop-up problems, or would it be ineffective and/or overkill? Thanks for any input on this.
 
real world benchmarks show that it is overkill. Google some and see for yourself.

synthetic benchmarks show it being the greatest thing since sliced bread. And that's pretty great. But real world numbers show a different story.
 
Might make games and maps load faster. It won't do anything for graphical problems however.
 
Just checking again to see if anyone knows if this would improve or eliminate micro-stutter. Thanks.
 
It happens in fallout 3 when I get near lots of buildings, the game crawls a bit. This is with a gtx 285 and a q9550.
 
Riddleofsteel said:
Would it do anything for the micro-loading/stuttering in Oblivion and Fallout 3?
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for Oblivion if you mean the loading screens between loading the zones than it should, i noticed a huge improvement in zone loads from my vraptors x2 raid 0 to the SSD , also if your installing the huge texture packs than keep in mind it does have to load those as you move around, i dont get any studders but i do see the textures loading when your on the really fast horse, perhaps that's where your delays are in Oblivion.

i think he means micro studders while games are pulling textures from the drive, not the micro studder that made the 9800gx2 famous
 
Yeah, that's what I was referring to. I can't afford an SSD right now, especially not two of them. I might either get a velociraptor or use 2x caviar black 640's. Any idea which is better for the money?
 
its probably better installing OS on 1 drive and install the games on the 2nd..

So, while drive1 is doing windows crap, your game drive doesn't get affected
 
if just grab a pair of WD blacks and make a raid 0 for everything os and gamesm keep it simple, and the cost down

maybe 150 gb vraptors but i wouldnt buy the 300's with the cost of ssd now
 
RAID 0 will definately increase load times and overall usage but it won't do anything for those video issues. You need to update your drivers or adjust your system if you are trying to overclock.
 
@ CanadaOwnsJoo, if I grabbed a pair of WD Blacks and used it for OS as well as games, wouldn't I be having the same problem I have now? My OS is on the first partition of the same physical drive as the games. Are you suggesting something different?

@ Yeorwned, I am using the most recent drivers each time I try the game, but I am using Windows 7 drivers. Should I use vista drivers?
 
If you have an ATI card, it's worth a shot. I actually sold my 4800 series crossfire setup because the ATI drivers were so horrible on 64 bit systems.
 
Riddleofsteel said:
@ CanadaOwnsJoo, if I grabbed a pair of WD Blacks and used it for OS as well as games, wouldn't I be having the same problem I have now? My OS is on the first partition of the same physical drive as the games. Are you suggesting something different?

@ Yeorwned, I am using the most recent drivers each time I try the game, but I am using Windows 7 drivers. Should I use vista drivers?
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would be fine, most stuff wil run fine with justa single drive for the OS/Games etc


the only benefit of multiple drives for speed would be a separate drive for the swap file but its not really worth it for now that's what id do 2x640 wd blacks and raid 0, when SSD comes down make 2xssd raid 0 for the OS and reuse your 2x640 in raid 1 for all your backup, music etc

the OS and games on the same drive or raid inst going to make much difference in the end
 
No, that would be RAID 1.

There is a good Wiki article on Raid levels.

Don
 
CanadaOwnsJoo said:
the OS and games on the same drive or raid inst going to make much difference in the end
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I've done some limited testing on my hardware and the loading time difference is nothing to ignore. Modern PC games have huge texture files and the seq read performance is a dramatic improvement. It obviously isn't going to yield any extra frame rate but makes everything else about life more pleasant.

Provided you have enough memory, you don't need to concern yourself with swapping. As cheap as DDR2 is today, difficult not to have plentiful memory. :cool:
 
Hmm, I wonder what the cause is, then. I just saw that there's new W7 drivers from Nvidia, so I'll get those. I might also try dual booting XP and see if that makes a difference.
 
Quick additional question. If I wait until SSD prices come down, would I benefit whatsoever with game stuttering if I bought a single Caviar Black as a stop-gap for game use? Thanks again.
 
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