What affects a Raid 0 Performance

[DasTweaker]

Here is the question I have. First off I am currently running a 4 drive raid 0 array w/ 4 wd360 raptors. I am using the onboard Intel ICH7r chipset, that is to say the one on my mobo. What I am really curious to know is if an Areca 1210 or similar raid controller card will really have any noticable/effective performance increase on the system? In other words is it going to be worth the $300 outlay!

This computer is used mostly for gaming. However the real reason I went raid is for Audio/Video post production work where opening and editing a 2 gig file is not un heard of. And yes I KNOW I should have more memory also but 4 Gb of DDR2-800 is REALLLYYY kind of pricey, well to get decent stuff at least.

My current setup is:

Asus P5wd2-premium (1 Pci Express X16 & 1 Pci Express X16 slot that only works at x2 / x 4 bandwidth! Nice isn't it! Apparently $225 wasn't enough to get it done!!!)
2 gig DDR2-667
4 wd360 Raid0
P4 550 (3.4 GHz, 800Mhz FSB)

Secondly if that card were to be choosen and correct me if I am wrong here! Now even if I were to get a mobo that is SLI/Crossfire compatable wouldn't the Areca card (a PCI Express X8 card) take my primary PCI Express X16 slot down to a PCI Express X8 slot? The reason I ask is because, this is where I am slightly naive to SLI/Crossfire, when you put 2 video cards in your rig it takes both slots to X8 performance. SO the other side of this could be worse in game performance beacuse my mobo would take bandwidth away from my vid card to "share" it with my raid controller. Which needless for me to say would SUCK!!!

I really appreciate any help someone could give me. Trust me I have been pooring over the forums tryin like hell to figure this out on my own.

Thanks.

 

[mad_fitzy]

Some mobos have 32 PCI-EX lanes that feed to x16 slots.

 

[dimwhited]

current gen video cards dont use the full 16x bandwitdh

countless threads have shown that there is no difference between two video cards running 16x on nforce4 16x chipset compared to 8x on a regular nforce 4

this shows that the card uses less then half of the bandwidth, so the raid controller, if it does reduce the videocard's 16x to 8x, wouldnt matter at all

go ahead and get the card if you want it, it wont be slowing down your video at all

 

[mad_fitzy]

Yea i know that I was just pointing that out though. Many video cards still use about 8x bandwidth.

 

[PCcashCow]

Some mobos have 32 PCI-EX lanes that feed to x16 slots.

Careful with the wording, PCI-e 32x is not available, yet, only achieved. Also there is no PCI-ex, just PCI-e and PCI-X (server platform that runs 64 bit @ 133+).

 

[vic20]

Make sure you do your homework on those raids cards as well. Many hardware based RAID controllers actually REDUCE performance compared to software controllers, as X-SCALE cpus (and other HW RAID cpus) cannot compete with a fast/modern desktop CPU running a SW controller.

They will reduce CPU utilization, but methinks this would be more desirable in a server, not a video workstation.

I would sooner looking at increasing the block size on your stripe. It would waste space if you have lots of small files, but will be better for video use.