compare single raptor to dual sata in RAID

[plac]

Adding my setup:

Coolermaster CM Stacker case
AMD Athlon XP 3200+ (non dual, running stock speed right now)
1 GB ram (Geil)
BFG 7800GTX
Audigy XS2

3 tests. Was comparing my raptor to a striped non raptor setup. All in all, now im tempted to keep the new pair of disks. Look at how much better the nvidia controller is than the silicon image controller. All clusters done in 16k.

1. Raptor 74GB single drive.

2. Two WD 320GB 16mb cache drives using the Silicon Image RAID controller.

3. Two WD 320GB 16mb cache drives using the Nvidia Nforce4 RAID controller.

 

[mpjesse]

meh. before you go getting all excited, you might want to run transfer benchmarks. i think you'll find that the raptor beats the other two setups in read/write performance and average seek times. burst speeds are not an accurate representation of real world performance.

but one thing is for sure: the nVidia RAID controller is always faster than an onboard silicon image RAID solution. This is because the silicon image controller connects to the northbridge via PCI. PCI has high latencies and low bandwidth compared to SATA solutions built into the northbridge.

now, if you were using a PCI-E raid controller, things would be much different.

either way, the nVidia RAID solution is always best if pure performance is the primary concern. silicon image is best if features are more important or RAID 1.

 

[plac]

well the whole system seems faster. Ive had these raptors for a year, I got used to how they ran. This was a noticable increase in basic use and functions regarding speed.

 

[mpjesse]

Part of the speed increase was likely due to the reinstallation of Windows.

Believe you me, dual 7200rpm drives in RAID 0 is no match for even 1 single raptor, much less 2 raptors in RAID 0 (which is what I'm using).

but hey... i could be wrong. (remember that raptors have a 16mb cache too)

(then again, if you're doing transfer and read work at the same time on the same drive, 2 7200rpm's in RAID 0 might be faster than 1 10,000rpm raptor. i.e., downloading something from bit torrent and watching a movie from the same drive)

 

[nukemaster]

If your drive is kept well defragged. then the 2 x 320s will give great performance... the Raptor will how ever always kill then when it comes to seek times. this will give the raptor an edge in lots of small files and files that are fragmented. But for real large file transfers(on a well defragged drive the 2 x 320's will win)

To sum it all up

Raptor - Kick ass seek times. Fast for small files, fragmented files and most games

2 x 320's - Kick ass top speed. great for watching super high bit rate moves and loading games like a bat out of hell(as long as it is kept defragged). And it's cheap too

Bottom line - Both kick some ass

 

[plac]

FYI:

All these tests were done BEFORE I rebuild the OS.