Single WD Raptor 74 OR RAID0 of 2x Maxtor SATA2?

[Jizumonkey]

I want to think about upgrading my SATA1 single drive to something quicker and here are the options:

A single WD Raptor 74GB 10k rpm and 16MB buffer OR 2 x Maxtor SATA2 drives also with a 16MB buffer in RAID0.

I'm looking simply for gaming performance and XP boot time. Not security, or reliability :twisted:

Reading on the subject tends to bring mixed opinions since some sites I've read say RAID0 does not improve gaming performance, this is my main concern. All I'm bothered about is speed. Any words of wisdom from people who've experience?


{EDIT} - http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/ftopic-170668-50-days0-orderasc-.html Already discussed here with an extremely good set of links later on in the thread to real world performances and times loading games. However, I would still appreciate anyones opinion on RAID'ing SATA2 drives with 16MB buffers, i cannot find any other reviews that do what I'm asking above which for me is about all i'm prepared to pay at around £110.

 

[Jizumonkey]

Can no-one offer any kind of advice here? It seems all people are interested in is RAID'ing Raptors! Thats no help to me, there seems to be very little information on RAID'ing newer SATA2 with 16MB buffers. I've spent my large amounts of money already on memory and CPU so dont really want to splash out a tonne more. My budget is set so it'd be good to see what can be done with it.