leachus2002
asked on
Problem with PC performance since switching to a RAID0 striping configuration
Hi,
I have just rebuilt my XP gaming box with 2 SATA drives, set to RAID0 (Striping) hoping to get better performance from my PC, but I have found that ever since I did this that the performance has decreased drematically and that alot of games are now stuttering and they are just unplayable. I am using an AMD 64bit and its like playing them on a Pentium 3.
I have done everything that I can think off to get it right, I have installed the correct RAID windows drivers and graphics card drivers and that doesn't seam to have made any difference.
A brief view of my sys specs are listed here:
http://www.ullenwoodinfo.com/spex.gif
I am running my system with 1gb of ram and my HDD's are both 80gb Samsungs with 8mb of cache and are spinning at 7200rpm with 4ms seek time.
I am running out of ideas.
Thanks
Matt
I have just rebuilt my XP gaming box with 2 SATA drives, set to RAID0 (Striping) hoping to get better performance from my PC, but I have found that ever since I did this that the performance has decreased drematically and that alot of games are now stuttering and they are just unplayable. I am using an AMD 64bit and its like playing them on a Pentium 3.
I have done everything that I can think off to get it right, I have installed the correct RAID windows drivers and graphics card drivers and that doesn't seam to have made any difference.
A brief view of my sys specs are listed here:
http://www.ullenwoodinfo.com/spex.gif
I am running my system with 1gb of ram and my HDD's are both 80gb Samsungs with 8mb of cache and are spinning at 7200rpm with 4ms seek time.
I am running out of ideas.
Thanks
Matt
The best idea and suggestion I have is to drop RAID0 for gaming. Even when configured correctly, the performance gains you wil recieve are very minimal and not worth the risk of a drive failing. In RAID0 if one of your drives fails, all the data is lost (for all intents and purposes).
ASKER
Ok, thanks for the hint.
Will disk mirroring effect my peformance at all?
Will disk mirroring effect my peformance at all?
There will be a slight slowdown if going to RAID 1 or 5, but again this isn't much. What I would do is look at getting a 36 or 74GB WD Raptor if you are wanting an increase in disk access rates. It won't be much, but I think the Raptor is your best bet.
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36 and 74GB Raptors are getting too long in the tooth to be worth the money. The new Raptor X is something special if you have the $$$, but recent 250GB 16MB cache SATA drives with NCQ make more sense than the older Raptors. Partition them sensibly and it's like having a Raptor boot drive, if you keep most of the seeks on the front half of the drive, and just use the other half for storage and backup.
How are they getting too long in the tooth? These drives are not utilizing the higher cache sizes , NCQ and a bit lower bandwidth, but that is prmarily because WD has tagged these drives as enterprise grade, with relaibility/perfromance being more important than latest tech/performance. The drives make great sense for a gamer or someone looking at a lot of disc activity.
Agreed that the 16MB NCQ drives make as much sense as the Raptors, but it really depends on the objective. Now the 150GB X... that is indeed one sweet drive. the damn $2 per GB is a stretch though.
Agreed that the 16MB NCQ drives make as much sense as the Raptors, but it really depends on the objective. Now the 150GB X... that is indeed one sweet drive. the damn $2 per GB is a stretch though.
Get a new samsung 250G, for ~$100 chop yourself a 100GB partition off the front, ignore the rest, result, 100GB drive @ $1 per GB that has an average transfer rate of about 67MB/sec, or get a 75G Raptor for ~$150, use all of it, @ $2 a GB, average transfer about 65MB/sec.
Now, average transfer for WHOLE samsung drive is lower, because it drops off on the inside of the platters, but stick to the outside, and you've got a cheap screamer. Also average seek times on that portion of the drive will compare well with the raptor, because you're not seeking the whole drive, just the first 40%.
But anyhoo, those hitachis in RAID 0 should be blowing 36GB raptors into the weeds already, should be getting 100Mb/sec on a so/so controller, and near 120 on a good controller. The controllers in desktops are pretty much what limits RAID performance these days, some of the worst ones will top out around 90MB/sec whatever you hook up to them, so you're no better off with raptors of any generation vs something like 1st gen sata drives with the pata<>sata bridge on them.
Now, average transfer for WHOLE samsung drive is lower, because it drops off on the inside of the platters, but stick to the outside, and you've got a cheap screamer. Also average seek times on that portion of the drive will compare well with the raptor, because you're not seeking the whole drive, just the first 40%.
But anyhoo, those hitachis in RAID 0 should be blowing 36GB raptors into the weeds already, should be getting 100Mb/sec on a so/so controller, and near 120 on a good controller. The controllers in desktops are pretty much what limits RAID performance these days, some of the worst ones will top out around 90MB/sec whatever you hook up to them, so you're no better off with raptors of any generation vs something like 1st gen sata drives with the pata<>sata bridge on them.
Doh, for some reason I thought they were the hitachi 80GB drives, not sure where I got that from, not sure how the 80GB samsungs do.
The actual impact of the RAID 0 array on gaming is almost non noticeable. Does it blow the Raptors "in the weeds"? I'm sure you can pull some spec sheet out that says so. Will you notice a difference? Absolutely not, we are not talking about heavy DB type access here, we are talking about gaming, level laoding etc. RAID0 is a total waste in that respect.
how do you knwo it's the controller limiting the transfer rates and not the drives used RoadWarrior? Any real experince here you can point to.
leachus- either suggestion you go with is equally fine. Just don't get mesmerized with that 'blow in the weeds" comment when talking about RAID0. it makes 0 sense to use it for gaming.
how do you knwo it's the controller limiting the transfer rates and not the drives used RoadWarrior? Any real experince here you can point to.
leachus- either suggestion you go with is equally fine. Just don't get mesmerized with that 'blow in the weeds" comment when talking about RAID0. it makes 0 sense to use it for gaming.
i use RAID 0 with two 36gb raptors and things run fine for me with games. I have built in SATA on my mobo, p4 pross, 1gb ram, and what seems to take a load of the OS is installing all my games on a separate hard drive. I've noticed some improved performance. If you have another hard drive to install the games on you might give that a try.
ASKER
Hi Roadwarrior - Thanks for you information regarding striping sizes. You were right, I had mine set to 64k, and now that I have set it to 16k its working like a dream. Once again, thankyou.