I'd love to see a stopwatch timing of how much faster these games and applications open up on the 4 drive RAID0 array, versus a single drive SSD. We all know there is a massive cost difference....but is there enough time savings to justify the cost?
The gains are there and significant, otherwise people wouldn't bother with it at all. For RAID 0 of HDDs the gains trail off after 3 drives are linked. For SSDs, there is no trail off at all, but the processing demand gets higher unless you have a dedicated RAID controller card. But any RAID array of 4 or less drives on a built-in RAID controller isn't much processing overhead.
If you look at my performance graph, you will see an almost straight line (compared to single drives) of 588 to 638MB/sec transfer speeds with a sustained average of 613MB/sec. The benchmarks don't lie, as they test file sizes of all different types. My RAID 0 array of SSDs will transfer data 8 times faster than a single performance HDD like a Raptor. And it will transfer data 4x faster than top-notch SSDs. Here's the price to performance comparison:
Do the math. RAID 0 and RAID 10 of top-dog SSDs give you more of a performance ratio for the money than a single top-dog HDD. And if you want redundancy? Change it to a RAID 10 and half the performance, which is still 4x faster for 3x the money. Then you'll have performance and redundancy, but be 60GB instead of 120GB. Still good for a second drive system to install games and other apps.
I still run my OS on HDDs (WDC Black) to overcome the SSD stuttering issues. If I was to use only HDDs, I'd still use a different HDD (or RAID array of them) to run my applications and games.
By comparison, from my original, single WD Black 1TB vs. my new RAID 0 array of four OCZ Vertex 30GB drives, my game loading screens (going from one area to another) went from 3-5+ seconds to virtually no time.
More importantly, I wasn't able to smoothly run high-res textures in a couple of games since I game at 3840x1024 (three 19" 5:4 monitors). Turning around with high-res textures on a normal, single drive would cause stuttering. With my RAID array of SSDs, it's buttery smooth.
If you're running a single monitor and regular resolutions (ie: 1920x1200 or less), you probably won't notice a difference for most games. The higher the resolution, the more pixels, and the more the pixels, the more the demand on the PC for loading textures. For large textures, the performance bottleneck is typically the storage system, not the video card, and not system memory.
Don't be jealous of RAID 0.
If people really wanted the performance of RAID 0 with redundancy, there is always RAID 10. RAID 5 works well too, but not as high-performing as RAID 0 or RAID 10. RAID 5 also requires more processing power, hence necessitating a dedicated RAID processor (ie: RAID controller card). Of course, all of this is more expensive, but if you can afford it and are a hardware enthusiast, it's more than worth it. If you're not, they why debate it? ... it's obviously not for you.
I'm not criticizing the use of RAID...especially the redundant configurations....but it's the all out performance versions (RAID 0) with the OS that I just don't think are worth the risk. Most people love 'em till 1 drive goes bad. And I've talked to numerous people that I work with and advice on forums against doing RAID0 who have suffered drive failures and lost stuff who no longer opt for the small edge in performance anymore. Which brings me back to my comment about the % of drives and what it really equates to. And 3 sets of friends were using either Raptors or Velociraptors when they lost a drive...and these are highly regarded as being fantastic drives.
And you have no personal experience with RAID 0 from the looks of it? All of that is what you've heard? Rumors are a dime a dozen. I've had no issues with my RAID 0 array for months. And I do backups of the entire volume on a separate, external drive. If I do lose a drive, I just clone the partition back. No worries at all.
If you really don't see the value in RAID 0 or RAID 10 performance for your storage system (the worst bottleneck on a PC), then you really have never experienced it for yourself or you just don't care? Whatever it is, your loss.
