Raid 0 Performance produces shocking results
Author: Greg Monkiewicz
e-mail: gmonkiewicz@gmail.com
Version: 0.10
Last updated on: April 13, 2005

---------
Contents:
---------

1. Raid 0 Performance
2. Credits
3. Legal
4. Contact Information

-------------------------------------------
Raid 0 Performace produces shocking results
-------------------------------------------

Raid 0 is a type of set up when two or more hard drives are the same and
connected via a RAID controller which allows two drives act as one and be
written to at the same time simultaneously. A RAID 0 array is what most power-
users could want in their configuration of choice since in the past it has
been proven to be the fastest with the best read speeds. RAID can be achieved
while using two  hard drives instead of one. Both drives are connected via a
RAID card which allows them to share the workload which can therefore result
in an astounding performance increase over a single hard drive due to its
ability of executing tasks in parallel. Benchmarks have backed up these
performance gains by many sources such as the following known hardware sites:

Anandtech - http://anandtech.com
Staoragereview - http://Staoragereview.com

which have come down hard on RAID 0's performance. Last summer (summer of
2004), both sites had posted stories that claimed that for single-user
workloads and gaming, the gains that RAID provided were either non-existent or
so small that it wouldn't be worth the extra money and the risks to use RAID
0.
Raid 0 was able to provide great performance benefits over single drives but
primarily it only managed to do this in the realm of sequential transfers such
as lots of video editing or while using other applications that require alot
more bandwith than you would regularly need to use. RAID 0 delivers higher
scores on certain hard drive benchmarks such as H2benchw which is an app that
tests hard drives. Its tests are based on real-world usage patterns for
general desktop users. Now you ask yourself what about the loading times in 3D
games that use huge maps?  A few tests were made by Maximum PC using three
different games such as Far Cry, Doom 3 and Battlefield 1942 while playing in
single player mode.
"Little performance benefits appeared from the RAID 0 array, In some cases
there were some decreases in performance. These startling results prompted an
extended version of tests. Today's games rely more on the CPU in terms of
mission and level loading. That means that alot of time is spent decompressing
and opening levels, textures and sounds that are being read from the hard
disk. To determine just how important the CPU is in loading levels, two
different CPUs were used on a test bed. A 3.2 GHZ Pentium 4 and a 2.0 GHZ
processor. The 2.0 GHZ processor performed 14 seconds slower than the 3.2GHZ
one."
Finally in conclusion, it is possible to conclude that "RAID 0 is an expensive
way to obtain a small performance advantage, but this was always been the
case." A few game level load times are below to prove that RAID is not that
much faster and promising than a simple single parallel drive brought to you
by Maximum PC.

Drive Type                  RAID | Single Drive
Doom 3 (seconds)              38 | 35
Far Cry (seconds)             21 | 21
Battlefield 1942 (seconds)    22 | 22

Benchmark results brought to you by Maximum PC