- Joined
- Dec 19, 2005
- Location
- New York
--This article is also published on the main OC home page here: http://www.overclockers.com/articles1297/index03.asp --
Who says that two Raptors arent better than one? PART 2.
Previously in part 1 of this article, I explained in a more general and non technical aspect that I had gained a very sizable performance increase when switching from one single raptor drive to two drives in Raid 0. This increase was notable in almost every aspect of PC usage. I ran some synthetic benchmarking tests including HDTach 3.0 and IOMeter and discovered that there was a double in synthetic performance increase when switching to the raid array and my random access time had remained the same. I appreciate all of the e-mail feedback that I have received on my part 1 article and this part 2 is based on a lot of the information and testing that many of you requested that I do. One of the main issues was the synthetic testing that was done in Part 1 of the article. We all know that synthetic benchmarks for HDD's mean little in comparison to how the actual drives perform in real world usage in a single user environment. Most synthetic benchmark apps are tailored for server level I/O's and although in my part 1 you saw a double in average sustained read, in actuality that may make the raid array look significantly better in a single user environment then it really was. Based on that, I decided to rip apart the array and start testing from scratch using an old fashioned stop watch timing technique. Again, this comparison is between a single WD74 Raptor vs. dual WD74 Raptors in Raid 0 with 16k striping.
Preliminary System Specifications:
CPU: AMD Athlon X2 4800+ (2.4ghz)
Motherboard: Asus A8N-Sli Premium
Video Card: ATI X1900 XT
Memory: Corsair XMS 2 Gigabytes PC3200 (DDR400)
Power Supply: Silverstone Zeus ST56ZF
Testing Procedure:
The actual timer used was a Casio hand held stop watch. The testing procedure was done exactly the same for both setups. I had all testing tools and applications on a WD2500 250 Gig Serial ata II hard drive left installed in the system. First off, the Windows XP Professional with SP2 operating system was installed on the drive/s. Immediately into the operating system, the Nforce4 motherboard drivers were installed. Direct X 9.0c was installed, Athlon Dual Core Processor Drivers and XP Dual Core Hotfix were all installed, sound card drivers and finally the catalyst video card drivers. The rest of my testing applications were then installed and all of my read/write rar, zip, avi, and jpg files were copied over from the WD2500 to the current setup. Immediately following final copies and installs the setup was defragged twice and the system was restarted and prepared for initial testing. Again, this was repeated exactly the same on the single drive and on the dual raid drives.
*Please Note* This article was completed using a hand held stop watch timer and although my results are very close to being dead on, you always have to factor in a slim margin of error. Especially when it is physically impossible for the human brain to make completely accurate timings. My results are as close as humanly possible.
Loading Results:
Windows XP bootup was where the raid array really displayed a dramatic increase in loading performance as I stated in Part 1 of the article. These times were measured over a span of 10 shutdowns and startups between application benchmarking on both of the setups. The average over a span of 10 bootups and shutdowns was recorded into the data field and chart that you see above you.
For the application loading tests I had freshly restarted the computer before each application load. Photoshop obviously displayed the most dramatic increase in loading time over the rest of the applications but the raid array proved to definitely increase the snappy feeling of application and file loads. The stop watch was clicked on as soon as the program was double clicked from the desktop and clicked off as soon as the application ceased loading. Each application was timed, and the PC was restarted twice to get two seperate readings. The reading you see on the chart is the average reading of the two on both setups.
Gaming load testing was generally completed the same way as previous application load testing except for the fact that only one timed reading was taken from each game. The raid array, to my suprise shaved off more than just a few seconds on these games. 10 Seconds off of a game load is rather significant in my eyes. Again, I was not expecting these kind of gains from the raid array. The games were timed from the first level loading screen and the computer was re-booted between each game. One timed reading was taken from each game on each setup.
Falcon 4.0 Allied Force was chosen for its heavy loading impact on any gaming rig. I took one reading from loading the game from the windows xp desktop and I took my second reading loading the Flight Training Takeoff level. The same procedure was used on the raid array. Again, you are looking at one timed reading from this game on each setup.
Who says that two Raptors arent better than one? PART 2.
Previously in part 1 of this article, I explained in a more general and non technical aspect that I had gained a very sizable performance increase when switching from one single raptor drive to two drives in Raid 0. This increase was notable in almost every aspect of PC usage. I ran some synthetic benchmarking tests including HDTach 3.0 and IOMeter and discovered that there was a double in synthetic performance increase when switching to the raid array and my random access time had remained the same. I appreciate all of the e-mail feedback that I have received on my part 1 article and this part 2 is based on a lot of the information and testing that many of you requested that I do. One of the main issues was the synthetic testing that was done in Part 1 of the article. We all know that synthetic benchmarks for HDD's mean little in comparison to how the actual drives perform in real world usage in a single user environment. Most synthetic benchmark apps are tailored for server level I/O's and although in my part 1 you saw a double in average sustained read, in actuality that may make the raid array look significantly better in a single user environment then it really was. Based on that, I decided to rip apart the array and start testing from scratch using an old fashioned stop watch timing technique. Again, this comparison is between a single WD74 Raptor vs. dual WD74 Raptors in Raid 0 with 16k striping.
Preliminary System Specifications:
CPU: AMD Athlon X2 4800+ (2.4ghz)
Motherboard: Asus A8N-Sli Premium
Video Card: ATI X1900 XT
Memory: Corsair XMS 2 Gigabytes PC3200 (DDR400)
Power Supply: Silverstone Zeus ST56ZF
Testing Procedure:
The actual timer used was a Casio hand held stop watch. The testing procedure was done exactly the same for both setups. I had all testing tools and applications on a WD2500 250 Gig Serial ata II hard drive left installed in the system. First off, the Windows XP Professional with SP2 operating system was installed on the drive/s. Immediately into the operating system, the Nforce4 motherboard drivers were installed. Direct X 9.0c was installed, Athlon Dual Core Processor Drivers and XP Dual Core Hotfix were all installed, sound card drivers and finally the catalyst video card drivers. The rest of my testing applications were then installed and all of my read/write rar, zip, avi, and jpg files were copied over from the WD2500 to the current setup. Immediately following final copies and installs the setup was defragged twice and the system was restarted and prepared for initial testing. Again, this was repeated exactly the same on the single drive and on the dual raid drives.
*Please Note* This article was completed using a hand held stop watch timer and although my results are very close to being dead on, you always have to factor in a slim margin of error. Especially when it is physically impossible for the human brain to make completely accurate timings. My results are as close as humanly possible.
Loading Results:
Windows XP bootup was where the raid array really displayed a dramatic increase in loading performance as I stated in Part 1 of the article. These times were measured over a span of 10 shutdowns and startups between application benchmarking on both of the setups. The average over a span of 10 bootups and shutdowns was recorded into the data field and chart that you see above you.
For the application loading tests I had freshly restarted the computer before each application load. Photoshop obviously displayed the most dramatic increase in loading time over the rest of the applications but the raid array proved to definitely increase the snappy feeling of application and file loads. The stop watch was clicked on as soon as the program was double clicked from the desktop and clicked off as soon as the application ceased loading. Each application was timed, and the PC was restarted twice to get two seperate readings. The reading you see on the chart is the average reading of the two on both setups.
Gaming load testing was generally completed the same way as previous application load testing except for the fact that only one timed reading was taken from each game. The raid array, to my suprise shaved off more than just a few seconds on these games. 10 Seconds off of a game load is rather significant in my eyes. Again, I was not expecting these kind of gains from the raid array. The games were timed from the first level loading screen and the computer was re-booted between each game. One timed reading was taken from each game on each setup.
Falcon 4.0 Allied Force was chosen for its heavy loading impact on any gaming rig. I took one reading from loading the game from the windows xp desktop and I took my second reading loading the Flight Training Takeoff level. The same procedure was used on the raid array. Again, you are looking at one timed reading from this game on each setup.
Last edited:
hehe
