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This is my desktop computer. Here are its specs:-
CPU:
Intel Core2Duo E6750 2.66GHz, 4MB Cache, 1333MHz FSB, Overclocked to 3.4GHz (stable)
RAM:
4GB DDR2 800MHz OCZ, 4-4-4-15, 2.1v
Hard Drives:
2x80GB Maxtor, 8MB Cache, RAID0 Configuration
2x250GB Maxtor, 16MB Cache, RAID0 Configuration
Graphics Card:
ATI Radeon HD 3870 Overclocked Edition
Power Supply:
Hiper 590 Watts Silent PSU
Operating System:
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate x64 SP2
Why small hard drives and RAID0?
Good question. You probably think I'm mad for having such small hard disks on such a high spec computer. Well I do have a very good reason why. I do regret it slightly now but I will explain...
As you may have read on other pages on this site, I have a very large storage server, 3.8TB of space. I like to keep everything in one place and not on lots of different computers. This was the main reason I chose to go for smaller hard disks. But why RAID0? Well thats simple. RAID0 is faster than not having RAID, but if either of the 2 drives fail, you lose the data on both since half of the data is stored on one drive and half on the other. The advantage for this however is a dramatic increase in speed, about 60%.
But why, might you ask, do I need a fast hard disk? Again thats simple. The hard disk is probably one of the most worked components on a high spec computer. Hard disks haven't caught up to the speed that the CPU, Memory and Motherboard can throughput. RAID0 helps because it can write to the drive quicker. This is especially important in situations such as when using Photoshop and very large PSD files. The most important for me however was being able to record the screen inside games using FRAPS at 1280x1024 resolutions. At that resolution, the sustained write speed needed is about 35-40MB/s. Most drives will struggle to do this. Many will peak to that value or higher, but they won't sustain it without a struggle. If the drive(s) struggle to save the data quickly enough, the cache will fill up and cause the video you're recording to start stuttering, both video and audio wise.
Most Motherboards today will come with some form of onboard RAID controllers. They're never going to beat a dedicated RAID controller but they will give some performance increase with 2 or 3 disks in RAID. Go any higher than 2 or 3 disks and the performance might even drop. An expensive, dedicated RAID card will solve this however.
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