name='nunzio' said:
That's actually kinda irrelevant at present because drives can't even get to full sata1 speeds let alone sata2.
The raptors are really faster, right across the board.
But, the only time you will really notice the difference between 2 raptors in RAID0 and 2 WD or (my personal fav) Samsung SpinpointT's in RAID0 is when you run a game which has large amounts of level data to load on startup or between levels. Or, in other words, when you need a high sustained read speed. (also when windows boots - as it loads the registry which can get quite large)
The reason you will notice it here and not at other times is that at other times the actual times involved are too small to notice the difference, plus the drives latency times come into it. When the time taken to read is less than the latency then all you're really measuring in a test like that is latency times.
An analogy might help ... It's like racing a bugatti veyron and a ford cortina over a distance of 15 meters, they both get there about the same time and you can't really tell how much better the veyron really is.
Something else to note is that drives get slower the further 'out' on the disk they go, this is because the rotational speed (the actual speed of the read head relative to the disk surface) gets slower the further out you get. Therefore the higher speeds of raptors i.e. 10,000 rpm as oppossed to 7200 rpm mean that they can sustain high speeds for more of the surface of the disk.
All that aside. I agree with the general consensus here. I'd get 2 samsung spinpoint T drives and put them in RAID0. The performance increase of 2 raptors over 2 samsungs simply isn't worth the money you pay for the privilege.
