Intel Smart Response - A Few questions

[idata]

Allright, first of all -sorry if i posted this in the wrong forum, i'm kinda new here.

So, i've been planning on buying a new pc and im basicly looking on any revieuw site about wich is the better bang for the buck, when it came to hard drives i've been looking at the intel smart response technology, wich is a possibility since i chose to go for a Z68 motherboard ( Gigabyte Z68-UD7 if u must know ). Revieuws couldn't help me with these questions, neither could google, so what better place to ask than in here!

1)Running two 500 GB harddisks in raid 0 gives a performance boost compared to a 1TB solo harddisk of the same kind ( lets say its a WD caviar black for example),

a) Will u be able to cache BOTH 500GB drives in RAID 0 With one SSD ( lets say OCZ agility 3, again, as example) ?

b) Will there be a performance difference between 2x500 gb drives in RAID 0 AND cached by SSD VS 1x 1TB drive cached by the same SSD

2)10.000RPM drives obviously have better performance than 7.200 RPM drives,

a) Does a cached 10.000 RPM drive have better performance than a cached 7.200RPM drive?

3) I talked to the store manager where im going to buy basicly all my parts from, he said that smart response is useless in his eyes, saying that a SSD with only ur OS + a regular HDD on it gives better total performance than a regular HDD whos cached ( I don't care much for windows boot times, more for game boot times/performance).

a)So, looking at what im planning on doing with the pc, what do u guys think? use Smart response or use SSD for OS only and use the HDD seperately?

If you think its relevant, here are the specs of the pc that im planning on buying:

Gigabyte Z68-UD7

i7 2600K

Corsair H70 cooler ( or H100 if it comes out soon nuff)

WD caviar black (2x500GB or 1TB, depending on answers given on quesiton 1) / WD velociraptor (Depending on answers given to question 2)

OCZ Agility 3

Gigabyte GTX 480x2

Corsair AX 1200

Corsair Vengeance 1866 MhZ 8Gb kit x2

Xigmatek Elysium case.

Sorry if im asking total noob questions, im just trying to learn! Thanks in advance.

[idata · Accepted solution]

1) Running RAID0 improves sequential performance. It does very little for random performance. The vast majority of OS and application loads are random intensive.

a) RST caches whatever needs to be cached regardless of disk source.b) Depends on your work patterns. If talking about random performance, there is no difference. If talking about sequential performance, the RAID0 generally performs better.

2) Not always. Newer 10K RPM are faster than current 7200 RPM. However, older 10K RPM are not. That being said the cost-benefit of the higher RPM is pretty low... 2-3 times the price per GB for 5-15% performance gain. The money probably would have been better spent on a larger SSD for most.

a) No. If the system is able to access what it needs from the SSD, the HDDs are not hit. Otherwise, the 10K RPM would perform better than a 7200RPM regardless of RST.

3) A dedicated SSD does provide better performance. RST is useful if everything that require random access does not fit on a SSD though or if end-user does not wish/know how to manage partitions. RST (my personal belief) will be standard in 2-3 years.

a) Depends on budget and technical saavy.... probably dedicated SSD for you.The Corsair H100 is avaliable now. The PSU wattage is more than you need unless you plan for tri-SLI.Is the Xigmatek Elysium avaliable in the US yet?

[vt5]

Hi Alucard, just to share - seen some bench test done by users in forum.

RAID 0 + 311 SSD = lower sequential write peformance than RAID 0 - example from RAID 0 - 180+ MB/s, it went down to 160+MB/s with smart response technology turn ON

single drive + 311 SSD = higher sequential write performance than single drive - from 80+MB/s, it went up to 200+MB/s

my personal take is RAID 0 + 311 SSD as cache as this setup would boost your 4KB/512KB performance to 2 to 3 folds, bench test shows < 1MB/s with RAID 0 only, you enabled SSD caching, it went up to 17+MB/s. the downside is minor dip in the sequential area of around 20MB/s to 30MB/s.

[idata]

Allright guys, so what i make up from your comments is, buy two 7.2K RPM drives in raid 0 OR buy a SSD just for OS/raid 0 and SSD SRT, the 10K RPM drive wouldn't give me any help.

Thanks for answering! was really helpfull

P.S:

H100 isn't out here yet, but will come this month.

Xigmatec Elysium has been out here for a few weeks, but i live in Belgium ( Europe) not America.

The 1200W PSU is just ' to be on the safe side' since one of the main reasons i buy this new pc is to be able to overclock it ( old pc's were OEM and thus not able to overclock) if i use ANTEC's PSU calculator with the fact that i'm overclocking, it gives me a worst case scenario of 1300W even.