Kind of quick Q, Need a quick A!!

[ChristopherP]

Hey guys, me again.

I have decided to reformat my system because its getting clogged up with junk (various episodes of futurama, Foghorn Leghorn, Music videos, crap etc etc you know what i mean. I got to 10Gb left out of 2 80gb drives Raid 0!

Well i want to get Flight Simulator to perform perfectly on higher settings because i hate it when runway texures are a bit out or the FPS goes crazy on final approach...

the average texture size (.bmp) in the FS2004 scenery folder is about 42.7kb but there are other scenery files (.BGL) that are inbetween 300kb and 1.1mb in size.

I think that i can improve performance by changing the Strip size of my Raid 0 array. I think i shall also move the drives from the Silicon Image controller to the Intel ICHR5 controller (both built into the motherboard though i believe the intel is meant to be faster as does not share some PCI bus or....i dunno)

basically i am asking what would the best strip size be for performance in FS2004?

if you need to know my system is as follows (you probably know it by heart already but here it is for reference)

Abit IC7-G Max 2 Advance.
Intel Pentium 4 2.8c
512Mb PC4200 DDR533 timings are Cas 2 - 6 - 3 - 3
Sapphire ATI Radeon 9800Pro
2 S-ATA Samsung (spinpoint or something like that) 80Gb 7200rpm 8mb Cache
400w Tru Power

There is only 1 PCI slot filled - Leadtek Winfast PVR200XP Deluxe TV capture card.


Any sugestions guys?

Thanks a bunch in advance.

Regards, Chris

 

[floppybootstomp]

I've tried a lot of different stripe sizes and cluster sizes, all in RAID 0 AMD systems I might point out, but the best combination for me was 16K for each.

To be honest, I could only see the difference in benchmark tests, real usage I could tell no difference.

 

[ChristopherP]

I may give 16kb a go - i know it will definatly speed up windows at least, there will be "wastage" in reading and writing large files though due to the nature of the technology. Its not something i do all to often though - i may move a movie or play a song every so often but more often than not its PCReview, MSN Messenger and Flight Simulator - A Century Of Flight!

Not sure about the effect that 16kb would have on FS though - most of the BMP texture files i would assume should load 50% faster as the controller would have the file in 2 parts and once one drive transferred its half, it could seek out the next or whatever it wants to do at the time...

 

[ChristopherP]

Righteo...Overhauled my computer to make it all neat(er) and tidy(er) on the inside. Shoved an extra 80mm fan in over the HDD's to keep em nice.

Switched my HDD's from the Silicon Image chip to the Intel ICHR5 controller and switched to a 32kb strip so i'll see how that goes.

tis installing a fresh copy of windows as we speak...

Chris

 

[ChristopherP]

I called my array Fernickety. Flops used the term when describing the KV7 and i didnt knw what it meant but it sounds cool so, whatever