Raptor or SCSI - Which is going to perform the best?

[Marc Brown]

The question isn't as pointless and rhetorical as it may seem. A
friend of mine can't get over the cool factor of his shiny new
Raptor. I, on the other hand, have been investigating SCSI as my
storage platform of choice. In both cases, gaming is the target
application. In researching SCSI options, my primary aim is to
minimize in-game "chug", which is to say the brief (or sometimes
protracted) performance pauses which seem to coincide with drive
access. I have been told that the SCSI controller card takes the
load off the CPU during drive access, with the result being little
to no discernable "chug".

Anyway, said friend seems convinced that the 74Mb Raptor is the
fastest possible drive out there, and would certainly offer better
performance than any SCSI solution I could come up with. I frankly
wouldn't know; I've never owned either. I do know that my current
IDE setup suffers from the "chug" mentioned above, pretty much at
any moment, apparently subject to the whim of Windows XP. I can't
see how a Raptor would significantly reduce this phenomenon, but I
certainly don't claim to be an expert. I do see how a SCSI setup
might at least theoretically help with such things, but it'd be
nice to see confirmation of my speculation before I take the
plunge.

Since I'm on the topic, what SCSI drive and / or controller might
I be well-advised in picking up? Targets are: 15k rpm, minimal
seek time, ~36GB for the drive, and no idea for the controller card,
since apparently nobody sells the things. Not even Newegg. There's
not much point in asking which Raptor to get, owing to the limited
selection.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Ron Reaugh]

The question isn't as pointless and rhetorical as it may seem. A
friend of mine can't get over the cool factor of his shiny new
Raptor.

He's got the best sane HD for a desktop.

I, on the other hand, have been investigating SCSI as my
storage platform of choice. In both cases, gaming is the target
application.

Forget SCSI.

In researching SCSI options, my primary aim is to
minimize in-game "chug", which is to say the brief (or sometimes
protracted) performance pauses which seem to coincide with drive
access. I have been told that the SCSI controller card takes the
load off the CPU during drive access,

That is FALSE.

with the result being little
to no discernable "chug".

That is a bogus claim.

Anyway, said friend seems convinced that the 74Mb Raptor is the
fastest possible drive out there,

For gaming, true.

and would certainly offer better
performance than any SCSI solution I could come up with.

Nope, spend 4x dollars and get a Fujitsu MAS3735 and an Adaptec 29320 and
you'll find the performance indistinguishable for gaming.

I frankly
wouldn't know; I've never owned either. I do know that my current
IDE setup suffers from the "chug" mentioned above, pretty much at
any moment, apparently subject to the whim of Windows XP. I can't
see how a Raptor would significantly reduce this phenomenon, but I
certainly don't claim to be an expert. I do see how a SCSI setup
might at least theoretically help with such things, but it'd be
nice to see confirmation of my speculation before I take the
plunge.

Since I'm on the topic, what SCSI drive and / or controller might
I be well-advised in picking up? Targets are: 15k rpm, minimal
seek time, ~36GB for the drive, and no idea for the controller card,
since apparently nobody sells the things. Not even Newegg. There's
not much point in asking which Raptor to get,

74GB only.

 

[CJT]

The question isn't as pointless and rhetorical as it may seem. A
friend of mine can't get over the cool factor of his shiny new
Raptor. I, on the other hand, have been investigating SCSI as my
storage platform of choice. In both cases, gaming is the target
application. In researching SCSI options, my primary aim is to
minimize in-game "chug", which is to say the brief (or sometimes
protracted) performance pauses which seem to coincide with drive
access. I have been told that the SCSI controller card takes the
load off the CPU during drive access, with the result being little
to no discernable "chug".

That's potentially true, but Windows probably won't take full
advantage of the potential.

Anyway, said friend seems convinced that the 74Mb Raptor is the
fastest possible drive out there, and would certainly offer better
performance than any SCSI solution I could come up with.

ANY SCSI solution? There are "SCSI solutions" out there that will
blow away anything you're likely to be able to afford.

I frankly

wouldn't know; I've never owned either. I do know that my current
IDE setup suffers from the "chug" mentioned above, pretty much at
any moment, apparently subject to the whim of Windows XP. I can't
see how a Raptor would significantly reduce this phenomenon, but I
certainly don't claim to be an expert. I do see how a SCSI setup
might at least theoretically help with such things, but it'd be
nice to see confirmation of my speculation before I take the
plunge.

Since I'm on the topic, what SCSI drive and / or controller might
I be well-advised in picking up? Targets are: 15k rpm, minimal
seek time, ~36GB for the drive, and no idea for the controller card,
since apparently nobody sells the things. Not even Newegg. There's
not much point in asking which Raptor to get, owing to the limited
selection.

Thanks in advance!

The fastest disk access is the one that isn't even necessary. Get
enough RAM to allow all performance critical data to reside in it.

If that won't work for you, look into RAID. Spending a fortune on
fast individual disks is usually a waste.

 

[Odie Ferrous]

The question isn't as pointless and rhetorical as it may seem. A
friend of mine can't get over the cool factor of his shiny new
Raptor. I, on the other hand, have been investigating SCSI as my
storage platform of choice. In both cases, gaming is the target
application. In researching SCSI options, my primary aim is to
minimize in-game "chug", which is to say the brief (or sometimes
protracted) performance pauses which seem to coincide with drive
access. I have been told that the SCSI controller card takes the
load off the CPU during drive access, with the result being little
to no discernable "chug".

Anyway, said friend seems convinced that the 74Mb Raptor is the
fastest possible drive out there, and would certainly offer better
performance than any SCSI solution I could come up with. I frankly
wouldn't know; I've never owned either. I do know that my current
IDE setup suffers from the "chug" mentioned above, pretty much at
any moment, apparently subject to the whim of Windows XP. I can't
see how a Raptor would significantly reduce this phenomenon, but I
certainly don't claim to be an expert. I do see how a SCSI setup
might at least theoretically help with such things, but it'd be
nice to see confirmation of my speculation before I take the
plunge.

Since I'm on the topic, what SCSI drive and / or controller might
I be well-advised in picking up? Targets are: 15k rpm, minimal
seek time, ~36GB for the drive, and no idea for the controller card,
since apparently nobody sells the things. Not even Newegg. There's
not much point in asking which Raptor to get, owing to the limited
selection.

Thanks in advance!

Just stick two ordinary (quickish) IDE drives in RAID 0 for excellent
performance.

Even better, get a SCSI raid card and 2 x 10K rpm SCSI drives (cheap.)

Odie

 

[Tod]

The question isn't as pointless and rhetorical as it may seem. A
friend of mine can't get over the cool factor of his shiny new
Raptor. I, on the other hand, have been investigating SCSI as my
storage platform of choice. In both cases, gaming is the target
application. In researching SCSI options, my primary aim is to
minimize in-game "chug", which is to say the brief (or sometimes
protracted) performance pauses which seem to coincide with drive
access. I have been told that the SCSI controller card takes the
load off the CPU during drive access, with the result being little
to no discernable "chug".

Talking about a Western Digital Raptor Serial ATA drive, right ?

In the past, one of SCSI advantages is that it took the load off the CPU for
SCSI device (hard drive, scanner, tape backup, etc) access.
A SCSI controller is better at managing multiable SCSI (5 or 10 or
15)devices at the same time
IDE/ATA controllers can handle one data request at a time
SCSI also has better ways of handling multiable data requests, which are
just now being added to the S-ATA (Data Queing ?).
The old IDE controllers need to steal CPU cycles to work.
The newer IDE/ATA chipsets take alot of the drive access workload off the
CPU.
ATA is really Parallel-ATA, S-ATA is Serial-ATA, think of S-ATA as the
improved P-ATA

One of the reason S-ATA was adopted is because it could use the same
Microsoft drivers as P-ATA.

Or at least work with very little rewriting of Microsoft drivers.

No good reason to spend that extra money on SCSI stuff for just a gaming
machine.

Go with the Raptor S-ATA.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

Just stick two ordinary (quickish) IDE drives in RAID 0 for excellent
performance.

RAID 0 may not help much with games.

Even better, get a SCSI raid card and 2 x 10K rpm SCSI drives (cheap.)

NOPE, any cheap 10K RPM SCSI HDs, even if in RAID 0, will not outperform
Raptors.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

Talking about a Western Digital Raptor Serial ATA drive, right ?

In the past, one of SCSI advantages is that it took the load off the CPU for
SCSI device (hard drive, scanner, tape backup, etc) access.

That has NEVER been true since EIDE/ATA HDs used DMA mode and that was
OSR2 and NT4 SP4.

A SCSI controller is better at managing multiable SCSI (5 or 10 or
15)devices at the same time

Exactly, that's where that onboard smarts contributes..multiple devices.
SCSI's onboard smarts does not help it be faster than 1 or 2 ATA HDs.

IDE/ATA controllers can handle one data request at a time
SCSI also has better ways of handling multiable data requests, which are
just now being added to the S-ATA (Data Queing ?).

That contributes to performance on small record I/O database servers and NOT
single user workstations. In fact all those extra features of SCSI inhibits
optimal performance on a single user workstation.

The old IDE controllers need to steal CPU cycles to work.

Very old.

The newer IDE/ATA chipsets take alot of the drive access workload off the
CPU.

Well, they just support DMA mode and DMA mode does relieve the CPU of
some burden.

 

[JS]

74GB only.

Why 74 only? Is there an issue (other than size) with the 36GB Drive?

TIA

 

[J. Clarke]

The question isn't as pointless and rhetorical as it may seem. A
friend of mine can't get over the cool factor of his shiny new
Raptor. I, on the other hand, have been investigating SCSI as my
storage platform of choice. In both cases, gaming is the target
application. In researching SCSI options, my primary aim is to
minimize in-game "chug", which is to say the brief (or sometimes
protracted) performance pauses which seem to coincide with drive
access. I have been told that the SCSI controller card takes the
load off the CPU during drive access, with the result being little
to no discernable "chug".

Anyway, said friend seems convinced that the 74Mb Raptor is the
fastest possible drive out there, and would certainly offer better
performance than any SCSI solution I could come up with. I frankly
wouldn't know; I've never owned either. I do know that my current
IDE setup suffers from the "chug" mentioned above, pretty much at
any moment, apparently subject to the whim of Windows XP. I can't
see how a Raptor would significantly reduce this phenomenon, but I
certainly don't claim to be an expert. I do see how a SCSI setup
might at least theoretically help with such things, but it'd be
nice to see confirmation of my speculation before I take the
plunge.

Since I'm on the topic, what SCSI drive and / or controller might
I be well-advised in picking up? Targets are: 15k rpm, minimal
seek time, ~36GB for the drive, and no idea for the controller card,
since apparently nobody sells the things. Not even Newegg. There's
not much point in asking which Raptor to get, owing to the limited
selection.

Thanks in advance!

In practical terms for your application you're not going to see any real
difference between a Raptor and a SCSI drive. I doubt that the "chug"
you're seeing has anything to do with the CPU workload in accessing the
drive--copying files typically shows one percent utilization on my machine.
Either the game is waiting to load something or Windows is paging. In
either case adding RAM is more likely than a faster drive to provide real
benefit.

The 74 GB Raptor is certainly no faster than the 74 GB 15K RPM SCSI drives,
but it is in the same performance league as the 10K RPM drives and a good
deal cheaper.

I'm not sure what newegg you were looking at, the one at
<http://www.newegg.com> lists 32 different SCSI host adapters ranging in
price from $23 to $700, with all but two of them in stock. As far as
selection of drives goes, among 36 gig 15K RPM SCSI drives there isn't all
that much choice either.

Personally I'd max out the RAM on the machine before I tried a faster drive.

 

[J. Clarke]

Why 74 only? Is there an issue (other than size) with the 36GB Drive?

The 74 is second-generation--if you check Storagereview you'll find that its
performance is considerably better than the 36.

 

[Peter]

Before you get to this, you'd better check which application causes a "disk
chug".
Filemon from Sysinternals is a good tool to use for that purpose. Once you
know it, try to reconfigure that application to use a RAM disk. If it writes
a lot of data, install more RAM and make a bigger RAM disk.

 

[Bob Willard]

The question isn't as pointless and rhetorical as it may seem. A
friend of mine can't get over the cool factor of his shiny new
Raptor. I, on the other hand, have been investigating SCSI as my
storage platform of choice. In both cases, gaming is the target
application. In researching SCSI options, my primary aim is to
minimize in-game "chug", which is to say the brief (or sometimes
protracted) performance pauses which seem to coincide with drive
access. I have been told that the SCSI controller card takes the
load off the CPU during drive access, with the result being little
to no discernable "chug".

Anyway, said friend seems convinced that the 74Mb Raptor is the
fastest possible drive out there, and would certainly offer better
performance than any SCSI solution I could come up with. I frankly
wouldn't know; I've never owned either. I do know that my current
IDE setup suffers from the "chug" mentioned above, pretty much at
any moment, apparently subject to the whim of Windows XP. I can't
see how a Raptor would significantly reduce this phenomenon, but I
certainly don't claim to be an expert. I do see how a SCSI setup
might at least theoretically help with such things, but it'd be
nice to see confirmation of my speculation before I take the
plunge.

Since I'm on the topic, what SCSI drive and / or controller might
I be well-advised in picking up? Targets are: 15k rpm, minimal
seek time, ~36GB for the drive, and no idea for the controller card,
since apparently nobody sells the things. Not even Newegg. There's
not much point in asking which Raptor to get, owing to the limited
selection.

Thanks in advance!

What matters for a good gamer PC is, in rough order of importance:
1. Memory capacity: at least 1GB, 2GB better, 4GB is best
2. Memory latency: insist on dual-channel, the faster the better
3. CPU chip speed: faster is better, 64b does not matter yet
4. Video card: see http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20031229
5. HD access time

To focus on HD performance, after taking care of items 1-4 above, note
that I listed access time as the key attribute -- not bandwidth. HD
vendors tout bandwidth, usually advertising the irrelevant peak bandwidth
instead of STR, but access time matters more for all but servers. The
access times for two performance leaders are: WDC Raptor 74GB SATA at
7.5 mS (4.5+3.0), and Seagate Cheetah 15K 73GB SCSI at 5.6 mS (3.6+2.0).
SCSI is still the clear winner if you ignore cost; but, SATA is built-in
on most good MBs these days, while a good SCSI HBA is pretty expensive
(the Adaptec 29320ALP-R, for example, lists for ~$395).

Note that WinXP did not have good support for SCSI. I don't know if SP2
fixed the XP problems, and I'd not pay for SCSI without making very
sure on that point.

One highly proclaimed storage feature is command queueing. SCSI has had
TCQ for years, SATA has NCQ in some hardware but limited driver support,
and PATA just doesn't get it. CQ is very important for database and
some storage server workloads, but it has near-zero value for a PC in a
single-user environment (except, maybe, for some CAD and software development
workloads).

Summary: buy a Raptor 74GB HD, or maybe a couple.

Note that I don't work for WDC. I just fired up my new PC, and I put
my money where my mouth is: 1GB of dual-channel RAM, and a 74GB Raptor.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

Why 74 only? Is there an issue (other than size) with the 36GB Drive?

36 is slower.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

In practical terms for your application you're not going to see any real
difference between a Raptor and a SCSI drive. I doubt that the "chug"
you're seeing has anything to do with the CPU workload in accessing the
drive--copying files typically shows one percent utilization on my machine.
Either the game is waiting to load something or Windows is paging. In
either case adding RAM is more likely than a faster drive to provide real
benefit.

The 74 GB Raptor is certainly no faster than the 74 GB 15K RPM SCSI drives,
but it is in the same performance league as the 10K RPM drives and a good
deal cheaper.

On a single user workstation the Raptor IS the performance match of late
model triple cost 15K RPM SCSI HDs becuase of the extra command processing
overhead of SCSI. Check the HD performance websites.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

What matters for a good gamer PC is, in rough order of importance:
1. Memory capacity: at least 1GB, 2GB better, 4GB is best
2. Memory latency: insist on dual-channel, the faster the better
3. CPU chip speed: faster is better, 64b does not matter yet
4. Video card: see http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20031229
5. HD access time

In the context of a game that means for an entire disk I/O operation to
complete. If that operation transfers a large contiguous segment of the
disk then the operation will be transfer rate(STR) dominated. In disk
performance the term "access time" has a specific meaning and that excludes
any data I/O transfer time so your use of the term "access time" here is
likely inappropriate.

To focus on HD performance, after taking care of items 1-4 above, note
that I listed access time as the key attribute -- not bandwidth.

An that is inappropriate.

HD
vendors tout bandwidth, usually advertising the irrelevant peak bandwidth
instead of STR, but access time matters more for all but servers.

Exactly BACKWARDS. STR matters most on many desktop applications including
games. STR is nearly meaningless for a server doing small record database
random I/O.

The
access times for two performance leaders are: WDC Raptor 74GB SATA at
7.5 mS (4.5+3.0), and Seagate Cheetah 15K 73GB SCSI at 5.6 mS (3.6+2.0).
SCSI is still the clear winner if you ignore cost; but, SATA is built-in
on most good MBs these days, while a good SCSI HBA is pretty expensive
(the Adaptec 29320ALP-R, for example, lists for ~$395).

Note that WinXP did not have good support for SCSI. I don't know if SP2
fixed the XP problems, and I'd not pay for SCSI without making very
sure on that point.

XP's SCSI support is/was just fine.

One highly proclaimed storage feature is command queueing. SCSI has had
TCQ for years, SATA has NCQ in some hardware but limited driver support,
and PATA just doesn't get it. CQ is very important for database and
some storage server workloads, but it has near-zero value for a PC in a
single-user environment (except, maybe, for some CAD and software development
workloads).

Summary: buy a Raptor 74GB HD, or maybe a couple.

Note that I don't work for WDC. I just fired up my new PC, and I put
my money where my mouth is: 1GB of dual-channel RAM, and a 74GB Raptor.

Me too.

 

[kony]

The question isn't as pointless and rhetorical as it may seem. A
friend of mine can't get over the cool factor of his shiny new
Raptor. I, on the other hand, have been investigating SCSI as my
storage platform of choice. In both cases, gaming is the target
application.

Doubtful, games rarely benefit from one particular _modern_
drive over another, except for (game) level loading.

In researching SCSI options, my primary aim is to
minimize in-game "chug", which is to say the brief (or sometimes
protracted) performance pauses which seem to coincide with drive
access.

You've either skipped a few steps in optimizing for gaming,
or at least failed to mention these steps, in addtion to
failing to mention the specific system. "Chug" is a
meaningless word, precise description of the environment is
necessary. Does friend's system play same game fine,
without "chug"? If so, is friend's system IDENTICAL
otherwise?

I have been told that the SCSI controller card takes the
load off the CPU during drive access, with the result being little
to no discernable "chug".

You were told wrong. Find another noun instead of "chug".
CPU overhead is not a problem in described scenario, if it's
drive-related at all it would be the drive performance
itself, how long it takes to get the data from drive into
memory. Towards that end, it must be questioned WHY this
data wasn't already in memory.

It could easily be that your system simply needs more
memory. It could be that your video card has insufficient
memory for the game's settings. It could be that you have
apps running in the background, like a hardware monitor or
whatever, that has I/O to disk on regular intervals. Since
you make no mention of the specific environment, we can only
speculate that the HDD choice isn't a solution.

Even getting a drive TWICE as fast, which you certainly
won't unless currently running something ancient, would make
"chug" only 50% as long, which is still a chug, not smooth
gaming.

Anyway, said friend seems convinced that the 74Mb Raptor is the
fastest possible drive out there, and would certainly offer better
performance than any SCSI solution I could come up with. I frankly
wouldn't know; I've never owned either.

SCSI uses PCI bus, which didn't used to be much of a
bottleneck, but today's modern drives make it so. Even with
a 15K SCSI drive if your PCI bus is saturated it is
bottlenecking disk I/O... not always a problem but moreso
with network and sound events gaming.

I do know that my current
IDE setup suffers from the "chug" mentioned above, pretty much at
any moment, apparently subject to the whim of Windows XP.

You might know it, but provide no details of it. For all we
know your current drive setup could be 80% as fast as a
Raptor or SCSI in the environment needing the boost/fix/etc.

I can't
see how a Raptor would significantly reduce this phenomenon, but I
certainly don't claim to be an expert. I do see how a SCSI setup
might at least theoretically help with such things, but it'd be
nice to see confirmation of my speculation before I take the
plunge.

You are assuming it's based around the IDE vs SCSI
interface. It isn't. Single-drive setups are faced with
other issues like where that interface is interfaced, to
southbridge. IDE is quite fine for single-drive use, even
PATA is as good as SCSI in this respect, it just happens
that the fastest modern Raptors are SATA.

Now at this point i should mention, I'm not just aiming to
tear apart your post, but to do so constructively. Plenty
of gamers use relatively older, slower drives and have no
"chug". Something else is at play here, and it's quite
possible that neither a Raptor or whatever-SCSI-you-choose,
will not resolve this chug problem.

Since I'm on the topic, what SCSI drive and / or controller might
I be well-advised in picking up? Targets are: 15k rpm, minimal
seek time, ~36GB for the drive, and no idea for the controller card,
since apparently nobody sells the things. Not even Newegg. There's
not much point in asking which Raptor to get, owing to the limited
selection.

SCSI is not needed for gaming. It's wasted $ towards that
purpose. A Raptor is a good choice for a desktop PC, will
improve performance at many things and is a good upgrade if
your current drive is over 1 year old. If newer than that,
the cost-performance benefit must be weighed against how
much you need additional storage, reuse of the current drive
for another purpose.

So to more directly answer the question, get a Raptor but
don't expect it to solve the problem. Or, don't get a
Raptor if your motherboard needs a PCI based SATA card to
run it, just get a huge PATA drive instead and run game (or
whatever's accessing HDD) from size-constrained first
partition on the drive.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

That's potentially true,

Nope.

[snip]

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

"Marc Brown" (e-mail address removed)> wrote in message news:[email protected]...

Talking about a Western Digital Raptor Serial ATA drive, right ?

In the past, one of SCSI advantages is that it took the load off the CPU for
SCSI device (hard drive, scanner, tape backup, etc) access.

That has NEVER been true since EIDE/ATA HDs used DMA mode and that was
OSR2 and NT4 SP4.

A SCSI controller is better at managing multiable SCSI (5 or 10 or
15) devices at the same time

Exactly, that's where that onboard smarts contributes..multiple devices.
SCSI's onboard smarts does not help it be faster than 1 or 2 ATA HDs.

IDE/ATA controllers can handle one data request at a time
SCSI also has better ways of handling multiable data requests, which are
just now being added to the S-ATA (Data Queing ?).

That contributes to performance on small record I/O database servers and NOT
single user workstations.

In fact all those extra features of SCSI inhibits
optimal performance on a single user workstation.

Clueless. There is no such fact.

[snip]

 

[DevilsPGD]

In message <[email protected]>

36 is slower.

Is the difference significant?

 

[Eric Gisin]

Correct.

On a single user workstation the Raptor IS the performance match of late
model triple cost 15K RPM SCSI HDs becuase of the extra command processing
overhead of SCSI. Check the HD performance websites.

Back with your SCSI/IDE delusions, Ronnie?

SCSI drives have faster processors and lower command overhead.