Does RAID0 Really Increase Disk Performance?

How We Tested

During our benchmarking sessions, we used the configuration listed below. Between our benchmarking sessions the only variable was the hard disk drive configuration.
 
Hardware Configuration

• Motherboard: Intel D975XBX2
• Processor: Core 2 Xtreme X6800 (Dual-Core, 2.93 GHz, 1,066 MHz FSB, 4 MB L2 memory cache)
• Memory: 2 GB DDR2-1066/PC2-8500, running at 800 MHz 5-5-5-15 (Corsair TWIN2X2048 memory kit)
• Cooler: Gigabyte Neon 775.
• Hard Disk Drives: Samsung HD080HJ (SATA-300, 7,200 rpm, 8 MB buffer).
• Video Card: XFX GeForce 7800 GTX.
• Video resolution: 1024x768x32@85Hz.
• Power Supply: Antec Neo HE 550.

Software Configuration

• Windows XP Professional installed using NTFS
• Service Pack 2
• DirectX 9.0c

Driver Versions

• NVIDIA video driver version: 91.47
• Intel Inf chipset driver version: 8.0.1.1002
• Audio driver version: Sigmatel 5.10.5143
• LAN driver version: Intel Pro/1000 9.5.12.0
• RAID driver version (Marvell): 1.1.0.38-beta
• RAID driver version (Intel): 5.5.0.1035

Used Software

• HDTach 3
• PCMark05 Professional 1.1.0
• SYSmark2004 – Patch 2

We adopted a 3% error margin; thus, differences below 3% cannot be considered relevant. In other words, products with a performance difference below 3% should be considered as having similar performance.