We built a RAID0 array with two 160 GB hard disk drives and compared the performance of this system against the performance achieved with a RAID0 array using the same drives but controlled by ICH9R south bridge chip from the motherboard we were using (ASUS P5K-E/WiFi-AP, which is based on Intel P35 chipset), using the recommended stripe size, 128 KB. We also compared the results with the performance of a single drive installed on our PC, in order to see how much performance gain you should expect to achieve with a RAID0 system.

During our tests we used the configuration listed below.

Hardware Configuration

• CPU: Core 2 Duo E6600
• Motherboard: ASUS P5K-E/WiFi-AP (0401 BIOS)
• Memory: 2 GB Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-8500C5D (DDR2-1066/PC2-8500 with 5-5-5-15 timings), configured at 1,066 MHz
• Hard Disk Drives: Two Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 160 GB (ST3160815AS, SATA-300, 7,200 rpm, 8 MB buffer) hard disk drives.
• Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB
• Video resolution: 1440x900 75 Hz
• Video Monitor: Samsung Syncmaster 932BW
• Power Supply: OCZ ProXStream 1000 W
• CPU Cooler: Thermaltake TMG i1
• Optical Drive: LG GSA-H54N

Software Configuration

• Windows XP Professional using NTFS file system
• Service Pack 3
• Intel Inf driver version: 8.3.1.1009
• nVidia video driver version: 169.21

Benchmarking Software

• DiskSpeed32 3.0.0.5
• HD Tach 3.0.4.0
• HD Tune 2.55

We adopted a 3% error margin. So, performance differences below 3% cannot be considered meaningful. In other words, products where the performance difference is below 3% must be considered as having similar performance.