So I realized that each of these things barely increase performance by themselves, but when added together can cause a pretty nice performance increase when working together.
Now I'm making a good $1200 ish system, but I have a 250 gb SATA150 already.
For RAID, I know there is RAID 0 and RAID 1, one where you mirror the drive for backup purposes and one where you run two together to get better speeds or some such. How does this work, and how do I set it up? I'll be running XP 32bit and Vista 64bit in partitions. Is it worth the trouble, and if I did the RAID where they work together not mirroring (is that RAID 0 or 1?), are there any negative effects at all?
For Dual Channel, let's do a scenario. I will have 2 x 1gb of brand A. I will also have 2 x 1gb brand B. Assume speed and timing of the RAM is the same for all 4 sticks. Each of the two sticks will be dual channeled with their respective brand counterpart fine in 64 bit Vista because it can read the 4 gb. However, if I boot into 32 bit XP, will it still be dual channeling all 4 sticks and just read 3GB or will it simply not read the 2 x 1gb sticks that are channeled together?
Also, is there a way to disable dual channel? How big of a speed increase is it?
I know Raptor drives are expensive ($150 for 74gb), so I probably won't use them unless I find a really nice deal. How big a speed increase is it? The hard drive is always being used whenever you are doing anything, so it effects everything right?
Now I'm making a good $1200 ish system, but I have a 250 gb SATA150 already.
For RAID, I know there is RAID 0 and RAID 1, one where you mirror the drive for backup purposes and one where you run two together to get better speeds or some such. How does this work, and how do I set it up? I'll be running XP 32bit and Vista 64bit in partitions. Is it worth the trouble, and if I did the RAID where they work together not mirroring (is that RAID 0 or 1?), are there any negative effects at all?
For Dual Channel, let's do a scenario. I will have 2 x 1gb of brand A. I will also have 2 x 1gb brand B. Assume speed and timing of the RAM is the same for all 4 sticks. Each of the two sticks will be dual channeled with their respective brand counterpart fine in 64 bit Vista because it can read the 4 gb. However, if I boot into 32 bit XP, will it still be dual channeling all 4 sticks and just read 3GB or will it simply not read the 2 x 1gb sticks that are channeled together?
Also, is there a way to disable dual channel? How big of a speed increase is it?
I know Raptor drives are expensive ($150 for 74gb), so I probably won't use them unless I find a really nice deal. How big a speed increase is it? The hard drive is always being used whenever you are doing anything, so it effects everything right?
