Hard Drive, RAID 0, RAID 1 question

[Zain]

Hey guys, I'm looking into investing in a new gaming laptop and I've got everything decided on but one thing. It's giving me three different choices on a hard drive and I'm not exactly sure what the benefit of one over the other is. I looked them up on Wikipedia, but it wasn't much help. I need it in lamnents terms...haha. So here are my choices, in order of price ascending...

Single Drive Configuration
Extreme Performance (RAID 0)
High Performance with Data Security (RAID 1)

Which one would I NEED for a computer capable of running the best PC games out there like Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Crysis?

Thanks.

[Xiahou]

Just a single drive. RAID0 might cut down some on load times, but it's probably not worth what they're asking for it and RAID 1 would give you some protection in case one of the drives failed.

When it comes to in-game performance, none of those configurations should make much difference one way or the other.

[Zain]

Okay... how about processing? If I press Internet, Word, Messenger, and a Media Player, I want this thing to pop them all up instantly. Would this affect the speed of processing?

[Papewaio]

Get a Mac

Slightly more seriously you have to look at each component and what the bottleneck is.

At the moment most of the bottlenecks are around BUS speed. The reason being that for most 32 bit systems it is fairly cheap to get more RAM then the OS can handle, and the amount of RAM used to be the old bottleneck.

Now the bottleneck is the speed in which the processor can access the RAM.

So you have two main hardware options:
Faster BUS or Processor that uses less RAM (larger Cache for instance).

If a computer was a physical desktop with paper and pen then
Processor is how fast you could write.
BUS/RAM Speed is how well organised your desk is.
RAM amount would be how much desk space you have.
Paging files is your filling cabinet at your knees.
Hard-disk is the rest of your files in a storage container across the room.

So in general if you are working on a single application the main bottleneck is going to be the speed of the processor then BUS then RAM speed will determine how fast the application goes. The more applications you use at once in general the more RAM and processor you will use up. Some applications will make a huge use of RAM if it is a database, others will be RAM low. But in general the more apps you use at once the more useful RAM is... more RAM generally isn't a problem. Also don't discount the GPU (Graphics Card)... Vista in particular "needs" this.

Each system and what you use it for vary which component you need to focus on. End of the day budget is the main deciding factor.

[TevashSzat]

A 7200 rpm single drive would be fine for any games I think. Those Western Digital Raptors with 10000 rpm are crazy fast, but probably aren't available for laptops. SSDs are supposed to be the best, ie fastest, HD, but they're a bit new and I have some reservation as to regarding to write limits

[Zain]

I'm going to max out my RAM at 4 gbs and my processor. Also I'm going to max out the video card. But I'm going with the basic Hard drive with 500 GBs space. So in other words, I just needed to know if the RAID 0 or RAID 1 was worth getting, since it was going to add up to 1,100 to my price. I'd rather not...

Thanks for the info guys, and now onto another question.

Dell, Alienware, or Acer?

[TevashSzat]

Well, imo Dell I don't like much and Alienware isn't that good as before after Dell aquired them. Acer I don't have too many opinions toward

I. personally, surprisingly found the hp laptops to be surprisingly competetive in pricing even when pretty decked out.

If you want a boutique laptop, I'm actually kinda partial to vigor gaming. Their laptops are actually affordable even though they are a boutique seller compared to the horribly overpriced stuff over at falcon northwest