Best raid0 configuration for gaming

[oxidius]

I'm finishing my build and I'm now wondering what is the best configuration for my gaming drive.

here's some important parts of my build to give you an idea:
intel i7 2600k
Asus sabertooth p67
8gb of G Skill sniper 1866
Crucial m4 128gb
Zotac GTX 580

I have 3 WD green drives (WD20EARS) at my disposal I want to use them to install games that wont be installed on my ssd. What is the best raid0 configuration for gaming?

I read that acces time were increased when you add drives to your raid0 configuration. Is the read/write speed more important than acces time when gaming?

I guess load times are sequential read so 3 drives would be faster than 2 drives... but loading textures might be more affected by acces times so 2 drives would be better than 3?

I need help on this one... what characteristic is more importnant for gaming?

thanks

[enaberif]

Greens in RAID for gaming? Greens are more meant for storage than anything.

[oxidius]

I got the 3 drive for 50$ total because of a local computer shop closing...

My OS is on my ssd, but I won't be able to install all my games on my SSD. Most of the interaction with a game is done with the gpu, cpu and ram except when the data is loaded from the hdd to the ram or video memory.

I don't think it would be wise to spend 200$ or more on caviar black hdds: the acces time are like 8% ms quciker and the sequential speed about 20% faster. With a 3x raid0 configuration i would have around 250% of the sequential speed but get acces times around 40% slower.

[LarkStarr]

I raided my two spare 1 TB greens...

I'm not sure of the answer, but I assume most of any game's textures and etc. are mostly preloaded or loaded in chunks into the RAM anyways, so raiding them would work better. I have nothing to compare my raided drives to, so I can't say if it's faster or not. Definitely slower then an SSD though.

make sure to grab WDidle and adjust the park time to 5 minutes for the greens though.

[oxidius]

thanks for the advice for the park time.

I guess I'll try it myself, Ill install a game on SSD, RAID0 HHDs and stand alone HDD and see what difference it makes.

[Phill]

Good idea, do a bunch of testing and then post here again

[LarkStarr]

I'd definitely be interested in your results! Maybe I can compare with some RAIDed times of my own, with similar games.