I hate to necropost, but...
Incriminated wrote:windows software raid + windows default cache + primocache.... extremely overheading block size... additional firmware-raid running.... running games that read/write files potentially from archived-data-streams .... you really look into this crap of these noobs xD
I'm actually a senior software engineer who has spent 20 years working on driver-level code for things like disk I/O, audio, graphics, memory management, diagnostics, and so on, in perf-critical embedded contexts. You too, huh?
I've also spent a number of years maintaining carefully-tuned enterprise-level resource/revision control servers aimed at maximum perf and zero downtime even during backups. But that must be old hat to you. Child's play, right?
Windows software striping (which is not RAID btw) was necessary because an onboard 8-slot SATA controller on my M/B had startlingly poor perf in RAID mode. I'm sure that, being so well-traveled on the internet, and so well-read on storage and perf, you've run across people talking about this particular onboard LSI controller. The only option those of us with the board could find that would produce the kind of throughput on 8 SSDs that we would expect was to switch to a non-RAID firmware and let Windows do the striping. As horrific as that sounds to both you and me, it does actually work very well, increasing throughput by about 6x and coming within about 25% of the theoretical max. The obvious drawback is that it's hard to trust Windows to do anything right. So far, though, no problems after two years of continuous use.
The stripe size on the disks is, in fact, well-indicated for things like games, which tend towards very large resource files (read: very long sequential reads) and do not suffer much from the average half-stripe of overhead. I'm sure that, being clueful and broad-visioned, you can easily see how this situation might be specific to someone building a pure gaming rig, rather than a general-use system.
The block sizes in PrimoCache were similarly calculated to maximize performance on large sequential reads while balancing partial last-block waste with the additional per-block management overhead, which can be quite significant in PrimoCache. Where the two lines crossed is where the final number came from. Surely you know what I'm talking about--you must have done this so many times yourself.
The additional two-SSD firmware raid is necessary for the OS, as Windows cannot boot from a software-striped volume. But you knew that, right? Furthermore, it's on a different controller (Sandy Bridge's own Intel controller, rather than the the LSI mentioned above, which the m/b maker added), which is very reliable and does not suffer from performance issues in RAID mode.
Two other slots on the Intel controller are connected to cheap(ish) spinning disks in an array for slow data like movies. Think of it as the opposite of a cache. It could practically be a floppy, perf-wise. It's really only raided for convenience.
These games do not write data to the biggest, fastest volume. While installing, sure, but not while running. They occasionally write save data to the OS volume. The OS volume obviously sees a fair bit of write traffic overall, which is unfortunate due to write overhead, but during games there's actually very little, and during games is when I care about.
Edit: To address a point you made in another post: PGO has usually indicated to me that LFU is superior to LRU in my use case. And when I say PGO, I mean both on my current system and also in games I've worked on from the dev side. The PGO you've obviously done yourself might differ due to differing use cases. Apples and oranges compare poorly when you get down to the details.
As an aside, PrimoCache isn't really very necessary on this system. It's seriously gilding the lily to add an additional layer of ram caching. I don't really need it. However, when I play games, I am a dedicated min/maxer, and in life as well, so as a theoretical/academic matter, I feel it's absolutely called-for for me to experiment with PrimoCache.
So, all of that said, I think I've covered everything you said that was incorrect, uninformed, and wilfully rude, which was in fact everything you said.
Your username is Incriminated. I think you should either change it to Self-Incriminated or learn to exercise your right not to do so by keeping your trap shut and your fingers off of the keyboard.
smh