Help set up a new 4-HDD system

[NicePants42]

I've got 4 Seagate 160gb sata drives that are going to be used in a new build (Specs at bottom). After reading this article, I'm not planning to set the drives up in a single RAID.

I'm not worried about redundancy becuase I have an external backup drive, and up until now I've been running these drives in one big RAID 0.

My question now is, how do I set up these drives for the best gaming and video encoding performance?

So far I'm thinking:
1) Set up 2 RAID 0's, (One with OS and swap file, the other for games)
OR
2) Set up one RAID 0 and two single drives (for 3 'drives' total) and put the OS on one, the swap file on another, and games on the last. Problem is, I don't know what would benefit the most from the RAID 0 (although I'm leaning toward the games).

What would be the best way to go if my top priority is game performance, seconded by content encoding/multitasking? Did I miss something? Is the article I referenced complete bunk?

Thanks in advance for input that is EXPLAINED to at least some degree.

New system is as follows:
ASUS A8R32-MVP Delux
Opteron 170
2x1gb Mushkin XP4000
2x X1800XT in crossfire
X-fi Xtrememusic
4x 160gb SATA HDD's (7200.9)
PCP&C Silencer 750

PS: I'm not interested in dropping more $$$ on a raptor. I got these drives for $40 each new, and the rest of the components were great deals also. I generally try to get the most for my money, and a few ms seek time improvement for $100 is not worth it to me.

 

[GreenJelly]

Fastest Gaming Performance from RAID comes from a 3rd party PCI-E SATA Raid Device from Promise or another company... you got to do some research on this.

RAID 5 is the best if you have 3 drives. For you dont get wolloped when one of your drives die... and it will... probably sooner then you can imageing.

Good Raid controllers unload the extra load that RAID 5 takes, and does some really cool things with Cache (if one drive takes longer to write then the other).

Games require allot of reading, and with enough memory, you wont have to worry about swap files. Though again a Good RAID controller does wonders. You can easily get better performance from a large array of small drives then a single WD 750; for about the same cost.

Biggest problem I have had with RAID controllers, is triing to figure out which drive went bad. Make sure the RAID controller makes it very clear and easy to find out what drive is kaput.

That article you read and trust isnt worth anything... it should be removed.

 

[ArgusII]

I have two RAID 0's. The OS and appz in one drive set. The swap file and storage. And it works great for gaming and encoding.

The fastest would be if you could afford two more drives. Then 3 RAID 0's.
1 - OS
2 - Appz
3 - page file

but that would leave a lot of wasted space.

Since gaming is priority. I would do 2 RAID 0's
1 - OS and page file
2 - games