bendsley

These aren't the same things. SATA is an interface while RAID is a way to combine drives for multiple purposes. SATA is certainly going to be better than IDE because of its initial transfer rate and ability to go faster, and also because the cable is much thinner than an IDE cable allowing for greater air flow in the computer.

RAID 0 is faster in some applications because it combines the two drives to look like a single drive and spreads the load between the two drives.

RAID 1 is strictly mirroring. One drive has an identical backup.

For a gaming only machine, I rather prefer speed as opposed to backups. I would suggest SATA drives in a RAID 0 array if thats possible in your budget. Other than that, I would actually suggest SCSI. 2x15,000rpm Ultra320 drives in a RAID 0 array will yield you extremely fast load times.

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