RAID and Partition Question Redux

[Major_A]

Since I didn't have any luck in the Storage subforum I'll ask again here.

I have 3 160GB drives that I'm about to put into RAID 0. Speed is king and the computer doesn't hold any critical info so a failure isn't a concern. My question is if I build the 3 drive RAID (will be software, don't own a card) and set a Windows partition to say 30GB will I see any speed benefit from that? Or will it not be worth my time to do that and just install one partition for the 3 drives?

Isn't what I'm thinking of doing essentially short stroking the drives or does that mean I would only build a 30 GB partition and leave the rest of the drive space unformatted?

[Major_A]

Since no one knows I'll just create one partition. I hate having to tell every program to install to a different partition anyway. After Santa drops off the drives I'll post some numbers.