I haven't done any test or actual study (I'm using crc32 and storing it in mysql signed int types), but if your algorithm of choice is bigger them the supported integer of your database I suppose it is possible that the raw_format option is the best option to store directly in the database without type casting demands for it results in a binary string value.
To check if your algorithm of choice have the supported integer size in your database just strlen the raw_format output and see how many bytes it have (for example: crc32 have 4 bytes output, sha256 have 32 e md5 possue 16).
<?php
var_dump(strlen(hash('md5', 'string to check', true))); ?>
PS: You can always use floating points to store a very big number but for "common humans" binary types by and large are easier to check, understand and maintain, so i recommend to use binary, but if you are about speed them floating point could be your friend.
PS: remembering ... without the raw_format the returned value are hexadecimal values without the 'Hx' complement, so to transform the result into a decimal just hexdec as shown ...
<?php
var_dump(hexdec(hash('crc32b', 'string to check'))); ?>
PS: Just registering ... I have noticed here some tests where 'crc32' is slower than md5, AFAIK by definition a CRC32 algorithm (there are several algorithms to calculate CRC32) is faster than MD5 and Adler-32 is faster than CRC32 (CRC32 is more consistent than Adler-32, less consistent than MD5, but if you want to safely validate the recommended would be SHA256 or better yet SHA512 because they are less likely to collide, so less vulnerable to collision attacks)
