Full Tower ATX
Case w/ 300W PS, AMD Athlon K7-600, MSI MS-6167 Motherboard, 128MB
PC133 HSDRAM from EMS, WD Expert AC418000 7200 RPM ATA66 Hard Drive,
Matrox G400MAX 32MB w/ TurboGL Drivers, Kenwood
72X True X CD-ROM and Memorex 48X CD-ROM,
Win 98SE, DirectX 7
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| Benchmarks
With The Kenwood 72X True X CD-ROM |
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won't find a faster CD-ROM |
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We
pitted the Kenwood up against a Memorex 48X EIDE CD-ROM just for
comparison. It wasn't much of a match-up but what do you expect when
there isn't anything that comes close to the TrueX Kenwood.
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SiSoft
Sandra CD/DVD Benchmark
(Click
images)
Memorex
48X
Kenwood
72X True X
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This
just about says it all. Consistent 66X performance across the disk
at a 10MB per second transfer rate. The Memorex drive looks pitiful.
Is it dead or is it Memorex?! :-)
There was something interesting to note here. The access times for
the drives seem to be flip flopped. The Kenwood shows 120ms. and the
Memorex shows 68ms. I was suspect of these numbers so we fired up a
more robust benchmark. |
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Ziff
Davis CD Winbench 99
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ZD has an
excellent benchmark package for CD and DVD ROMs. It tests everything
including CPU utilization.
(click
for larger view)
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Since
the Athlon based systems are not as mainstream yet, we
also set the drive up in a BX chipset based board with a Pentium!!!
600.
The motherboard used was the Soyo SY-6BA+IV. We set it up on the
standard DMA33 controller that comes on the board.
As a side note, it is amazing to see the differences between the
disk performance of the Athlon vrs. a P3 of the same clock speed.
As we saw in the Sandra benchmarks, the Kenwood drive is like a Jet
Fuel Injected Funny Car when compared to a 48X drive. Once again,
the Kenwood 72X True X CD-ROM shows it lives up to its 10MB/sec.
claimed performance. Also, the access times are a little more in
line with what we expected from both drives, sub 100ms.
CD
Speed 99
CD Speed does a nice job
of reporting performance across the entire disc and gives you worst
case, best and average performance numbers.
This is fantastic
performance and the drive easily beats anything we have tested to
date. Also note the perfect DAE quality score. The True
X 72 should rip audio CD like a walk in the park and with perfect
quality.
One final note, these numbers are nice to look at but the
experience when using this drive for a large program install is
nothing short of amazing. We install many instances of Microsoft
Windows 98SE around here these days. Never in my life has an
installation gone so quickly than when using this CD-ROM drive. It
literally cut the load time easily in half, maybe even less. There
is a very prominent speed gain you will notice when you fire this
drive up for the first time. You'll be spoiled from that point
forward.
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The
Spin Cycle
Simply
put, this is one great CD-ROM drive. The Kenwood 72X TrueX lives up
to it claims of "the fastest CD-ROM Drive on earth". It is
also one of the quietest. It is absolutely flawless.
The
Editor Choice Award is a "no-brainer" on this one folks!
We
give the Kenwood 72X True X CD-ROM Drive a Hot Hardware Temp-O-Meter
Rating of...
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Get
the Kenwood 72X True X Drive at...
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