Testbed and Methods

In order to get a more or less objective picture of how fast our CD-RW/DVD-ROM drives are, we were running two kinds of software during our tests. First we used special utilities that helped to get a lot of technical info about the drives. This is very important as it is sometimes hard or simply impossible to receive this information from the manufacturer. We also compared this info with the claimed specifications. Sometimes they differ, you know. So, here is the list of our info utilities:

• Nero Info Tool version 1.03.2;
• CDIdentifier 1.0.0.3;
• EAC version 0.9 Beta 4 (Configuration Wizard);
• HWINFO32 version 1.30.

The other group of programs consisted of various benchmarks sets:

• CD WinBench 99 version 1.1.1;
• Nero CD Speed version 1.02e;
• Nero CD DAE version 0.4 Beta;
• Nero InCD 3.5.2.40;
• CDRom Drive Analyzer version 2.32;
• CDVD Benchmark 1.2;
• Sandra Standard 2003 3.9.44.

All the drives we tested were attached to the second IDE channel as Master and were working in the UDMA mode.

Our testbed was configured as follows:

• Athlon 700MHz CPU;
• Elitegroup K7S5A mainboard;
• 128MB SDRAM;
• ATI Radeon 8500 64MB;
• IBM DTLA 307015 15GB UDMA/5 HDD;
• Windows XP with Service Pack 1 and DirectX 9.0 installed.

We didn’t tweak the drives in any way and tested them “As Is”, just as they came into our test lab.

If you don’t see some results or diagrams for certain drives, it means that the drive didn’t pass the test completely or partially.

Informational Utilities

LG GCC-4480B

The hardware capabilities of LG GCC-4480B read with the help of special programs do not quite correspond to what the manufacturer claimed in the specs sheet. According to the applied utilities, this model supports today’s most acute technologies, such as Mount Rainier, and can work with C2 markers. While the second thing is pretty clear, the Mount Rainier support is not mentioned on the manufacturer’s site and in the corresponding PDF-file. Is it manufacturer’s modesty, lack of official certification, unavailability in the first firmware version, or what? We will see whether Nero Info Tool is right in the benchmarking part of our roundup.

As for other characteristics, the karaoke fans may be upset to find out that this combo-drive doesn’t support CD+G disks. The drive has regional protection without any particular zone specified.

LG GCC-4320B

The second drive from LG differs from the first one by the lack of Mount Rainier support. Well, it is not mentioned by the manufacturer, so it is not included. The drive is also regionally protected without any zones specified.