by Andrey Kuznetcov
11/15/2004 | 11:33 AM
This review is written for those users who don’t want or can’t afford a DVD-recorder, but are not satisfied with their CD-ROM drive, either. The reliable and time-tested CD-ROM drive have been losing its ground lately to the more expensive DVD-ROM because the price gap between them is constantly diminishing, while DVD media are becoming widespread.
Two Korean giants, Samsung and LG, are antagonists in market, and now we can organize a mini-dual between two similar products from these two companies and determine the winner in this particular case.
The “burl” in the center of the tray is a characteristic feature of LG’s optical drives. The tray also displays the name of the manufacturer and the symbol of the category this device belongs to. A round eject button and a LED indicator are located below the tray. The headphones socket is not present here. The printed grooves on the top panel of the drive add it more robustness. At the rear panel you find the following: power and interface connectors, digital and analog audio outputs, a jumper for choosing the device’s status on the IDE channel.
The GDR-8163B can read CDs at 52x speed and DVDs at 16x. The size of the cache buffer is 256KB. The declared access time is 98 milliseconds with CDs and 110 milliseconds with DVDs. The drive supports the E-IDE interface and the Ultra DMA Mode 2 data-transfer mode. The following media types are supported: DVD+R/+RW, DVD-R/-RW, DVD-RAM, DVD-ROM, CD-R/RW, CD-ROM Mode 1,2, CD-DA, CD-I FMV, CD-ROM XA, Mixed CD, CD Extra, CD Plus, CD Text, Photo CD, Video CD. The dimensions of the device are 146x42x184.6mm; its weight is 0.75kg. The drive can be positioned vertically as well as horizontally.
The average retail price of the GDR-8163 is $25.
Once again we meet a drive from the joint venture Toshiba Samsung Storage Technology and we will regard it as a product from the company that’s promoting this model in the market. The drive has the typical design of Samsung’s optical drives with that round sunken eject button made of translucent violet plastic; a LED indicator resides next to it. The tray has rounded corners, too. The two symbols beneath the tray indicate the category of the device. There is no headphones socket here. Power and interface connectors, digital and analog audio outputs, and the jumper are found at the device’s rear panel.
The TS-H352 can read CDs at 48x speed and DVDs at 16x. The size of the cache buffer is 512KB. The declared access time is 90 milliseconds with CDs and 100 milliseconds with DVDs. The drive supports the E-IDE interface and the Ultra DMA Mode 2 data-transfer mode. The following media types are supported: DVD-ROM, DVD-R/RW, DVD-Video, CD-ROM, CD-R/RW, CD-DA, CD-ROM/XA, Video CD, CD-I, Photo CD, Enhanced CD, CD-Extra, and CD-Text. The dimensions of the device are 148.2x42x184mm; its weight is 0.75kg. The drive can be positioned vertically or horizontally.
The average retail price of the drive is $25.
To check out the operational characteristics of the DVD drives, we used the following programs and utilities:
The testbed was configured like follows:
The drives were attached to the mainboard’s second IDE channel as “Master”.
LG GDR-8163B
Samsung TS-H352
The Samsung TS-H352 boasts a somewhat wider functionality as it supports CD+G media; its larger cache buffer is also an advantage which counterweighs its lower CD read speed (compared to the LG drive). DVDINFOPro “found” the Samsung TS-H352 capable of reading dual-layer DVD+R discs. Note also that both info utilities report this drive’s ability to work with DVD+R/RW media, although the manufacturer’s website doesn’t mention that in the specifications.
I tested the drives in CD WinBench 99 using a molded CD as well as two copies of it (on CD-R and CD-RW discs).
These links lead to the data-transfer graphs the drives have with different media formats; both devices have no problems reading the test discs.
The diagram above shows that the Samsung TS-H352 has a higher performance score than its opponent when working with any CD media type.
The next two diagrams show the data-transfer rates achieved at inner and outer tracks of the discs. The LG GDR-8163B is no worse than the Samsung TS-H352 here, so the higher performance score of the latter device must be due to its larger cache buffer.
The Samsung TS-H352 takes less time to access any of the three test discs. The results comply with the specifications almost ideally.
To perform the basic tests I took five CD discs: a molded CD enclosed with a computer magazine, 700MB CD-R and CD-RW discs with data written by the test utility itself, a likewise prepared 800MB CD-R, and an Audio CD.
CD-ROM | CD-R | CD-R 800MB | CD-RW | CD-DA | |
LG GDR-8163B | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph |
Samsung TS-H352 | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph |
The results of the tests with five different CD media presented in the diagrams suggest that the real characteristics of these two optical drives differ when they are processing discs of some formats. The LG GDR-8163B almost reached its declared maximum read speed on the CD-ROM and CD-DA discs, but only had a speed of 41x with the CD-R and CD-RW discs. The Samsung TS-H352 met its specifications with the CD-ROM and exceeded it with the CD-R, but processed the CD-RW and CD-DA at about 32x speed only. The access time of the Samsung TS-H352 is again measured to be smaller than that of the LG GDR-8163B; the measurements comply with the specifications of the devices.
The next group of basic tests is concerned with the DVD format. I took five discs to examine the drives’ ability to process the various available formats: a DVD-ROM with a movie and its copies recorded on DVD-R (Digitex), DVD-RW (TDK), DVD+R (Fujifilm), and DVD+RW (Verbatim) discs.
DVD-ROM | DVD-R | DVD-RW | DVD+R | DVD+RW | |
LG GDR-8163B | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph |
Samsung TS-H352 | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph | Graph |
So, what have we got? The drives both reached a speed of 6x on recordable media, but produced quite different results with the DVD-ROM. The Samsung TS-H352 almost hit its declared max speed of 16x, but had some problems reading the last stretch of the disc (you can see a slump in the data-transfer graph). The LG GDR-8163B could only accelerate to 8x on the DVD-ROM. Of course, it is possible that some problems with the particular DVD-ROM disc led to such discouraging results. The access time of the Samsung TS-H352 is smaller with DVD media compared to the LG GDR-8163B. Here, however, the DVD access time parameters of the two devices are better than their own specifications imply, especially the access time of the LG drive.
And once again we see that an optical drive supports a format which is not listed in its specs. I mean the Samsung TS-H352 which works normally with DVD+R/RW discs.
To determine the drives’ ability to create precise copies of audio discs I performed the Advanced DAE Quality Test. Two special CD-R discs, prepared by the Nero CD-DVD Speed utility itself, were employed to check the hardware characteristics of the devices pertaining to the audio extraction process. The first disc is normal, the other has deliberately inflicted scratches on its surface, imitating a long-used CD.
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The first two screenshots show you the results I got with the normal disc – both drives achieve the maximum possible quality score. Although the LG GDR-8163B has a higher speed, the Samsung TS-H352 has an advantage due to a smaller offset which is a parameter that reflects the drive’s ability to position precisely on a definite spot of the audio disc. Otherwise, the two drives behave similarly: both can read two types of servo information out of four. The Samsung TS-H352 is more stable at on-the-fly copying.
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The two screenshots above show you the results of the drives with the bad disc. The LG GDR-8163B has got a higher quality score, almost 100 percent. It also had a much higher speed and was stable at on-the-fly copying.
To check out the ability of the drives to process errors occurring during extraction of audio tracks I used the specialized Advanced DAE Error Correction Test with the same bad compact disc prepared by Nero CD-DVD Speed. The test utility determines how many C2 errors should be found by the drive and how many it does find, producing Quality Score and C2 Accuracy parameters which reflect the efficiency of the hardware error correction mechanism of the optical drive.
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The LG GDR-8163B can be considered the winner of this test, as it has no C2 errors and stops very short of 100% Quality Score. The Samsung TS-H352 has somewhat humbler results, but I can’t call them bad, either.
The CD Quality Check test is trying to read a bad compact disc in the optical drive:
Samsung TS-H352
Alas, I couldn’t check the drive from LG in this test: the utility probably doesn’t support the given optical drive model (the utility is being constantly updated to support more devices and offer more features). As for the Samsung TS-H352, it read the disc through at a constant angular velocity and made no errors.
I used two programs to check the drives at extracting audio tracks and converting them into WAV-files. Nero CD DAE was the first of them – it is a standard audio ripping utility:
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The final screenshots above indicate that the LG GDR-8163B has made the job done faster. Unfortunately, it has committed some errors, while the slower Samsung TS-H352 has not.
The second audio extraction utility, Exact Audio Copy, differs from Nero CD DAE as it is capable of making use of the hardware characteristics of optical drives to achieve the maximum quality of the resulting files. I used the EAC utility to determine the hardware properties of the drives and then to extract audio tracks (in the Secure Mode) from the same disc as in the previous test; the tracks were saved as WAV-files.
To check out the support of C2 errors, a special “bad” audio disc was used, prepared by Nero CD-DVD Speed. Running a little ahead, I must admit that both drives support this function.
LG GDR-8163B
Samsung TSH-352
The resulting screenshots say that the LG GDR-8163B is faster at extracting audio tracks and converting them into WAV-files. None of the drives committed any error in the test.
So you have watched a competition between two DVD-ROM drives from the eternal rivals LG and Samsung. Both models are of the same class and price, so choosing between them is rather difficult. I’m going to single out strong and weak sides of each device for you to choose what suits you better.
The LG GDR-8163B has a slightly higher declared CD read speed, but it was not always better than its opponent in this parameter on all media types. It is, however, very fast with Audio CDs. The drive features an efficient C2 error correction mechanism and thus can successfully handle damaged media. Among the disadvantages of this drive I can mention its big offset, its inability to reach the specified read speed on the DVD-ROM disc and a high level of noise at work. The noise factor is seldom mentioned in reviews, as it is clear that high speeds are unavoidably accompanied with more noise, but the LG GDR-8163B was rather too loud, above the average. I hope this was a defect of our particular sample.
The Samsung TS-H352 has a slightly lower declared CD read speed, but would sometimes outperform its rival in the tests. It offers a better performance with CD media overall. Undeclared by the manufacturer, the ability of this drive to support DVD+R/RW media was revealed during the tests. Samsung’s drive has a small offset and features a quite efficient C2 error correction mechanism (but worse compared to the LG drive).
So, these are the points to consider when shopping for any of these devices. I hope this review will help you make a wise choice.
