Afreey 45X EIDE CD-ROM
 |
Date: 05th February 98 by Vijay Anand |
 - The Good
|
Afreey INC. was
setup only early last year in Taiwan. Their Primary business is to design and manufacture
CD-ROM, DVD & slim-line drives and mechanisms. Thier products are priced quite
affordable. What I have here for review is an unusual 45x speed rated drive. At this time
of writing, Afreey had just announced the world's first 50x CD-ROM drive which makes it
the fastest in the maket, period. Not bad for a relatively new comer!
|
CD-ROM Specifications |
|
| Interface | ATAPI IDE Interface |
| Transfer Rate | 45X ~ 6750 KB/sec |
| Functions | Multi Read, Vertical Mount, CAV/CLV |
| Ultra DMA 33 | Yes |
| Data Buffer | 128 KB |
| Supported CD Formats | CD-DA, CD-ROM/XA (Mode 1, Mode2) |
| CD-I/MPEG, PhotoCD, Karaoke CD, | |
| CD-Extra(CD+), I-trax CD, CDR, CDRW | |
Specifications ar all in-line as what is expected these days. So, we'll have to see how it performs in contrast to it's close competition.
The Good
Since this a high-speed drive, it supports UDMA-33 and DMA functions. To take full advantage of the drive, be sure to enable UDMA option in your Bios and set your CD-properties to enable DMA. While using this drive, I transferred many huge files from different CDs to my HDD and installed Quake-2 and KQ-8. All the programs/games/files worked fine. It also supports vertical mount function.
Let's see if this drive can deliver what it claims to be........
CD WinBench 99 Result for Afreey CD 1845E
TEST Afreey CD 1845E Unit CD-ROM PlayBack / Overall 1360 123 Thousand Bytes/sec CD-ROM / Transfer Rate 123
Inside 2940 Thousand Bytes/sec Outside 6170 Thousand Bytes/sec CD-ROM / Access Time 88 123 ms CD-ROM / CPU Utilization 6.64 12345 % Percent
The benchmarked results are much less than expected. With a sustained transfer rate at 1360 KB/sec or about 9X, it is not a speedster, nor does it feel slow. The CD-1845E offers a fast access time of 88 ms at a low CPU utilization of 6.64%. Kindly also note that the DMA box in system properties is checked during the benchmark. The retail price of this drive is about $85 about this time of writing.
The buttons of the drive are a bit too clicky for liking. The spin-up and spin down times are just a bit longer than usuall. But I guess this problem is associated with high speed CDROMs. The speed of the CDROM would be proportional to the time required to spin up a CD.
The last point to not and the most unbearable is the noise it makes once the drive starts reading or seeking for info on a CD. The drive claims that it has some sort of damping system built in but I fail too see it in action if there is any. It sounds like a jet engine that is kept in your system and is constantly being revved up and down.
| Processor(s) | AMD K6-2-300Mhz |
| Ram | 64 MB PC100 LGS-7J SDRAM Dimm |
| Motherboard | AOpen AX59Pro 'CE' |
| HardDrive(s) | IBM Deskstar-3 3.2GB |
| Operating System | MS Windows 98 Build 4.10.1998 |
| DirectX Version | MS DirectX Version 6 |
| Other software used | CD Winbench 99 |
Conclusion
At it's price, I doubt one can complain as it does it's job well, good documentation, DOS-drivers, Audio-cable and screws all packed in a colourful retail box.
CDROM RATING
Overall Rating (Out of a maximum of 5 Star) |
|
| Installation | **** |
| Performance | *** |
| Price | **** |
| Software Bundle | *** |
| Material Quality | *** |
| Overall Rating | *** |
This Product is provided courtesy of
No part of the above is to be reproduced, copied or
modified without the permission of the WebMaster.
Copyright © 1998, Singapore Hardware Zone. All rights reserved.
Last updated February 04, 1999.
Comments or suggestions, please direct to us, and check out how you can
advertise with us and target your products
and service to computer buyers.