AOpen 48X EIDE CD-ROM

Date: 08th December 98 by Jackie Lee Choon Yau

- The Good - The Bad - Test System Configuration - Conclusion - Rating - Other reviews

AOpen has established her reputation not only in the realms of motherboards but also the cutting edge in spinning technology. With her 40X released not just too long ago, AOpen has stunned the world with the first 48X CDROM. Many have questioned about the necessity of a CDROM to spin at such high speeds. But I share a rather different perspective on this issue. Cos......I for one, wouldn't mind having a faster chip. Thus, I guess there will never come a time when the speed is too fast for your work. Hee hee..There is always a NEED FOR SPEED!!!! Is the 48X CDROM  just another AOpen Component Solution for the computer world?  With their press release on 02nd December 98, they have announced that they have broken the speed barrier with their latest and fastest cd-rom drive. ".........New AOpen 48X CD-ROM Drive Leads the Industry With Unrivaled Speed; Offers Maximum Multimedia Entertainment......" "Dec. 02, 1998 -- Blowing away the competition with lightning-fast speed, AOpen Inc., the component manufacturer of a $7 billion group, today announced the launch of one of the industry's fastest and most flexible CD-ROM drives, the CD-948E. With a maximum data transfer rate of 7200KB/sec and an expansive 512KB data buffer, the CD-948E offers unparalleled multimedia and data throughput performance." Well, we shall see how true is their claim of their drive being the fastest in the industry. (Dated 05 Dec 98) Please fasten your seat belts as we are going for a spin of a lifetime!

I guess the specifications of this new drive is similar to that of their predecessors other than transfer rate. So, I guess we have to see if the GOOD really justify your spending to upgrade your present cd-rom. Here's the goodies!

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The Good

	The CD-948E is an excellent performer. With maximum transfer rate up to 7200 KB/sec, you can rest assured that you have the fastest installation from your CDROM for now (dtd 08 Dec 98). The reliability of the drive is commandable. I have installed Shogo, Unreal, Need for Speed III, Half Life (All Maximum Installation) and the games all worked flawlessly. Just to answer the question of reliability at high speed transfer which is of concern to some of my viewers. Another bonus bundled to this AOpen CDROM is the NORTON Virtual Drive and NORTON Anti-Virus. This drive supports UltraDMA 33 and vertical mount function.
Since the introduction of DDS in their 40X CD-ROMs, AOpen has managed to ensure stability of their high speed spinning drives and keep the noise level within tolerable limits. The 48X CD-ROM has inherited this system and also all the goodies in the 40X brother.
This AOpen cdrom allows you to customised this drive to suit your Windows Operating Systems. If you are using Windows 98, you can enable UDMA mode of the drive. But if you are still a great supporter of Windows 95 or have certain hold backs to the new OS for what ever reasons you might have, this drive allows you to disable UDMA to standard mode for stability purpose. This could explain why some of your old cdroms do not work properly when you upgrade your Windows 95 drivers to Intel Bus Mastering Drivers. But still if you should still experience problems. Please warp over to our Hardware Clinic for consultation.      Let's see if this drive can deliver what it claims to be........

WinBench 98 Result for AOPEN CD 948E

Weighted Suite	AOpen CD 940E	Unit
CD-ROM WinMark 98	1950 123	Thousand Bytes/sec
Test
CD-ROM PlayBack / Bus	1950 123	Thousand Bytes/sec
CD-ROM / Transfer Rate	123
Inside	3690	Thousand Bytes/sec
Outside	7180	Thousand Bytes/sec
CD-ROM / Access Time	86.3 123	ms
CD-ROM / CPU Utilization	7.11 12345	% Percent

 

     The benchmark results are more or less expected. With a sustained transfer rate at 1950 KB/sec or 13X, it is actually a pretty decent drive. This is actually a 10% enhancement over the AOpen 40X CDROM. There is a 15% increase on the Inside transfer rate and a 18% increase in Outside transfer rate. The CD-948E offers a low access time of 86.3 ms at a low CPU utilization of 7.11%. Kindly also note that the DMA box in system properties is checked during the benchmark. The retail price of this drive is at S$ 129 at Fuwell (dtd 08 Dec 98)

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The Bad

     One bad point that I have experienced is that during Digital Audio extraction, I have experienced data overruns and instability which causes the termination of my extraction software. Therefore, I would recommend that when you are performing high speed digital audio extraction to uncheck the DMA box in the system properties and to configure the drive to standard mode rather than UDMA mode.

     Another down side would be the long spin up time of a CD. 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 unless there is a break through in CDROM technology. So I guess we can expect AOpen's R&D team to come up with something new soon!

     The last pointer is actually a suggestion to AOpen rather than a bad point. Despite increasing the spindle speed, I would suggest that AOpen should also increase their data buffer capacity to at least 256KB or 512KB as that would greatly increase the CDROM's performance.

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