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Gigabyte GO-5232A
DVD/CD-ROM Combo Drive
Installation occured as
easily as any modern plug-and-play device should. Windows Professional detected
the the drive and installed the drive letter without even requiring a reboot.
The drive was installed on the same cable as a Lite-On 48x CD-R/W drive with
both drives jumpers placed in the Cable Select (CS) position. Using the Nero
Info Tool, which comes bundled with the Nero OEM Suite, we can querry the drive
for its supported modes of operation.
Buffer
Underrun Protection, Mount Rainier, and 52x CD-R recording plus DVD +/- R DVD
-R/W reading as well. Unfortunately, the drive will not support DVD Dual Layer
reading. Testing the drives reading speeds will be accomplished using
Nero CD-Speed, another tool bundled with the Nero OEM Suite. The testing
platform is built as follows:
| Motherboard |
Asus K8N-E Deluxe
nForce3-250 |
| CPU |
AMD Athlon64 3200+ 2.2GHz
NewCastle Core |
| Memory |
OCZ PC3500 Enhanced Bandwidth
1GB @ 2.5-3/2/5 timings |
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Results from
the first speed run were be accomplished using a silver pressed Data CD-ROM.
Though not quite full, the CAV read angle started at 22x and ended at 50x
with an average read speed of 38.09x Random seek time was 88ms and
full stroke seek time was 169ms. Burst read speed was monitored at
23MB/second. These numbers rank very well among other drives for Silver
press CD read capabilities.
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Inserting a Silver pressed DVD we try the test again. This disc was also not
full, only having 2.68 Gigabytes of data written on the disc. CAV read angle
started at 6.75x and ended at 13.13x with an average read of 10.28x. Random
seek time was 71ms with a full stroke seek of 130ms. CPU usage was
considerably higher on the DVD-ROM starting at 6% and ending at 50%. Burst
rate data read was 26MB/s.
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Digital
Audio Extraction began its speed at 19.56x and ended at 42.67x with an
average read of 32.60x. Random seek time was 93ms with a full stroke seek of
161ms. Digital Audio Extraction quality was rated a perfect 10 and given the
Accurate Stream checkmark of approval. The CAV angle arced very smoothly and
the drive achieved a 19MB/second burst rate.
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