DVDilemma

CD, DVD and (Ultra HD) Blu-ray Writers
#1

I’m thinking of buying a DVD-ROM since CD-ROMS are a bit outdated.
I was in a dilemma between buying the Toshiba 1612 and Pioneer 117.
After searching a lot on Google i found some tests on both drives based on Nero CD-DVD speed and other programs.

What i found out is that the Toshiba 1612 has a very high CPU usage while reading DVD movies especially.CPU usage was nearly 50% according to Nero speed tests :eek:

While tests on Pioneer showed a CPU usage much lower near 10%.

High CPU usage would be a major problem for me since i own a quite old system : Pentium 3 450 Mhz - 128Mb RAM - Voodoo 3.

I would appreciate your thoughts on this (or your test results if you own a Pioneer 117 or a Toshiba 1612)

#2

Originally posted by The_Judas
After searching a lot on Google i found some tests on both drives based on Nero CD-DVD speed and other programs.

What i found out is that the Toshiba 1612 has a very high CPU usage while reading DVD movies especially.CPU usage was nearly 50% according to Nero speed tests :eek:

Can you tell us where you find it? I mean the original link preferably.

Read this thread if you have time.

#3

Of course i have already read the Best DVD-ROM thread , that’s the first thing i did :slight_smile:

The original links are :
http://www.cdrlabs.com/reviews/index.php?reviewid=81&page=Performance
especially on the “Nero DVD Speed 99 0.52 - Data DVD” and
“Nero DVD Speed 99 0.52 - Movie DVD” parts of the article.

and http://www.cluboverclocker.com/reviews/drives/dvd-cdr/
where the CPU usage is very high on DAE tests.

#4

Originally posted by The_Judas
The original links are :
http://www.cdrlabs.com/reviews/index.php?reviewid=81&page=Performance

Reviewed By: Ian on 11-13-2001

Lows:

Slow DVD movie read speeds.
DAE quality is questionable. Created errors in our CD DAE tests.
No headphone jack and volume control on front of drive.

Ian said playing DVD movies was no problem. I was watching DVD movies with Toshiba 4.8x DVD-ROM drive in an ABIT BX + Intel Celeron 300A system + Intel i740 AGP in 1998. But if you do a lot of CPU-intensive tasks while watching movies on PC (I don’t), it could be a problem maybe.

#5

Has anyone benchmarked a Toshiba 1612 and can post some results ?

#6

Well Mate, if it uses 50% of the CPU on (what I assume) would be a reasonably powerful pc (I am assuming the reviewers PC would have been atleat 1ghz) then it would probably just slaughter your pc.

#7

Something i didn’t notice at first place in CDrlabs review :

" … the CPU usage tests seem to have a few bugs" :a

" In this case, both DVD Speed 0.2 and DVD Tach reported a CPU usage of about 5% at 1x. Compare that to the 48% DVD Speed reported."

Well lets hope that’s true because i’ll probably pick the Toshiba in the end.

#8

Has anyone used the Sony DDU1621 DVD-ROM ? Because i’ve heard that’s also a good drive.
So now it’s Toshiba vs Sony vs Pioneer in my mind.