CD Speed 99 ver 0.66 beta

72X Avg Start End Speed 65.02x 44.23x 72.10x Random 1/3 Full Seek Times 97ms 105ms 176ms 2x 4x 8x CPU Usage 2% 5% 10%

This screen shot from CD Speed99 illustrates read speed (in green) vs. spindle speed (in yellow). In the image above from the 72X drive, and the one below from the 40X Sony drive we see that that both are operating on the CAV principle. Constant Angular Velocity CD-ROM's rotate the disk at a constant speed, resulting in slower data transfers at the beginning of the disc. In the case of the 72X drive, data rates start off at about 44X and work their way up 72X by the end of the disc even as the RPM lowers. From the numbers we can see that the average speed is about 65X.

40X Avg Start End Speed 26.8x 16.05x 35.01x Random 1/3 Full Seek Times 85ms 89ms 163ms 2x 4x 8x CPU Usage 1% 3% 5%

In the second example with the 40X Sony CD-ROM drive, we see almost Constant Angular Velocity hovering just above 16X. As the laser moves progressively closer to the outside edge of the disc the read speed increases, to a maximum of 35X, yielding an average of 26X across the entire disc.

Kenwood Demo Disk

The Kenwood Zen Demo Disk works by flashing 50-odd high res images over and over. By this operation it is able to calculate the transfer rate at which data is flying off the disc, the rate at which individual frames are displayed, and the amount of data being handled by the video adapter. The Kenwood 72X drive scored significantly higher than each of the comparison drives.

CD WinBench 99

The results of our WinMark 99 test say it all. Performance more than twice that of the reference 40X Sony drive.