CD Speed is a CD-ROM benchmark which can test the most important features of a CD-ROM drive. In this particular test we use a pressed CD-ROM with about 640MB of data as the test disk. Using a CDR or CDRW as the test disk may (or may not) impact the results slightly, so the pressed disk is the de facto standard.

Samsung SM348 - CDSpeed Data Tests

Optical Drive	SM348	SW240	SW232	SW224	SC152	DVD500M	SW216
Disk Type	Data	Data	Data	Data	Data	Data	Data
Avg Speed	38.91x	31.06x	31.65x	30.82x	38.90x	32.30x	24.94x
Random Seek Time	90ms	93ms	90ms	87ms	86ms	86ms	94ms
1/3 Seek Time	104ms	100ms	101ms	91ms	105ms	100ms	112ms
Full Seek Time	175ms	160ms	169ms	137ms	181ms	164ms	192ms
CPU use: 1X	0%	1%	1%	1%	1%	0%	1%
CPU use: 2X	1%	2%	2%	3%	2%	1%	2%
CPU use: 4X	3%	5%	4%	7%	4%	2%	5%
CPU use: 8X	6%	10%	9%	11%	8%	3%	9%
Disk Recognition Time:	9.10s	4.63s	5.2s	9.15s	6.30s	0.01s	-
Disk Eject Time	1.31s	1.33s	1.39s	1.12s	1.05s	1.19s	1.19s
Disk Load Time:	1.21s	0.98s	1.080s	1.10s	1.14s	7.26s	1.14s

CD speed tests are important, but as the size of hard drives have ballooned, less and less of us are playing games, or running software from the CDROM as we used to long ago when storage was smaller, and much more expensive. The SM348 boasts the best average speed of the bunch (38.9X) and among the slowest disc recognition times. The rest of the test variables are in line with the other drives.

CD Speed is a CD-ROM benchmark which can test the most important features of a CD-ROM drive. In this particular test we use a pressed Audio CD with about 65 minutes of audio on it as the test disk. CDROM's in general have a harder time processing audio data, and hence the results can be drastically slower than that of data tests alone.

Samsung SM348 - CDSpeed Audio Tests

Optical Drive	SM348	SW240	SW232	SW224	SC152	DVD500M	SW216
Disk Type	Audio	Audio	Audio	Audio	Audio	Audio	Audio
Avg Speed	30.56x	27.44x	24.89x	22.98x	18.97x	29.96x	22.32x
Random Seek Time	149ms	92ms	93ms	86ms	88ms	88ms	97ms
1/3 Seek Time	186ms	106ms	107ms	102ms	98ms	95ms	98ms
Full Seek Time	276ms	161ms	170ms	157ms	167ms	161ms	163ms
DAE Quality	10	10	10	10	10	10	10
CPU use: 1X	1%	1%	1%	2%	1%	0%	2%
CPU use: 2X	2%	3%	3%	6%	3%	1%	4%
CPU use: 4X	4%	7%	7%	14%	5%	2%	7%
CPU use: 8X	100%	14%	14%	23%	11%	4%	13%
Disk Recog. Time:	7.49s	3.99s	9.16s	8.38s	4.35s	0.01s	-
Disk Eject Time:	1.49s	1.33s	1.37s	1.10s	1.06s	1.19s	1.18s
Disk Load Time:	1.23s	0.98s	1.08s	1.10s	1.14s	7.33s	1.14s

Samsungs' SM348 drive nets an improvement over the other contenders here, reaching an average CD-audio read speed of 30.56X. CPU usage jumps up to 100% at 8X; we're not quite sure why this occurred.