help in selecting dvd rom

[eBast]

hello guys,

i would like your opinion on two matters...

1. I would like to buy a DVD ROM, and the choices available to me are .. Asus 16x 48x and a sony 16x 48x. which among these two is a better buy ?

2.I already have a creative cd drive as secondary slave and a sony 215e as secondary master. A samsung 40 gb hdd is primary master leaving only the secondary slave for the DVD ROM. Will there be any performance degradation for the hdd or the dvd rom in such a setup ?

I already tried a sony 16x 40x borrowed from my friend in the same setup, but the movie does not play smoothly nor does the sound.

in this situation, will the asus dvd be better as it offers ATA 100 Support ? or it will not make any difference ?

any other combination will give better picture and sound quality ?

Please advice..

Athlon XP 2000+
256 MB ram
Asus A7N 266 VM
Pixel view Geforce MX 440 64 mb
Samsung 40 gb 7200

eBast

[TheWizard]

A friend of mine has the Sony 16X/40X DVD-ROM as well, and I wasn't impressed with its performance either. I'm not sure if the 16X/48X model is any better. If you don't trust Sony after seeing the 16X/40X then your answer is simple, get the ASUS. The ATA 100 support it offers will only help when you transfer data from CD or DVD in the DVD-ROM drive to your hard drive. The transfer rate will be faster than that of a ATA 33 drive.

Regarding IDE setup, I recommend putting the Samsung hard drive and ASUS DVD-ROM on the same IDE chain (if, in fact, you get the ASUS). That way, you keep all the ATA 100 devices on the same IDE cable, just make sure you are using 80 conductor ATA 100 IDE cable. If you get the Sony drive, which only supports ATA 33, I'd still put it on the same chain as the Samsung HDD. The hard drive will still transfer at 100MB/s no matter what type of drive is in the primary slave position, provided you use 80 conductor ATA 100 IDE cable.

[dhc014]

The Sony DDU-1621 isn't a very good drive, but the DDU-1612 is good. 1621 = BTC, 1612 = Lite-ON LTD-166S