Afreey 56X CD ROM Drive

Test System

First lets get on with the SiSoft Sandra CD-Rom/DVD ROM Benchmark scores. We used a 562MB MS Office CD as our testing CD-ROM.

Just for our curiosity we wanted to see how well this drive would stand against a Kenwood drive. Even though we couldn’t get our hands on the 72 TrueX drive, we got the next best thing; their 52 TrueX. Now one thing we must keep in mind is that Kenwood CD-ROMS use a more advanced reading technique and the price gap between these drives are substantial. While a Kenwood drive retails for around $116 the Afreey drive costs only $37. Another thing worth noting is that the Kenwood drive will not read most CD-RWs. Even if the CD is slightly damaged there are occasions when the drive will not recognize the CD. Having said that lets take a look at the scores. DMA has been enabled on all tests.

Afreey 56X Drive

As expected the Afreey 56X drive turns out the fastest score here. We ran the test many times and the results were the same, which erases the doubt of false scores 🙂

Kenwood 52 TrueX

Not too sure if this is a bug or not, but we did run the tests a number of times just to make sure. For some reason Sandra detects the drive speed as 20X for the Afreey drive. Anyway bottom line is the Kenwood drive is damn fast.

Alright, on to some CD 99 scores. First we wanted to see what kind of a performance hitch we get by disabling DMA. So take a look at the scores

DMA Disabled	DMA Enabled

One fact we all know is that we’ll never achieve the speeds displayed on any drive. The average speed you’ll achieve of CD-ROM/DVD drives are considerably lower than the speed claimed by the manufacture. As you can see the Afreey 56X drive achieves a speed of only 41.36X on average. This is the speed you’re likely to receive on day-to-day use. This is a problem that plagues every optical drive by any manufacture and is simply not reserved to Afreey alone. Nevertheless achieving a score above 40X on average is simply fantastic.

Kenwood 52TrueX drive (DMA Enabled)

I couldn’t believe my eyes at first, then I was hit by reality that the Afreey drive outperformed the Kenwood drive in this instance. We re-performed the test many times but the results we the same. However when it comes to average speed, which is what we always look for in a drive, the Kenwood drive still leads the way. This too is only by a 6X margin.