Generic 50x or Kenwood 72x Truespeed

[Kenny Graves]

I am building a new system and I would like to know if I should stay with my Generc 50x or should I buy the Kenwood 72x. Would there be a be performance gain. Is it worth shelling out an extra 100 bucks or is what I have fine or gaming now and the future?

Thanks in Advance.
Kenny

[InsaneMorphius]

Kenny, what kinda system do you have, this would help us to determine if the upgrade will be better for ya. For an average MHz system, I would recommend keeping the 50X. I would even recommend it using HIGH MHz systems, as I have my system at 825MHz and am using the AOpen 50X and have had no problems.

Morphius

[NavyDood_ F/A18_Mech]

I have the kenwood 52X. I love it. I can't see any need for the 72x for me. you may want to look into the 52x instead.

I love these kenwood drives. They are quiet and they don't sound like they are going to try and take off out of your computer case. They don't need the high speed like the generic 50x or above to read.

Jim

[This message has been edited by NavyDood_ F/A18_Mech (edited 02-14-2000).]

[Kenny Graves]

I am getting an Athlon 750 with an Asus board I have 256 Megs of PC100 ram.

[Axel]

The 72 is really a waste of speed unless it is on SCSI2 or an IDE66 channel. Also - if you put an old music CD in it - if the CD isn't balanced right, it can damage the drive as it wobbles. It will also sound like ****, even with the best of speakers.

the 50 is really pushing the limits of a regular IDE channel and old music CD's will sound like ****.

I'd recommend looking at spending the extra cash and getting a DVD10X for your trouble, which doesn't cost a lot more than the 72X you are looking at.

There are those who say that the higher speed will correct the errors caused my scratches on the CD face, but this hasn't been my experience.

Also, the speed and on-board memory of your video card will play a part in your decision. If you have a high-end AGP video card and you play a bunch of CD 3D games, then it might be worth it to put in a SCSI 72X CD. If you are building a gaming server that you plan to network, then I'd spring for the 72X, otherwise, a 40X, which are very affordable, would probably do you just fine.

[NavyDood_ F/A18_Mech]

Hey Axel......
The 72x (a.k.a 72x72) is the Kenwood version that uses a beam splitter to generate seven beams that read 7 tracks in parallel at once. And it does all this at a speed compared to a 24x regular cd-rom drive if I am not mistaken. It reads all formats oc cd-'s also.

Jim

[Dominus]

Note: Some earlier Kenwood CD-ROMs do not work, or do not work well with the K7M. Namely the 40x (sold under other name), and the Kenwood 42x.

I have been informed that this problem has been solved on the newer drives, but I have not witnessed one working properly yet.

Basically, make sure that if you do get a Kenwood, make sure you are able to return it if you have problems.

Other than that, the Kenwoods are superb CD-ROMs. They actually perform *above* their rated specs, when they work properly.