DVD or CDROM?

[Mattrick76]

Can you use a DVD to read cds just like a cdrom or do DVDs just read special disks made specifically for DVDs. I am looking to buy a DVD drive if it does everything a cdrom does and more, if so do you have any recommendations.


thanks,

matt

[Ziz]

A DVD drive will read normal CD's, both audio and ROMs, but the only real advantage to a DVD drive at the moment is if you want to use your computer to watch movies, and even then you need either a heavy duty video card (major hit on your wallet) or DVD decoder software (major hit on your system performance). There are maybe a dozen software titles available on DVD, and the majority of them are games. Of those, the only advantage to having the DVD version over the CD version is that the video sequences between gameplay will look nicer....big deal :-\

Speed-wise, the newest (5x-6x) DVD drives are only about as fast as a 32x CD drive. CD drive speeds just broke 50x this past week or so (Asus and Kenwood).

If you have to have the newest toys or are building a "graphics heavy" system, get a DVD, otherwise stick with a regular CD drive.

[Isos]

It all depend on how much can you get the item. Where I am, I can get a 2nd Gen DVD drive for the price of 32X CD-ROM. I choose DVD, although slower, it gives that advantage of DVD playback. I am using either ATI Rage Turbo chip or Matrox G200 chip based cards. Both has DVD software support.

[pray59]

I got a CL 2X DVD for $85 and use Cinemaster software DVD with my ATI AIWpro card. The playback for DVD is good, and cd-roms read at 20X...fast enough for me. The CL 5X DVD plays cd-roms at 32X.

[LED]

Go with the newer DVD's w/software support...starting @a little over a buck