Panasonic LF-D311 IDE DVD-RAM/R - Page 3

CD Data Tests

- Test Method

* SCSI Mechanic v3.0x: This was used to compare the drive's I/O performance against other various CDR-W drives (see charts). We used a pressed CD containing PlexTools v1.08 for all tests.

* Nero CD Speed v0.84b was also used to check the drive's performance with pressed CDs. For that test, we also used the PlexTools v1.08 pressed CD.

- SCSI Mechanic v3.0x results

The Panasonic LF-D311 has good performance for a 24x CD-ROM reader. It managed to outperform Pioneer DVR-A03 but stays behind Ricoh MP5120A, which however is a 32x reader. The Average Random I/O score is not as good as the specs say.

- Nero CD Speed v0.84 results: (Click to see the CD Speed Graph)

Using Nero CD Speed 0.84, we can see that Panasonic LF-D311 average reading speed is 20.27X. The drive starts reading at 12.14X and ends at 26.59X.

We thought that Ricoh's MP5120A "seek times" results were impressive. Panasonic manages to further reduce the seek times around 91ms in the random access test.

- PSX Pressed Media

For this test we used the PSX game 'NBA Jam Extreme' and we ripped the image to HD with CloneCD. We measured the reading times for the Panasonic LF-D311, which was very low compared to other drives (84secs):

- CDR Media: (Click to see the CD Speed graph)

With CDR media, the Panasonic LF-D311 has an even higher reading speed of 20.7X compared to the pressed CD results.

- DVD Speed v0.52: (Graphs for DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW , DVD-RAM)

The Panasonic LF-D311 has 6X (max) DVD reading speed which enough for our daily needs.

The DVD seek times of the Panasonic LF-D311 with DVD Speed were very low, which leads us to the conclusion that there is some kind of bug here. The DVD Speed gives zero (0) seek times for random use and 63ms for full stroke.

When ripping DVD movies, the Panasonic LF-D311 give an 6764Kb/s average transfer rate, which is the highest among the three tested drives.

The Panasonic LF-D311 cannot recognize the DVD+RW media. The results with DVD-R/RW media are very good. Lastly, the drive reads the DVD-RAM media with a 2698Kb/s transfer rate (CLV).

- Movie Tests

We tested the Panasonic LF-D311 with many DVDs and our overall impression was very good. When we played the DVD movies, the average CPU Usage was 45% using PowerDVD v3.0 Build 0421. We noticed no problems during DVD playback.