CD Speed is a CD-ROM benchmark which can test the most important features of a CD-ROM drive. In this particular test we use a pressed CD-ROM with about 640MB of data as the test disk. Using a CDR or CDRW as the test disk may (or may not) impact the results slightly, so the pressed disk is the de facto standard.

MSI 8340 - CDSpeed Data Tests

Optical Drive	MSI 8340	SW-240	SW-232	SW-224	SC-152	DVD-500M	SW-216
Disk Type	Data	Data	Data	Data	Data	Data	Data
Avg Speed	30.69x	31.06x	31.65x	30.82x	38.90x	32.30x	24.94x
Random Seek Time	94ms	93ms	90ms	87ms	86ms	86ms	94ms
1/3 Seek Time	98ms	100ms	101ms	91ms	105ms	100ms	112ms
Full Seek Time	165ms	160ms	169ms	137ms	181ms	164ms	192ms
CPU use: 1X	0%	1%	1%	1%	1%	0%	1%
CPU use: 2X	1%	2%	2%	3%	2%	1%	2%
CPU use: 4X	5%	5%	4%	7%	4%	2%	5%
CPU use: 8X	8%	10%	9%	11%	8%	3%	9%
Disk Recognition Time:	0.01s	4.63s	5.2s	9.15s	6.30s	0.01s	-
Disk Eject Time	1.32s	1.33s	1.39s	1.12s	1.05s	1.19s	1.19s
Disk Load Time:	7.60s	0.98s	1.080s	1.10s	1.14s	7.26s	1.14s

While average read speeds are never quite at the listed rate of the optical drive, we must take solace in the fact that near the end of the test the MSI 8340 does reach the 40X mark (as shown in the graph above). An average rate of 30.69X on a data disk is pretty consistent with what we have been seeing from CDRW's lately, and therefore isn't much of a surprise. CPU usage stays conservative and jumps from just 0% to 8% which is very nice compared to the reference drives we compared it against.

CD Speed is a CD-ROM benchmark which can test the most important features of a CD-ROM drive. In this particular test we use a pressed Audio CD with about 65 minutes of audio on it as the test disk. CDROM's in general have a harder time processing audio data, and hence the results can be drastically slower than that of data tests alone.

MSI 8340 - CDSpeed Audio Tests

Optical Drive	MSI 8340	SW-240	SW-232	SW-224	SC152	DVD-500M	SW-216
Disk Type	Audio	Audio	Audio	Audio	Audio	Audio	Audio
Avg Speed	29.58x	27.44x	24.89x	22.98x	18.97x	29.96x	22.32x
Random Seek Time	134ms	92ms	93ms	86ms	88ms	88ms	97ms
1/3 Seek Time	109ms	106ms	107ms	102ms	98ms	95ms	98ms
Full Seek Time	520ms	161ms	170ms	157ms	167ms	161ms	163ms
DAE Quality	10	10	10	10	10	10	10
CPU use: 1X	1%	1%	1%	2%	1%	0%	2%
CPU use: 2X	1%	3%	3%	6%	3%	1%	4%
CPU use: 4X	3%	7%	7%	14%	5%	2%	7%
CPU use: 8X	6%	14%	14%	23%	11%	4%	13%
Disk Recog. Time:	0.02s	3.99s	9.16s	8.38s	4.35s	0.01s	-
Disk Eject Time:	1.31s	1.33s	1.37s	1.10s	1.06s	1.19s	1.18s
Disk Load Time:	7.60s	0.98s	1.08s	1.10s	1.14s	7.33s	1.14s

Audio disk benchmarks show a lead over all the drives except the Panasonic DVD-500M. CPU usage at 8X is really good (just 6%) and the other parameters seem to follow the numbers of the Panasonic as well. I wouldn't be too surprised if the core drive was manufactured by the same company. Anyway, it's good to see that the MSi 8340 is meeting our expectations and offering some very good drive performance thus far. Full seek times are really low however.