Encore, Cube customer....
Little big screen. (Creative Labs PC- DVD Encore DXR2 kit) (Hardware Review)(Brief Article)(Evaluation)
Dave Salvator
02/01/98
Computer Gaming World
Page 132
COPYRIGHT 1998 Golden Empire Publications Inc.
DVD represents a major paradigm shift in storage, content distribution, and media presentation. Or something. The marketing of DVD has been a study in hyperbole. But like it or not, DVD is here to stay, and will eventually supplant conventional CD-ROM drives in PCs. So what does this mean for gamers? Two words: bigger bit-bucket. Yes, you'll also get MPEG-2 video playback and Dolby Digital (AC-3) 6-channel audio for movies, but very few games make effective use of full-motion video in actual gameplay. So DVD 's main contribution for gamers will be gobs of storage space--from 7 to more than 25 times that of a traditional CD-ROM. This bigger bit-bucket translates into more detailed graphics, higher-quality sounds, and better-looking trailers.
One major roadblock to DVD has been the price of the kits, which usually range from $600 to $800. But Creative Labs brings in its new PC- DVD Encore DXR2 for under $400. The kit includes an EIDE 2x DVD -ROM drive and an MPEG-2 decoder board. The bundleware includes DVD versions of WING COMMANDER IV and that oldie but goodie, DRAGON'S LAIR. Other notables: S-video output from the MPEG-2 decoder board, and SP/DIF digital audio output to route to a Dolby AC-3-enabled amplifier.
Installation proves fairly painless, though by its nature, it's a somewhat involved process. You'll need an available 5-1/4-inch drive bay and a free PCI-slot. The DVD -ROM drive comes preconfigured as an IDE slave device and can be placed on either your primary or secondary EIDE controller. Just to make the decoder board installation a little more interesting, I installed it into a system that already had a 3Dfx-based 3D-only board to see if that would give PC- DVD Encore any trouble. It didn't. Once both devices were physically in place, I fired up the system. The DVD -ROM drive was detected on POST, and when Windows 95 came up, I fed it a driver disk for the detected DVD decoder board, and the unit's drivers were installed. Next, I installed Creative's PC- DVD Player for playing DVD titles, and the unit was good to go. Though not enabled by default, the DVD -ROM drive supports EIDE bus-mastering, which lowers CPU usage during transfers. Another note: This second-generation DVD -ROM drive can read CD-R media, something first-generation drives couldn't do.
Although DVD -ROM will play an increasingly important role in PCs, its performance as a CD-ROM drive, though improved, still falls short of traditional drives. Creative rates the PC- DVD 's drive as a 20x CD-ROM drive. But in WinBench 98's CD-ROM WinMark test, Creative's DVD -ROM turned in a score of 961, compared to a 1,320 by the test system's installed 24x Toshiba drive--making the DVD drive only about three-quarters as fast as the CD-ROM drive. Other performance news is mixed: While the DVD -ROM's CPU usage came in at 3.6 percent, compared to the CD-ROM's 5.3 percent, its access time was 148 milliseconds, versus the CD-ROM's 111. So if you're hell-bent on having a DVD -ROM unit in your rig, you'd do well to hold on to your existing CD-ROM drive, and run both.
I also ran a wide variety of DVD movie content on the PC- DVD Encore, and the results were, by and large, impressive. At 800x600x16-bit color, image quality was smooth--both in a window and full-screen--thanks to Encore's bilinear interpolation filtering. This type of filtering smoothes pixelation when the playback image is scaled up, but will sometimes cause a blurry effect if not done well. Blurring was minimal, even on credits. When I upped the resolution to 1024x768 and 1280x1024, image quality headed south somewhat, with some visible deinterlacing that produced jaggies on vertical lines. The Encore's bundled DVD player features a remote-control-like interface, and is readily navigated for playing DVD content. The player can also play MPEG-1 and VideoCD content.
Creative's second-generation DVD kit gets a lot right, including the price. But DVD -RAM drives--which let you write data as well as read it--should ship by the end of 1998. And while DVD -based games will begin to ship in 1998, there's no pressing need yet to have DVD in a gaming box. But if you just have to have DVD , this part warrants a look.
APPEAL: Gamers who must have DVD in their rig.
PROS: Easy hardware installation; aggressively priced.
CONS: DVD 's throughput performance still can't match a typical CD-ROM drive; some installation headaches; a few configuration problems with DVD player.
Price: $379
Vendor: Creative Labs
(800) 998-5227
www.soundblaster.com |
