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CD-ROM
& DVD drive optimization tips Yes,
you can actually enhance your CD-ROM/ DVD/ CD-writer performance quite a
bit. You can particularly improve DVD playback a good bit. Drivers Download
& install the latest drivers/firmware updates for your drive then
& update as appropriate. Go to DriversHQ
for links to manufacturers. General First
go into "System properties" (Right click on My Computer,
select Properties) & select the "Device manager" tab.
Click on the + sign next to "CD-ROM" & double click on
your CD-ROM (or DVD, etc.).
Next,
go back into System Properties click on the Settings tab &
put a tick in the DMA box. DMA increases the drive access speed,
as a result this should speed up your drive, if you experience any
trouble afterwards, just simply go back & untick the DMA box to
disable it. Also
tick the Sync data transfer box. Again, if you experience any
trouble afterwards, just simply go back & untick the box to disable
it. Tick/untick
Auto insert notification at your own discretion. Leaving it
ticked will allow say, the autoplay of audio CD’s. Unticking it will
disable this & other options such as auto-install on some games and
applications when inserted. Restart
the PC for the change to take effect. Next,
go into "System properties" once more. Select the
"Performance" tab, and "File system". Click
on the "CD-ROM" tab. Slide the slider all the way to the
right, & select Quad-speed or higher for
"Optimize access pattern for". You should use this
setting even if you have slower than a quad-speed CD-ROM for better
performance. Click
on Ok then. Reboot as necessary. This file will increase your CD-ROM's cache, thus increasing its performance. CD-Quick
cache For
the more hardcore people out there, particularly those with CD-writers
& DVD drives. CD-Quick
cache
may be more suitable for you. With this program you “Can use up to
64MB of RAM or 512MB of hard disk for a CD-ROM cache”. This amount
can be changed as you see fit. While
it does actually work (& work very well at that) it may not be of
too much benefit to people that mainly game on the PC or those where the
CD usage is minimal (playing audio CD’s doesn’t count), the $29
price for registering may also turn you off it. NOTE
– You can use either RAM or the Disk for the caching purposes,
but not both. Set
the Disk cache to 32MB or so (depending on usage you may need more, or
less). Unless you have over 128MB RAM I wouldn’t recommend using the
RAM for caching. Although this may depend on whether or not you use the
PC for other RAM intensive applications, such as games, or multimedia
editing, like Adobe Photoshop. Seeing as the RAM is faster you may not
need to set it quite as high as the Disk cache.
DVD
tweaking For
those out there with DVD drives that play DVD movies (no laughing) I
suggest downloading DVD
Genie. This will allow you to select some advanced options in
software DVD players such as WinDVD or Cinemaster as well as change the
regional settings on the players (for those with region unlocked
drivers). The version used in this guide is 3.29. I
use Software Cinemaster99 as my DVD player (as it’s the best, in my
opinion). As you can see this allows for far more customisation than is
allowed via the Control Panel options. Select your own DVD player &
choose which options to use as you see fit. The settings pictured below
give me the best quality image/sound for my machine. Although
the settings below are based on the Cinemaster player they can be
applied to the other players if selectable.
Select
Region
– Select the region of your chosen DVD. Decode
setting
– If you have any of the cards mentioned in the drop down menu, choose
that, otherwise choose Full quality (CPU). If you have a Pentium
3 you can select Katami enhanced full quality (CPU). Sample
rate
– Choose the playback frequency. 48,000Hz being the best
quality. Use this if you have a good soundcard & fast CPU. Select
44100Hz if you have an older soundcard, such as an AWE64. Only choose 22050Hz
if you’re desperate for a performance increase, albeit with a loss of
sound quality. Deinterlacing
– Choose Force weave for best quality, if unsure select Smart
detect. Enable
hardware optimisation
– Only untick this for trouble shooting purposes only. Enable
3:2 pulldown reconstruction
– Tick this for smoother playback. Apply
settings retroactively
– Tick this to apply settings to previous versions of the
Cinemaster engine. Apply
only region setting
– Only Tick this if you only want to change the region setting. Extra
settings (click on More options) Surface
flip mode
– Controls in non-hardware assisted cases how the multiple buffering
of decoder surfaces is handled. Select Soft De-interlace for the
best quality if you meet the 400Mhz+ CPU & 4MB+ graphics card
requirement. Surface
Flip Position
– Similar to the above setting, select your video if shown, e.g.
Voodoo3 owners should select Bottom of the overlay. Sound
Compression Mode
– Select Normal. The default is Compressed & does
not yield the best quality sound. AC3
downsample mode
– Leave it at the Default setting, which is Filter #5.
Changing to a lower setting will free up some resources but reduce sound
quality.
AC3
SP/DIF out mode
– Select the use of any SP/DIF module. Select your soundcard if
applicable or choose Disabled. Dynamic
Audio Range Compensation
- Selects dynamic ranges in Dolby Digital (AC-3) decoding. Setting both
sliders to 0 will give the best quality sound. Dialog
Normalization
– Keeps the average dialog level of an audio stream at a constant dB
level when checked. Enforce
flip sync
– Untick this setting unless you experience image
tearing or flickering. This may fix it. Intel
740 page flipping
– If you have an i740 card tick this, otherwise untick
it. Triple
buffering
– Tick this for smoother playback. DVD
Max
– If you have a G400 tick it, otherwise untick it. 3d
Audio
– Tick this to enable 3d audio. Untick to disable. Use
LFE decoding
– Used with high quality speakers this will give a more dynamic sound.
On low quality speakers it could damage them. Pro-Logic
Sound
- Selecting this provides support for Pro-Logic amplifiers. Untick
this if you have no Pro-Logic decoder. Enable
SP/DIF
– Tick it to enable SP/DIF output. Untick to disable. The
other available settings may be required by some cards for
correct playback. If unsure & playback if ok leave them at their
default setting, unticked. Finally
select Apply to apply the changes you have made. Trouble-shooting Some
games that play movies from the CD drive (such as Tiberian Sun) can
improve playback by lowering the read-ahead cache size. If you find that
movie/audio playback is stuttering you should try doing so. For
optimal performance do not use any DOS CD-ROM drivers. Remove such
references from the config.sys/autoexec.bat file. These are only
needed in DOS mode. Conclusion |
