Stats don't amount to a hill of beans however if the real-world performance doesn't live up to the hardware's potential. To find out if the ASUS CD-S500 was really "all that" (ok, so I watched Rikki Lake today…sue me) we tested it using Ziff Davis' CD WinBench 99 synthetic benchmark suite, along with some large CD data transfers.

Here are the specifications for the two identically outfitted test rigs we utilized, as well as the results:

Test rig:
Intel Pentium 2-450 CPU
ABIT BX6 v2.0 Mainboard (Slot-1 - Intel 440BX)
Goldstar 128MB PC-133 SDRAM (Prototype)
Canopus Spectra 3200 16MB AGP 2D/3D Accelerator
Quantum3D X-24 Voodoo2 SLI PCI 3D Accelerator
Adaptec 2490UW Ultra-Wide SCSI Controller
IBM Ultrastar 9 8.4GB UWSCSI HD
Diamond Monster Sound MX300 3D PCI Sound Card
Win95 OSR 2.1

Test Conditions and Specifications:
All tests were run a total of three times with the results averaged to determine final score.