First, I would like to personally thank the modem manufacturers that contributed modems for this test and comparison. The time and trouble they took to export their products to Canada, and the costs involved in shipping, import taxes, and duty, made this somewhat intimidating, but, they graciously contributed nonetheless.
They are: Boca, Diamond, Viking, CNet, and Multitech.
Although the list is very short, the range of modem types is extensive. Included in the testing are Internal ISA, and PCI, both hard and soft modems, External 9-pin serial, and USB models. Chipsets contained in the modems tested are Cirrus Logic, PCTel, Rockwell/Conexant, and Lucent. Notably missing are U.S.Robotics, who no longer make consumer modems, ESS, and Motorolla.
I personally included my own Diamond Supra Express external, an Askey HCF PCI modem, and a questionable PCTel winmodem.
Instead of including pages of tables and graphs comparing all the models tested, I am going to give you the best and the worst, with comments about some of the models in between. My final thoughts and recommendations are based mostly on speed* and stability**, but I will include observations about packaging, looks, ease of installation, software bundle, and any other pertinent information that caught my attention.
*Speed: The initial connect rate of the modem.
**Stability: The ability of the modem to connect and stay connected for long periods of time.
Although the main purpose of this test was to determine the all round best modem, based on download speed and stability, a few other factors come in to consideration. For external modems, the “footprint”, or amount of room it takes on the desktop, and for internals, ease of installation. Driver version, chipset, upgradeability, and looks also contribute to the overall “score”.
Although I did not rate the modems on a scale, I installed and tested every modem I received, more than once. This can become an inf conflict nightmare, especially when dealing with winmodems, but I managed it all with as few changes to the basic system as possible.
As a power user, with tweaking and overclocking being part of many user’s systems, the modems were all tested on a “tweaked” system, with the boring details below:
Processor: Intel Celeron 466PPGA, MSI slotket, overclocked to 700mhz. (7x100mhz)
Motherboard: ASUS P3B-F, 440BX chipset.
Modified generic tower case, 300w P/S, 2 CPU fans (front and back), and 3 case fans.
128 Megabytes of generic PC100 SDRAM
Creative Sound Blaster Ensoniq PCI sound card.
Creative 32x CD-ROM
IBM 10gigabyte, 7200rpm hard drive in 2 equal partitions.
Fujitsu 3.5″ floppy drive.
Software and OS: Windows 98 (not SE), TweakUI, TclockEx, Asus utility Probe V2.11
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