Performance

Is 56Kbps enough?

In order to test the modem, I had to bring it home and install it in my home system, a Celeron 300A overclocked to 450MHz. Installation was painless on my Win98 SE machine, and after digging up my old Autobahn ISP account info, I was online reading Cached.net in no time.

It had been a while since I've been on the internet through a 56k connection (We have the T1 at work, and I've had DSL(384-1.5/128) since early this year), but I have to admit the dial-up connection was sufficient for most of my work related needs. Firingsquad.com and Gamers.com seemed to load just fine.

How's the ping?

Satisfied with the modem's web browsing performance, I launched Quake 3 Demo TEST to check my ping to Firingsquad's favorite local server: kitty1.stanford.edu. With a 49,333 bps connection, my ping ranged from 140 to 170, which is pretty good for a modem. Here's a shot of the dos box ping:

Kitty1 ping

(This screenshot was taken at 3 in the morning. An analog modem connection from the same location usually pings about 150-200 to kitty1 during normal hours.)

I also tested two software modems, an OEM 3Com U.S. Robotics Winmodem PCI and an OEM Diamond SupraMAX 56k PCI. I tested all the modems on three separate days at different times, and I found that the Winmodem consistently pinged 20ms higher to the same servers as the Gaming modem. It isn't quite 43%, but 20ms is still a substantial amount of latency. The Quake pings for the SupraMax modem, however, were almost exactly the same as the pings for the Gaming modem.

SupraMax PCI

The results were the same when I downclocked the CPU to 300MHz and retested the modems. The Diamond SupraMax software modem performed just as well as the 3Com Gaming modem, with both pinging about 20ms less than the Winmodem.

Gaming Mode

After installing the Gaming modem a little icon appears in your taskbar icon tray. You can use the icon to enable and disable the modem's "Gaming Mode" before you connect to your ISP. You're supposed to disable the Gaming Mode when you're just browsing the web and performing other non-gaming related activities. When you're ready to play online you have to disconnect, enable Gaming Mode, and reconnect to your ISP.

After a couple hours of "testing" in Q3demoTEST, I didn't notice any difference between playing with Gaming Mode enabled or disabled.