Almost all internal (PCI) modems and USB modems are software modems, good
hardware modems are harder and harder to find. I strongly recommend to stay
away from all winModem/softmodem, show industry what we (customers) want,
those cheapo so called "modems" don't worth the money you spend on them (too
much hassle).

If you play games, no matter how faster your CPU is, winModem/softModem
should be always out of your option, every bit of CPU power count. todays
games ask more and more processor power, I can notice the speed difference
between a soft/win Modem and a hardware modem on 1G+ machine.

Jun Qian

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dennis Noble" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 2:55 AM
Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] Hardware vs Win Modem Speed


> I think that there is a misconception that all WinModem's are softmodems.
> There are win modems that use a hardware based datapump and controller.
They
> are simply jumperless and use windows to assign the IRQ and Com port. A
> software type or soft modem, uses software and the computers processing
> ability to do part or all of these functions. Your US Robotics may have
both
> a controller and a data pump on board or it may have a hardware type
datapump
> but no controller in which case your computer only has to emulate the
> controller. To my knowledge, USR never made HSP type modem which has
neither
> a controller or a data pump.
>
> While I have not tested any modems lately, in the past, I have tested
> WinModems against both standard jumpered type modems and software modems.
On
> slower machines, I was using a P166, the only modems that tested slower
were
> the software type modems. When I used faster systems, blazingly fast
350Mhz
> systems, only the cheaper HSP type modems were any slower and the better
> software modems showed no difference as long as you didn't try to run any
> other applications at the same time. At 450Mhz, I would guess that you
could
> probably play game and use your modem and not notice a decline in
performance.
>
> While I am still no fan of the software modem, with systems running at
1Ghz
> or better, I imagine that most systems would hardly flinch at tacking the
> responsibility of any type modem onto them. Unless you have a specific
reason
> to want to force your system to work around a modem that you set the
> resources on, I would find a good quality WinModem (which you probably
> already have) .

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