Hey, I wasn't sure where to post this, so I'll throw it in gaming since it primarily has to do with games. Are virtual CD-ROM drive programs like DaemonTools or GameDrive viable options for gaming? I've heard that the processor power necessary to emulate the drives really eats away at game performance, but I'm very intrigued by not needing to change CDs every time I want to play a game. I haven't seen any real reviews of any virtual drive programs, so what's the deal with them? Are they worth trying out with the latest games like BF2? Or will they really slow down my computer? Specs: 3500+ Venice SLI GeForce 6600GTs 300GB Maxtor SATA Gigabyte K8 Pro mobo Thanks

there is no impact in perfomance. In fact emulated cd's take less time to be "read" when the game asks for it. At most an insignificant amount of memory will be used that probably won't hurt a single fps. Free

Unfortunately many games do not like virtual drives running, F.E.A.R for instance will not even run if a virtual drive is enabled, i have used Virtual drive for some games but mainly for things like Encarta. If the game allows it then its worthwhile, but bear in mind it sucks up a huge amount of hard drive space for the disk images. Woof Always proof-read carefully to see if you any words out.

Hard drive space I'm not concerned with, as I have 300GB of space on my just-for-gaming computer. And yes I've heard of anti-piracy programs like StarForce that seem to hate virtual drive programs, my friend plays F.E.A.R. with GameDrive and it works just fine. I think I'll download GameDrive and give it a shot!

u could always use a no cd crack, wehich I have had to do because i use pinnacle instant disk which installs a virtual drive as standard and its too much of a pain in the ass to disable it Woof Always proof-read carefully to see if you any words out.