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Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1732
Introduction
The two things that help create a great performing DVDR drive are the hardware (laser, DSP, motor, etc.) and the drives' firmware. A drive's firmware can be the final deciding factor of its overall performance, or even the performance of a single area.It is difficult to benchmark a DVDR drive for that reason. Firmware can change once a year, or even as quick as once a day, depending on the team in charge of testing the units. Therefore, performance can change drastically from year to year, or day to day.
We have taken 6 units from 6 different manufacturers and tested two brands of media on them, including DVD+/-R, RW, +/-R DL, and CDR. The drives are BenQ's DW1640, LG's GSA-4163B, NEC's ND-3540A, Pioneer's DVR-109D, Sony's DRU-720A with updated firmware, and Toshiba's SD-R5372.
We updated the firmware on all of these drives at the time that we tested them. Note that there may be new versions of the firmware released since then. Henceforth, we cannot gaurantee that our benchmarks will have used the latest updates at the time of publication.
Our benchmark results show each drive's performance with the specific firmware installed, but also how each drive should perform compared to the other drives. Take a look at our results...
Special thanks to BenQ for supplying us with the DW1640.
Special thanks to Sony for supplying us with the DRU-720A.
Special thanks to Marken Communications for supplying us with Verbatim brand test media.
Special thanks to Antarra Communications for supplying us with Ridata brand test media.
The Test
Our benchmarks include a few tests to show the performance of each of our test drives. We first use Nero CD-DVD Speed to create a data disc, which tests the write capabilities/performance of the drive. We then run a transfer rate test to benchmark the read capabilities as well as verify the data on the disc.Finally, we use our Plextor PX-712A drive to read the media for PI/PO errors. According to the ECMA standard...
A row of an ECC Block that has at least 1 byte in error constitutes a PI error. In any 8 consecutive ECC Blocks, the total number of PI errors before correction shall not exceed 280.Now, some writers may create discs with more than 208 PI errors and they are not necessarily unreadable, but they are not the best quality discs around.
A row is 182 bytes long where the last 10 bytes contain PI (Parity Inner) information. An ECC block is 208 rows long where the last 16 rows contain the PO (Parity Outer) information. This gives us a maximum possible PI error amount of 208 errors per block and for 8 blocks after each other, this sum is of course 8 times higher giving a maximum possible amount of 1664 PI errors.
If a row of an ECC Block contains more than 5 erroneous bytes, the row is said to be “PI-uncorrectable” or PIF (Parity Inner Failures).
In any ECC Block, the number of PI-uncorrectable rows should not exceed 4.
Our test bed:
AMD Athlon64 3500+ (2.2Ghz)
Giga-byte GA-K8NXP-SLI
NVIDIA 6600GT SLI Edition (single 128MB card)
1GB (512MBx2) Corsair XMS4400
Plextor PX-712A, Firmware v1.07
Microsoft Windows XP SP2
Nero CD-DVD Speed 4.00
PlexTools Professional XL 3.03
The Competition
Firmware | Access Time (CD/DVD) |
DVD +/-R Write | DVD +/-RW Write | DVD +/-R DL Write | CD-R/RW Write | CD/DVD Read | Buffer Size | |
BenQ DW1640 | BSHB | 120ms/ 120ms |
16x/16x | 8x/6x | 8x/NA | 48x/32x | 48x/16x | 2MB |
LG GSA-4163B | A104 | 125ms/ 145ms |
16x/16x | 8x/6x | 4x/NA | 40x/24x | 40x/16x | 2MB |
NEC ND-3540A | 1.01 | 120ms/ 140ms |
16x/16x | 8x/6x | 8x/6x | 48x/32x | 40x/16x | 2MB |
Pioneer DVR-109D | 1.55 | 120ms/ 130ms |
16x/16x | 4x/6x | 6x/NA | 40x/24x | 40x/16x | 2MB |
Sony DRU-720A | JY03 | 140ms/ 135ms |
16x/16x | 8x/6x | 4x/NA | 48x/24x | 40x/16x | 2MB |
Toshiba SD-R5372 | TU55 | 100ms/ 120ms (200ms DVD-RAM) |
16x/16x | 8x/6x | 5x/NA | 48x/24x | 48x/16x | 2MB |
16x -R - MCC 03RG20
For our first test, we used Verbatim 16x DVD-R media to test the high speed -R write capabilities of each drive.
We have created ZIP files of the screenshots that we have taken of the Nero CD-DVD Speed and PlexTools benchmarks. Feel free to click on the links below to download them.
BenQ DW1640
LG GSA-4163B
NEC ND-3540A
Pioneer DVR-109D
Sony DRU-720A
Toshiba SD-R5372
16x +R - MCC 004
Our 16x DVD+R tests are performed the same way with Verbatim brand media.
We have created ZIP files of the screenshots that we have taken of the Nero CD-DVD Speed and PlexTools benchmarks. Feel free to click on the links below to download them.
BenQ DW1640
LG GSA-4163B
NEC ND-3540A
Pioneer DVR-109D
Sony DRU-720A
Toshiba SD-R5372
16x +R - Ritek R04
Here, we start to see that not all drives accepted Ritek media.
We have created ZIP files of the screenshots that we have taken of the Nero CD-DVD Speed and PlexTools benchmarks. Feel free to click on the links below to download them.
BenQ DW1640
LG GSA-4163B
NEC ND-3540A
Pioneer DVR-109D
Sony DRU-720A
Toshiba SD-R5372
4x -R DL - MKM 01RD30
BenQ DW1640
LG GSA-4163B
NEC ND-3540A
Pioneer DVR-109D
Sony DRU-720A
Toshiba SD-R5372
2.4x +R DL - MKM 001
It has been a while since all of the drives have been able to write to a disc. Take a look at the results for the older 2.4x DVD+R DL media.
We have created ZIP files of the screenshots that we have taken of the Nero CD-DVD Speed and PlexTools benchmarks. Feel free to click on the links below to download them.
BenQ DW1640
LG GSA-4163B
NEC ND-3540A
Pioneer DVR-109D
Sony DRU-720A
Toshiba SD-R5372
6x -RW - MKM 01RW6X01
We tested each drive with 6x DVD-RW media...
We have created ZIP files of the screenshots that we have taken of the Nero CD-DVD Speed and PlexTools benchmarks. Feel free to click on the links below to download them.
BenQ DW1640
LG GSA-4163B
NEC ND-3540A
Pioneer DVR-109D
Sony DRU-720A
Toshiba SD-R5372
8x +RW - MKM A03
Now, we look at each drive's performance with the new 8x DVD+RW media.
We have created ZIP files of the screenshots that we have taken of the Nero CD-DVD Speed and PlexTools benchmarks. Feel free to click on the links below to download them.
BenQ DW1640
LG GSA-4163B
NEC ND-3540A
Pioneer DVR-109D
Sony DRU-720A
Toshiba SD-R5372
6x -RW - Ritek W06
We tested 6x Ritek DVD-RW media also.
We have created ZIP files of the screenshots that we have taken of the Nero CD-DVD Speed and PlexTools benchmarks. Feel free to click on the links below to download them.
BenQ DW1640
LG GSA-4163B
NEC ND-3540A
Pioneer DVR-109D
Sony DRU-720A
Toshiba SD-R5372
8x +RW - Ritek 008
We then performed tests with 8x Ritek DVD+RW media.
We have created ZIP files of the screenshots that we have taken of the Nero CD-DVD Speed and PlexTools benchmarks. Feel free to click on the links below to download them.
BenQ DW1640
LG GSA-4163B
NEC ND-3540A
Pioneer DVR-109D
Sony DRU-720A
Toshiba SD-R5372
48x - CDR - Fujifilm
With CDR media, we expect all new drives to perform OK at best and that is just what we saw...
We have created ZIP files of the screenshots that we have taken of the Nero CD-DVD Speed and PlexTools benchmarks. Feel free to click on the links below to download them.
BenQ DW1640
LG GSA-4163B
NEC ND-3540A
Pioneer DVR-109D
Sony DRU-720A
Toshiba SD-R5372
Final Words
What makes a DVDR drive perfect? Well, for one, it has to be able to write to just about any media that we throw at it and then read it back without a hitch. A perfect write should have no PI/PO(DVDR) or C1/C2(CDR) errors on it when read back with PlexTools.So, what makes a DVDR drive acceptable, a great deal, better than the rest? The ideal, best drive out of a group should be able to write to high quality media without any problems, and should be able to read back a disc to which it wrote in the first place. It should have no problems reading a disc unless it reports a successful write incorrectly. This is what we saw in our benchmarks today. There were a few drives like the Toshiba SD-R5372 and LG GSA-4163B that could write a disc "successfully", but not read it back with its own laser.
Half of these drives failed to even see Ritek brand RW media, which cannot be caused by a bad batch of media. Sony's DRU-720A wrote to them perfectly, but even its disc had a good number of PI errors. We were really dissapointed in the NEC ND-3540A's performance when compared to drives like the BenQ DW1640, but hopefully their performance will improve as their BIOS matures.
The only drive we saw that could write to the majority of discs and quickly at that was BenQ's DW1640. It had average performance on most of the benchmarks. but always had a successful read to go with the successful write. The only disc that it could not write to was the MKM A03 8x DVD+RW.
Besides that single issue, the DW1640 has features to aid in successful writes, as well as bitsetting features to allow greater compatibility of the media to which it writes. The bitsetting utility can be downloaded from BenQ's website. Over these 6 DVDR units, we recommend the BenQ DW1640 for its performance and reliability in writing to various types of media. Expect this drive to start showing up on retail store shelves very soon.
Special thanks to BenQ for supplying us with the DW1640.
Special thanks to Sony for supplying us with the DRU-720A.
Special thanks to Marken Communications for supplying us with Verbatim brand test media.
Special thanks to Antarra Communications for supplying us with Ridata brand test media.