Spring 2004 DVD Performance Roundup: More DVD Dual 8X
by Kristopher Kubicki on April 28, 2004 7:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Conclusions
Our recent roundup made us think long and hard about the performance of many of today's drives. We were mildly surprised on how few designs really exist in the DVD recorder market; the choices are fewer than you think.Like with any roundup, the ultimate equalizer is always the price. Is there a need to buy a $300 burner if a $100 one performs almost the same? The newest drive in our review, the Gigabyte GO-W0808A, has not even hit store shelves yet, but when it does, it is expected to cost around $115. The Toshiba SD-R5272 cost us $93 last week, while the NuTech DDW-082 and the NEC 2500A cost about $85. Our most expensive drive, the Sony DRU-530A retails for about $140. Obviously, the lower priced drives have a slight edge over the more expensive drives. In the case of Sony, we proved that while their cost is high, it clearly pays off in the Tech Support benchmark.
When we first set out to do this roundup with NuTech DDW-081 firmware upgraded to a DDW-082 (with the B364 firmware), the drive was almost unusable. We went out and bought a DDW-082 instead, and then flashed our drive to the B372 firmware. The difference was night and day concerning media support and errors. Incredibly, this drive went from one of our worst performers to our best performer with simple firmware upgrades. Another great feature of this drive is the supported 8X write strategies on 4X media. The fact that this drive is also the cheapest drive in our roundup makes NuTech's DDW-082 a true underdog champion. The DDW-082 deserves our editor's choice award for this roundup.
There are some exciting drives on the way. 16X NuTech drives should be here before the summer (Dual Layer compatible). Plextor's 12X drive is already starting to show up here and there (CyberDrive already has a 12X drive based on the same Sanyo chipset). MSI and Plextor both have SATA drives on the horizon, and Philips and Sony both have Dual Layer DVD recorders of which we should see samples in the next couple weeks. Stay tuned for more DVD reviews!
Special Thanks to Sony and Verbatim for providing media for this review.
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CrazeeHorse - Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - link
Kristopher, define what you mean by performance. If you mean burn speed, of course it will be similar in different drives that use the same chipset, as their burn speeds are defined by the chipset! However, if you take a wider view,IMO, performance also refers to the burn strategies,media compatibility, media preferences.. all of which can vary from drive to drive, even if they are based on the same chipset. Case in point.. Pioneer 107 and NEC 2500A use the same co-developed chipset. However, NEC allows burning of certain 4X +R media (eg. RicohJPNR01) at 6X, while Pioneer limits them to 4X in their official firmware. NEC's drives have been reported to have problems with some batches of RitekG04 -R media, while Pioneer's drive seems to burn them without any issues.So I reiterate.. performance should cover a whole lot of other parameters,besides the ones defined by the chipset.
Oh,Ian, this is bhairavp from CDRLabs.
KristopherKubicki - Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - link
Its OK. The similarities i claimed though were in performance, not features. The operative word is similar also. So yes, in some instances it would be like saying motherboard and and motherboard b perform similarly because they have the same chipset.When it comes down to it, if the Memorex, ASUS and Pioneer drives are all very similar (well actually identical), wouldnt you just want the cheapest?
Kristopher
Ian@CDRlabs - Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - link
Sorry Kristopher, I didn't get your email. Send it again.Just to be nitpicky, there are differences between the 2500A and DDW8800, at least cosmetic. The AOpen is missing a head phone jack. The MSI and Sony drives also have their differences. In particular, the Sony is lacking HD-Burn support.
While those are good examples of companies using the same OEM, I wouldn't say that the Gigabyte (OEM BTC?) performs like the Lite-On 812S just because they have the same chipset. That's like saying this and this motherboard perform the same because they have the same Intel chipset. You Anandtech guys should be able to relate to that.
arswihart - Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - link
Can somebody tell me what bit setting is and why I should care about it? ThanksKristopherKubicki - Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - link
Ian i sent you an email the other day and you never responded ;)There is 0 difference between the NEC2500A and the AOpen DDW8800. Same with the MSI and Sony, and the ASUS and Pioneer. They just use the same OEM so all the components are identical. Manufacturers get really upset when you say stuff like that, but its the truth.
Kristopher
Ian@CDRlabs - Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - link
You might want to try KProbe2. It now has separate PI/PO settings.I was a little surprised by the "would expect similar performance" comments. While some of drives use the same chipset, there are a lot of other differences (Ex: firmware, pickups, etc) that effect performance.
Also, when are you going to start including writing times to go along with the average writing speeds? IMO, this isn't the way to show which drive is "fastest".
KristopherKubicki - Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - link
#6: I heard otherwise about using the DDW-061 to DDW-081 utility on the DDW-082 and bumping your 8X burns to 10X. I havent tried it though thats something i will look at after finals maybe.Kristopher
Booty - Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - link
'didja *read* the article??'Nope, sure didn't... I skip through parts of most AT articles because they either get too wordy or I just don't have time to read them thoroughly. In those cases, I skip to the conclusion for a summary. My bad.
CrazeeHorse - Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - link
Number 2 : You can download the B372 firmware from www.rpc1.orgNumber 4 : Nopes.. you're outta luck.
Mr Kubicki.. Why didn't you test KProbe @ 4X/8ECC as is being used @ CDFreaks and CDRLabs? The original scanning PI/PO specs call for 1X/1ECC scanning, so Max/1ECC is not going to give you correct results.
ALso, there is NO hack for making the Nu081 burn at 10X, and their bitsetting utility is perfect. The disc is recognised as DVD-ROM by all the DVDROM drives I've tried, so it seems to work just fine;)
l3ored - Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - link
the nutech and toshiba error charts dont come up