LiteOn Dual-Layer DVD RW SOHW-1693S Review - Benchmarking
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Benchmarking
Actual benchmarking of a DVD writer can go into many different tests. Basically I will be testing how long it takes to burn at the rated speeds. I purchased the fastest media that I could find at my local staples inserted them into my drive and burned full data onto each DVD as I watched the speeds.
Test Bed:
- AMD 3000+ Venice Core
- 9x200HTT
- 2x512MB Twinmos PC3200
- 2.5337 2.7v
- Asus A8N SLI Premium
- Hitachi Deskstar 80GB SATA HDD
- Nero 7 Platinum
The first media that I had tested was my DVD+R media. I am using Verbatim 16x discs as they are a great quality disc, plus they were the only manufacturer who offered dual-layer DVDs at my local store. I could not find any 4x dual-layer DVD’s at the store, so I picked up Verbatim 2.4X dual-layer DVDs. To my surprise when I was running my tests, they were capable of burning at 4x. For CD-R media, I had used Fuji 48x CD-R discs.
First test is DVD+R; these DVDs finished very quickly. My older 8x DVD writer took considerably longer, in fact twice as long at best. The DVD+R discs burned with an elapsed time of 5 minutes and 55 seconds, at an average speed of 11.91x. I accidentally loaded up a background application during the test where you can clearly see a decrease in speed, down to 10x. But it still peaked at 15.95x, so it minimally affected the results of the test. Simply put, the drive progressively gets faster as it burns.
The second test was DVD+R dual-layer, recording dual layers allows users to record twice as much data onto a single disc all on one burn. Basically the ability to burn at 4x in dual layer mode is similar to burning two DVD+R discs at 8x speed. My media wasn’t rated to burn at this speed, but during the tests all 8.1GB of my backed up data was recorded flawlessly at 4x. This was all done with a total burn time from start to finish of 26 minutes and 42 seconds, at an average speed of 4.07x. The drive did not speed up much faster, nor slow down during the burn.
My final test was burning a regular CD-R disc. I feel this test is still important since many users will still be burning audio CDs and backing up data on CD-R discs. When I had tested this drive, I had used a 48x disc. What I had found was the drive actually surpassed its rated write speed and peaked at 49.4x, and it had an average burn speed of 37.3x and finished creating the CD in 2 minutes and 31 seconds. This drive is great since few CD recorders write faster than this drive. Writing faster than it’s actually rated always makes a product look better.
Next: Conclusion >>
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