Flashing an Internal Drive with External Firmware?

I recently bought a Philips 1628B (internal). After some research I decided to flash it with BenQ firmware, because of faster firmware upgrade cycle, PIF reporting (missing on Philips firmware), QSuite and Quikker software support, along with a larger hobbyist base online for BenQ firmware.

My question now is whether I should flash my drive with a DW1640 (internal) or EW164B (external) firmware, and if so, which one? I would not have considered EW164B firmware until I read posts by various people under a number of different topics reporting good results with such a flash, with better burst speed, more resilient buffer, and higher quality burns.

I'd like to unite this scattered congregation of expertise under the unified dome of this topic so that we may worship at the altar of external BenQ.

Please comment.

Thanks.

I have a real BenQ1640 flashed to external 164B BEFB firmware but I am not sure about the Phillipps drives. BEFB works fine for me internally, and yes the burst rate is about 37 Mbs because it runs in UDMA 4.

Did you do anything special to set UDMA 4?

Bump?

By default. But you won't gain anything serious with UDMA4. UDMA2 is more than enough to do all DVD burning stuffs.

what do you mean by default...I am getting a benq 1640 and would love it to be even faster.

If you read the spects of BenQ 1640 or majority of other brand DVD drives their reading speed capability is 33MB/S which is DMA 2 some times you can set it for DMA 4 which is 66MB/S but by default they all go to DMA 2 at time of installation. Just remember at 16X reading speed your transfer rate is maximum 22MB/s and you can't go over that.

I've found that the BEGB external fw lowered my PIE by a substantial margin. I think it's because there is less interference when running UDMA4, but that's pure conjecture
Burst rate is certainly much faster, so it's better for CD ripping.