Interface Burst Rate and Older Hardware

coulikof

Hi everyone,

I am very pleased with my DW1620. I burned a lot of crappy media with only 2 "coasters" who are able to play in my home DVD player but not on my computer. That's OK, these are crappy Princo's...

I was also able to burn very good MCC003 8x@12x and 16x. I scan every media after burning and rarely got something below the 90's.

I have an older computer than many of you and yes, I plan to upgrade soon!

I have a Celeron 900MHz running on a MSI 694T Pro Motherborad with 576Mb of SDRAM PC133 running at 100MHz FSB... I also have a WD Caviar SE 160Gb and a LG CED-8120b 12x CD-RW.

The problem is that I saw very good burst rate test with some of yours posts, but I only am able to get 13MB/s with brand new cables (was 12MB/s with 3 years old cables)...

What is the problem? My mother board have a blue and a white IDE port... May be ATA100 and ATA33? here is a link to my Motherboard's spec : http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p...T_PRO&class=mb

If you have some suggestions, I will be happy to hear them as long as these are not : upgrade your computer!!!

Here is the test :

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coulikof

I forgot to write that my HDD is alone on the Primary IDE bus, my BenQ is Secondary Master and my LG is Secondary Slave.

Quikee

Well with such low burst rate I guess you have your drives at Multi Word DMA instead Ultra DMA 2. Check this in Device Manager.

__________________
NecDump, WOPC Tool, BQFlasher 0.7.2 (+source), DVDScanner, DVDWrite,...

coulikof

Yes, you're right.

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Goudo

You should definately look what is the different IDE connector, might be that the blue is the faster one.

but as to what you report now...
Hmmm, I cannot see how you can burn at 12X, as the burst rate maxed out at ~9X and this cannot be sustained, and your CPU is not powerfull enough not to slow down the burn when some other process needs to run in the background even for a fraction of a second.

I suspect a reasonable "good" rate, based on this factor alone might be under 8X, or to be safe actually 6X.

Can you please report the total burning time? it would help to see if the drive slows down and goes into "burn proof" mode.

If you can waste one media blank, maybe use CD-DVD Speed to create test data disc and post the result.

Also, you need to check the burst rates of the HDD, check each partition.

__________________
NEC ND-3500AG [2C8_SE_Ritek_4X_DL]

coulikof

I will burn a MCC003 @ 12x in a moment.

I was able to burn one of these under the 6 minutes with DVD Decrypter.

to be continued...

furballi

Didn't know that MCC 003 could write @ 16X! New speed record for this media. Why worry about burst rate when you can burn @ 16X in under 6 min???

You claim that you can do a full burn on a DVD-5 disc at 12X in under 6 min? Should be closer to 6:30 to 7:00. There are a lot of things that don't add up with your story.

My 600 MHz PIII running at 133 MHz FSB is limited to about 14X. Burst rate is closer to 29 MB/sec. Burn time at 12X on an NEC 3500 is a tad longer than 7 min. The 600 with 133 bus is probably on par with the 900 Cel at 100 bus.

coulikof

I'm shocked...

the burn is pretty good, but not at 12x... not even at 8x...

Time Elapsed Action
[10:58:49] Creating Data Disc
[11:07:52] 9:06 Speed:6-6 X P-CAV (7.05 X average)

But I did a sub 6 min burn a few weeks ago... here is the proof :
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showpost.ph...&postcount=718

Finally, here is the scan of the test media. Sorry, I wiped the transfer window when ejecting the media

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coulikof

Just look at my previous post for the link on the sub 6 min burn...

coulikof

You were right about the reasonable "good" rate...

Here are information on the burst rate of the HDD :
(All on the WD Caviar SE 8Mb 160Gb)
C:\, 20.0 Gb total, 2,105 Mb free - 52,608 Kb/s
D:\, 40.0 Gb total, 24,273 Mb free - 49,472 Kb/s
E:\, 60.0 Gb total, 11,076 Mb free - 44,416 Kb/s

These were tested with Nero 6.6.0.6 and this harddrive IS NOT connected on the same connector than the BenQ...

coulikof

If it can help, here are information on my Motherboard's chipset :

MSI-6309 (694T Pro)
Northbridge : Via Apollo Pro, rev. C4
Southbridge : Via VT82C686

BIOS: American Megatrends Inc.
Version 062710
Date : 07/15/1997

Goudo

I am glad my analysis was correct

Your HDD transfer rate is super, even too good
In this case, you might want to look at additional new and faster PCI to IDE controller card, instead of the slow IDE channel you have on the motherboard.

__________________
NEC ND-3500AG [2C8_SE_Ritek_4X_DL]

furballi

You HAD a Special 1620 that will burn MCC 003 at 16X! Today, it is acting like a regular 1620. A burn time of 11 min @ 12X/8X indicates that the drive is slowing down, due to

1.Hard drive speed
2.CPU load hitting 100% range

Again, perfectly normal behavior with that PC.

Download and post a transfer graph of the hard drive using HDTUNE. The limiting factor appears, as in my case, to be the speed of the CPU.

Anyone else capable of buring MCC 003 at 16X?

coulikof

This is unfortunately not an option as I plan to upgrade to an AMD64 before the end of the year... I will not invest another buck in that system, which I got for about the price of the HDD a year ago... without the BenQ and the WD Caviar SE, of course!

I would like to "downgrade" my BIOS because I don't have any option for the IDE controller if not to disable it... In the manufacturer's documentation, it is supposed to have a lot of control on this...

I also should test my BenQ on the Primary Slave, that blue connector puzzles me...

coulikof

Don't know what to think of that graph, as it is the first time I run this software. According to me, the curve is not so good, but I'll let you check it...


I really like your theory on my BenQ "acting" like a regular 1620!!!

By the way, the harddrive is brand new (bought in Decembre 2004, at the same time of the BenQ...)

coulikof

oops, the graph...

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furballi

Very good HD speed. The dip is normally related to a fragmented drive. Your CPU is probably the bottleneck. Can't expect high end performance from a 2000 PC.

coulikof

Ok.

My drive always produce good burns, even on crappy DVD-R media (Princo), so I might just burn everything at 4x and wait for my upgrade?

My HDD and my BenQ are brand new, but the CPU, the memory, the motherboard, everything else is very old hardware manufactured before 2000...

Thank you for your help, I hope upgrading will solve the problem.

Goudo

You might try:

1) Put the burner as slave on the fast connector where the HDD is master. Give it a try. Check if burner goes faster, but disk is not slowing down.

2) Investigate what specification speed is the slow IDE connector on the motherboard. The burner burst rate suggest IDE16, for some reason I expect to see IDE33 which should give you about 26MB/s be good for safe 8X and even up to 12X if CPU slowness not becoming limiting factor. Maybe you can change cable if the controller is indeed 33MB/s? maybe see if you can put it in full UDMA mode in Windows? Search the forums on UDMA in Windows.

3) IDE controler card. Just keep an eye on sales, maybe you can find one on sale and after rebate for cheap. In BIOS you should see a page with onboard peripherals. Maybe there is advanced menu you need to activate.

4) If you have or can get external box for the burner in Firewire or USB2, is also option to consider. I think this is more trouble and not real solution for you right now.

__________________
NEC ND-3500AG [2C8_SE_Ritek_4X_DL]

oman

If you are going to get a new system anyway, of course you may use the slow but working writing speed of 4x and wait for your new hw. Do one or two scans of the discs written to be sure. If it works fine, why not wait before doing much useless work now.

IIRC the via chipset had some issues with high loads on PCI or IDE (which is on PCI as well) which sometimes caused blue screens or (hard) disc corruptions. Not sure about that, but ppl I know had such problems and switched to other mobos (like nforce or even slower-but-stable sis).

coulikof

NO WAY!

If you read the thread from the beginning, you will read about a blue connector...

The folks at MSI completely forgot to document this feature... It seams that I only have one ATA/100 connector on my motherboard, the blue one...

I switched my configuration to this :

Blue Connector :
Primary Master : HDD
Primary Slave : BenQ DVD+/-RW

White Connector :
Secondary Master : LG CD-RW
Secondary Slave : nothing

...


Et voilà!

Now Nero CD-DVD Speed shows me 21MB/s of burst rate and my BenQ now is in UDMA2 mode!

I just worry about the firmware updates and the drive performances in that configuration. My LG CD-RW needs to be secondary master to be updated. Is that the same with BenQ? Anybody knows limitations with that configuration or is that everybody plug the BenQ in Secondary Master because it is the way everybody do it??

Thank you for your assistance.

Pics - Burst rate and Ultra DMA settings...

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coulikof

This is a good improvement, isn't it?

oman

So what about the blue connector. I would not want to have my hdd the data is on and my writer on the same IDE port! And why worry about burst rate, for 4x writing you will need a mere 5600kB/s on the secondary ide. Even for 8x writing it should still be okay, as about 12MB/s will still be no problem. Delay 16x writing until you got your new system

And as you report, you wanted to buy some amd64 anyway? So why invest any work in that via board anymore?

PS&EDIT: BTW the via southbridge sucked with those boards. Google and find many problems with SB Live and so on. Dont know exactly but it was the reason I didnt get a via board back then though I wanted to.

coulikof

Why? is there known issues?

oman

I am just careful.

As that hdd will also be your system=Windoze hdd probably, there may be situations the writer needs around 23MB/s (16x writing), the hdd has to deliver the same and win wants to write to swap or start a program or screensaver or whatever. That may ruin the transfer. And 2MB cache in the BenQ are less than 1/10th of a second of buffering at that speed.

Sure, Buffer underruns are not that great issue anymore with DVD+-R, but they will for sure produce some corrupted ECC frames and therefore higher PIE maybe even PIFs on your discs.

You may try if you want to, sure, but I would be happy with the writer on the 2nd ide.

EDIT&PS: Ever tried to connect the BenQ to 2nd IDE without the CD-RW connected?
2nd EDIT&POST: Maybe I overread it, do you use a 80wire cable for 2nd ide? It costs no more than 1-2$ I suppose and may enhance signal quality significantly.