Fast DVD burner on Slow comp?

Newbie Forum
#1

Hello dear readers,

My system specs are:

PIII 550 on i440BX, 320MB RAM, UDMA/33, 16MB Matrox G450 video card, Win2k.

and I’m interested in a drive like the Sony DW-D26A. It has a Minimum requirement of PIII 450. I just happened to notice a similar burner Sony DRU720A - Yes I lurrv SONY - which is almost identical, except it requires a faster comp - at least PIII 800, in fact, they recommend a P4 1.6G.

I want to know if my system could support the D26A at full DVD burn speed without any problems? Why is there such a big requirement on the 720A?

Thanks!

#2

I want to know if my system could support the D26A at full DVD burn speed without any problems? - only way you’ll ever know is to install it.

#3

Indeed… :iagree:

#4

I have hard to believe your IDE bus is fast enough for 16x burn speed…

Sometime a add-on PCI to IDE controller can help, but in this case it’s hard to give any warranty.
In my example (PII-266 440LX), a Promise add-on card, didn’t improve burn speed (above 8x).

#5

I ran a similar system to what you have except for a PIII 650 and 512MB of ram and had no problems with burning at full speed. Be advised that with your PIII 550 you CANNOT be running anything else while you are burning. The 440BX chipset is far superior to the 440LX and the UDMA33 implementation is much better. You should look around for some more memory and try and find a PIII 650 or faster for an additional “buffer”.

There are some things money can buy. For everything else, there’s adrenaline and instincts. /.

#6

G)-(osters: “only way you’ll ever know is to install it.”

Theoretically speaking, ok? :slight_smile:

pinto2: “I have hard to believe your IDE bus is fast enough for 16x burn speed…”

I can burn at 40x on my current CD writer (700MB @ ~3mins) - or do you mean something else?

Do I really need an upgrade for burning DVDs? I mean, it was already upgraded…a month ago I had 333 celeron and 198MB RAM (don’t laugh) on the same system running win2k and my CD-writer has always been going strong.

#7

16x DVD is a lot bigger than 40x CD - with a peak of 22MB/s, it’s 2/3 of an ATA/33 channel.

The requirements for the retail boxed version may be dictated by the software bundle, rather than the drive, and then, only for realistic use of certain parts of it.

So long as you’re not stuck in PIO mode, whre even the most powerful system will lose speed, kicking large amounts of data around is not a hugely demanding task.

#8

You will probably get up to about 12X before running out of CPU clock time. Once the CPU load hits 100%, your burn will slow down. Data throughput may be a problem, too unless the system is optimized with a fast hard drive.

#9

“You will probably get up to about 12X before running out of CPU clock time”

Even with DMA enabled?

Anyways, I’ve made the purchase and when I can I’ll see how it burnz and let you all know how it goes. Thank you for your replies!

#10

makes no difference really anyway as the burners are all similar in price. If the pc can’t keep up the burner will slow down but still burn as fast as it can.