Plextor PX-W4824A



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Review: Plextor PX-W4824A
Reviewer: G@M3FR3@K
Provided by: Plextor Europe
Firmware: version 1.00
Production date: August 2002
TLA#: 0000

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A few weeks ago Plextor announced its latest
recorder, the Plextor PX-W4824A. This drive is one of the fastest recorders available today and is the first Plextor drive
to support the new ultra speed CD-ReWriting standard with which it's possible to re-write at an amazing speed of
24X.

Of course this new Plextor drive has much more to offer than just increased re-write speeds. Some new and improved
features include the fastest access time ever (< 65ms), Mount Rainier support and 48X CAV recording of data and
audio
. Some major changes compared to their previous model, the Plextor
PX-W4012A since this drive had rather high
access times, no Mount Rainier support, used the Z-CLV write method and was limited to writing audio at 'just' 24X.

In this review we will take a thorough look at this latest Plextor drive and see if it can live up to the
'Plextor standards'. During this review we will also explain some of the decisions Plextor took with this new drive such
as why the drive is by default limited to 40X reading instead of 48X it can reach. Read on to find out what we have to
say about this new and improved (?) Plextor drive!

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Test Machine:

For the tests we'll be using the following configuration:

Hardware:

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  • Motherboard: ASUS K7V
  • Processor: AMD Athlon 700Mhz
  • RAM: 256MB (PC133)
  • GFX: ASUS V8200 (GeForce 3 Ti200)
  • Hard Disks: DiamondMax 40GB & 30GB (7200rpm)
  • IDE Controller: PCI UDMA100 Controller
  • USB Controller: NEC USB 2.0 Controller

System set-up:

System set-up

As you can see the Plextor PX-W4824A was hooked up to the (onboard) secondary IDE-controller and identifies itself as
"PLEXTOR CD-R PX-W4824A". DMA was automatically enabled and autorun has been disabled. The listed Plextor PX-W4012A and
Toshiba SD-M1502 drives are hooked up to the PCI UDMA100 controller. All drives, including the PX-W4824A drive, support
UDMA33.

Used Software:

The Windows XP Professional operating system is installed on our test machine. We'll be using the following software
to perform the various tests:

On the next page we'll take a look at the retail package of the Plextor PX-W4824A...


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