ASUS DRW-0402P/D: ASUS joins the dual format fray
by Kristopher Kubicki on September 21, 2003 6:13 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Testing the Drive
We used the following configuration to test our DRW-0402P/DGigabyte GA-7VRXUsing CD Speed 2.02 and DVD Speed, we had run a battery of read, write and rewrite tests on the drive. Our first test determines CD read speed in normal mode, while the second determines the speed while the turbo 52X mode is enabled. The following read speeds are for a pressed HP System Recovery CD.
AMD Athlon MP 2100+
2 x 128 DDR Corsair XMS 2400
Maxtor 80GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache
Windows XP SP1
Click to enlarge.
Interestingly, the drive seems more than capable of the advertised 32X max CD read speeds. With only 70 minutes of data, the DRW had no problems obtaining speeds higher than 33X read. Unfortunately, the random seek times are incredibly awful compared to high end CDR drives. Our findings found that full seeks actually took double the amount of time on normal. CD Speed reports 17MB/s burst rates on the DRW while most CDRW drives we’ve looked at were only capable of 1MB/s.
You may have noted that the full seek times are phenomenal on these drives for Pressed DVD Video. Unfortunately, CD Speed reports this particular value erroneously, as most of our DVD-/+RW reads were in excess of 300ms. On DVD media, CD Speed reported the drive bursting over 23MB/s consistently.
We also tested the drive on a variety of DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, CDR, CDRW and DAE media. The follow table contains our results.
| Average Transfer | Seek Random | Seek 1/3 | Seek Full | Media Length | |
| Pressed HP System Recovery | 25.37X | 128ms | 148ms | 287ms | 69:18.41 |
| Pressed DAE Global Underground 24 CD2 | 25.31X | N/A | N/A | N/A | 73:20.15 |
| Burned PNY 48X CDR Dummy File | 25.33X | 130ms | 152ms | 295ms | 74:00.05 |
| Burned Mitsubishi 32X CDRW Dummy File | 25.41X | 126ms | 161ms | 293ms | 74:00.05 |
| Pressed DVD The Matrix | 6.13X | 142ms | 241ms | 45ms | 7.82GB |
| Pressed Mixed DVD The Animatrix | 6.29X | 136ms | 237ms | 49ms | 7.92GB |
| Bundled (Generic?) 4X DVD-R Data CD | 4.60X | 136ms | 169ms | 310ms | 4.38GB |
| TDK 4X DVD-R Data CD | 4.66X | 140ms | 171ms | 308ms | 4.38GB |
| FujiFilm 4X DVD+R Data CD | 4.62X | 133ms | 167ms | 315ms | 4.38GB |
| Imation 4X DVD+R Data CD | 4.61X | 136ms | 164ms | 311ms | 4.38GB |
| FujiFilm 4X DVD-RW Data CD | 4.62X | 139ms | 170ms | 316ms | 4.38GB |
| FujiFilm 2.4X DVD+RW Data CD | 4.67X | 138ms | 172ms | 324ms | 4.38GB |
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Anonymous User - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
Hmmmmmm. It appears as though DVD-/+R is almost ready for prime time. Almost... Thought the ASUS product would rock, but it merely spins. And I was bummed to see that ASUS was not the OEM. They usually do a great job. We'll wait until after Xmas I think...Ho ho ho.Anonymous User - Monday, September 22, 2003 - link
Maybe I misread the review, but Nero test alone don't really give enough information - what about actual burn tests? Just because it handles a certain media in the speed test doesn't mean it won't burn a coaster everytime.In fact, often times the actual burn will be faster or slower then the testing, or will so a weakness for certain media that the CD Speed won't uncover.
Anonymous User - Monday, September 22, 2003 - link
What about Sonys DRU510, thats faster than all these drives in specs atleast and available for the same price.Anonymous User - Monday, September 22, 2003 - link
In this review, I am wondering the price for each drives in the market. If you chack the www.newegg.com, it is much higher than the quoted price.Anonymous User - Sunday, September 21, 2003 - link
Slightly off topic, I'm wondering how you guys rank the media? Maybe that should get it's own article sometime in the future?In the US at least, Fujifilm has been using Taiyo Yuden (until recently) for their CDRs which are generally regarded as the top quality. For the DVDRs theyve been using the latest Ritek revision and from what I have read around the net, these are showing very good results as well.
So I'm wondering how you came to the conclusion that their DVD are of lesser quality than TDK/PNY/Imation? I don't know anyone that touches PNY and Imation while TDK's history in CDR changes manufacturers so much they aren't consistent either.
Anonymous User - Sunday, September 21, 2003 - link
FYI: The AnandTech Staff are at Computex right now (we just got in!)I get to speak to LiteOn tommorow. We will see what new products are on the horizon soon!
Kristopher
ViRGE - Sunday, September 21, 2003 - link
FYI, in the Review Index, there are 2 "Final Thoughts" pages, 6 and 7. 6 is the real one, and 7 is blank, so I'm guessing someone should delete it.Anonymous User - Sunday, September 21, 2003 - link
Hope you can get the oportunity to compare with the new LiteOn CD-RW/DVD+/-RW unit that goes for an almost unbelieveably low price. Given LiteOn's positive record in regard of their pure CD-RW drives a combo writer will get a lot of attention.Now if only there were SATA models of these units as well.