CD-RW: 8MB vs 2MB

[MrBurns]

I need a new CD-RW drive (see this thread: http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=89003#89003 and I have a few questions:


1.) Does 8MB buffer make a big difference in performance and buffer underrun protection compared to 2MB? The cheapest 8MB drive costs 15$ more than the cheapest 2MB drives, and only supports 24x on CD-RWs, but one of the cheap 2MB drives supports 32x? Is it worth the 15$ more?

The cheapest 8MB drive (52x), I have seen:

Samsung SW-252B Retail


2.) If I buy a 2MB drive: I have found 3 52x burners, that cost all the same where I live (about 44$). Which do you think, is the best? Dont post anything about newegg, because I dont want to buy online. I could also get slower burners, but this doesnt make a sense, because they also cost the same. The burners:

LiteOn LTR-52327S Bulk, available as retail for about $1.50 more

AOpen CRW5224 Retail (91.3ED37.011/055)

BenQ CRW-5224P Bulk (99.B0512.0F1)

The LiteOn is the only one, which burns CD-RWs at 32x (all others use 24x).


3.) I never have seen any CD-RWs, that support more than 12x. Have you seen CD-RWs, that support more than 24x?


AMD Athlon XP 2700+
Epox 8rda+
Thermaltake Volcano 7+
2x256 MB PC2700
Creative GeForce 4 Ti 4800 (4600 Chip)
Chieftech Case
WD 80GB/8MB HDD
16x48 DVD-ROM
20x10x32 Burner

 

[Spitfire_x86]

8 MB buffer is useless. All current CD-RW's come with buffer underrun protection, so 8 MB buffer doesn't mean better safety over 2 MB buffer.

Buy the LiteOn CD-RW

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[MrBurns]

But the buffer underrun protection doesnt always work. My old 20x drive had a few buffer underruns, when nothing or except the burning program or only Outlook and Internet Explorer was running, althought it had Just Link:

I remeber, that I once even had a buffer underrun, only because my harddrive was very fragmented (I made the read speed test befor burning, and it got down to 1x for a short time).

Also SimCity 4 (german version) caused a buffer underrun everytime I tried to burn it, because it has some sort of copy protection on it, that makes the reading very slow (most of the time it was about in 0.002x clone cd, althought most of the data was burned w/ 1-2x, but at 0.002x it burned most of the time, because this took very long). The copy protection of SimCity 4 goes so far, that even the install from the original CDs takes about a hour. It doesnt have any impact on game performance however, because the game is entirely copied to the HDD, and the file, that is used for checking if the Cd is in the drive is the only one, that can be raed at full speed.


Also, the performance drops, when the buffer is low.

AMD Athlon XP 2700+
Epox 8rda+
Thermaltake Volcano 7+
2x256 MB PC2700
Creative GeForce 4 Ti 4800 (4600 Chip)
Chieftech Case
WD 80GB/8MB HDD
16x48 DVD-ROM
20x10x32 Burner

 

[Spitfire_x86]

At high buring speeds (32x and above), 2 MB vs. 8 MB really doesn't matter.

SmartBurn® of LiteOn always work, don't know about other anti buffer underrun technology

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[dinkster9]

well, first you have to remember the actual speed that a cd drive burning at say 32x is going. 32x is in the 4mb/second range (or close, just go with me on this analogy) So buffering at 2 megs or 8 megs is only a matter of saving you about 1 second. So if anything you are doing with your system besides burning your cd is able to lag your system for say more than 1 whole second your cd is now a toster. It doesn't matter if you have 2mb, or 8mb or buffer underrun protection. One way to make less costers is to cache ALL files being burnt into phusdo ram (a mix of hd and ram) where all files are sorted, ready and in order to be burnt, so the system doesn't have to do any processing to get them ready (this really helps) I assume all burning software allows this function, but i'm sure nero does because I use it. Simple rule, you really have to have a pretty good system to be able to do much while burning at such high speeds.

Secondly clone cd for some reason (maybe just technology) is able to rip protections MUCH faster when being read from dvd drives, in my experience my older burner (24x) i would get that old .02x alot and it never seemed to speed up taking hours to rip hmm cd (they have level 9/10 cd protection where 10 is impossible . When i started using my 48x24x48x with 16x dvd drive and it only took 25 minutes to rip the game and burn it onto another cd. Same results were found on my brothers system where we used just a stand alone 16x dvd drive to do the ripping.

An hour to install a game from one cd? I'm thinking you might have an outdated cd drive? Ouch, I would have returned a game to the company if it took THAT long to install, i've never heard of that, is it common to that game?

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[MrBurns]

1.) I always have the RAM buffer enabled when I burn CDs. What is the optimal size for that? I had it set to 59MB (default), but now I changed it to 80MB, because in nero it sayed, I should not use more than this. In clone CD it was set to 22.71 MB (default), but now I changed it to 76.50MB (max.).

I also have a settinmg in clonecd, which is called something like "buffer setting for buffer underrun protection " (translated from German). It is now at default=8.37MB. How high should I set this?


2.) I used a DVD-drive for copying the SimCity 4 CD w/ clone cd, but it didnt change the speed.


3.) Normally a install takes about 15 min (2-3CDs). SimCity 4 only took so long because of the copy protection, which causes the read speed to decrease dramatically. also it was from 2 CDs. My CD-drive isnt outdated. Its a LiteOn 16x48 DVD-ROM drive.

AMD Athlon XP 2700+
Epox 8rda+
Thermaltake Volcano 7+
2x256 MB PC2700
Creative GeForce 4 Ti 4800 (4600 Chip)
Chieftech Case
WD 80GB/8MB HDD
16x48 DVD-ROM
20x10x32 Burner