DVD Burners round-up: Plextor, Panasonic & Pioneer drives tested

Performance compared

Test System specs were as follows:

• Epox motherboard w/ Intel Pentium 4 1.8 GHz processor

• 1 gig DDR RAM

• 80 gig Maxtor Drive

• Windows XP Professional

Burn Speed Results

All drives were tested using a 500 MB file and DVD-RW media (Plextor used DVD+RW). Burn time is the complete process, from pressing start to the CD ejecting, which includes finalization processes. All of the drives performed as specified, the Panasonic the slowest (1X) and the Plextor the fastest (2.4X).

NERO DVD Speed Results

I used Nero's popular DVD Speed benchmark running Days of Thunder DVD:

Panasonic

Plextor

Pioneer

The worst performer here goes to the Pioneer drive. Notice how the others spool up after time, yet the Pioneer goes down. Take a quick look at CPU usage on the Panasonic, MAX is 2%, the others it’s 1%. Seek times are all pretty close, but the Panasonic is fastest upon a full seek. I would have to say the Panasonic drive shines throughout this particular benchmark, with Plextor knocking at the door. The Pioneer drive is a few steps back.

SiSandra DVD Speed Results

Once again, I used Days of Thunder for Sandra’s benchmark, and here is how things went:

Panasonic

Plextor

Pioneer

The results for the Plextor are quite staggering. Not sure why the Plextor performed so slow in this benchmark, but it did. Once again, the Panasonic drive outshined the rest in this series of benchmarks.

Select DVD Burners round-up Panasonic LF-D521 DVD-RAM Plextor PX-504A DVD+RW Pioneer DVR-A05U DVD-RW Burn & Read performance Picking a winner, Final Thoughts

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