Posted by root on 04/02/07 12:24

Eamon Skelton <Xnospam@oceanfree.net> wrote:

You have been extraordinarily helpful, thanks very much.

>
> Did you try writing to DVD+/-R with the LG?
>

No, I was primarily interested in the RAM read speed.

>> My motherboard is the EVGA 680i SLI with an NVIDIA chip set. The problem
>> isn't in my machine as the differences among the various brands of
>> drive evidence.
>
> I see a lot of reports about SATA problems with the 680i. EVGA
> and Nvidia have brought out several BIOS upgrades to address
> these problems.
>
> http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/chipsets/display/20061222124554.html
>

Thanks for that reference. That was back in December and my MB was
bought in March. I haven't had any problems with the SATA drives.

> BenQ have been taken over by Liteon. Real BenQ drives are not easy to
> find: http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=192997
>
>
>
> I still think something is wrong with your setup. You should be able
> to burn those Verbatim discs at higher speeds. I use growisofs to
> burn Verbatim +R discs at 16x in my Liteon and 18x in my LG.
>

I learned something from this exchange with you. A few minutes ago
I tried burning a 16x Verbatim with growisofs, resulting in an average
speed of 10.9. That is comparable to what I get using cdrecord and
other drives such as the Optiarc. So the problem I have been seeing
is related to cdrecord and Pioneer. As you know cdrecord has forked
several times and I am using one of the forks that supports ide
drives. I have no personal attachment to cdrecord so I can easily
adapt to growisofs for all disks.

> This site seems to confirm that some drives can read 3x DVD-RAM
> at speeds higher than 3x and some drives can't.
> http://www.cdr-zone.com/forum/about4306.html
>
> I suppose the ultimate soultion would be to find some 12x DVD-RAM
> media. I suppose it will cost a fortune, will work perfectly with
> your new DVD drive, but it won't work in your Panasonic. That's
> what would happen to me anyway.
>

I am going to get some 5x media and see if that changes the read
speed. It doesn't make any sense to me that it would, but it is
worth an experiment.

Thanks for all your help.

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