CD-RW questions

[Binoculars]

What's the story with the quoted Write speeds on CD-RW's? In the beginning I was naive enough to think that my 40x12x48x Liteon would burn a CD in about 2 minutes, but I was soon cured of that fantasy. In fact there has never been any real difference in the time to burn a CD from my old 6x. Hardly a major problem, it's only 10 minutes or so anyway, but my Roxio software gives the actual write speed, and even when I have 24x selected as the maximum write speed to avoid buffer underrun ( I think :confused: ) I've never seen higher than 7x as the actual write speed. And buffer underrun seems to sit at 1%, though the CD's are burning ok; shouldn't that be closer to 100% or have I got it back-asswards?

I assume this is also why CDROM's galloped up to 52x then stopped... people began to realise there was ******all difference?

While I'm here, what's the easiest way to find the Processor speed of a computer without rebooting?

[Front_Seat_Dreamer]

Binoculars

Previous answer just about covered it, remember though the manufacturer puts info on the box, these are generally achieved in perfect lab conditions, anybody ever had anything like the manufactured ppm that printers offer.

If you have windows xp pro drop to a DOS prompt (Start - Run CMD - OK then type systeminfo at the prompt this will go off and tell you lots of info re your PC one of which is processor speed.

Or try downloading:

Aida32 - 3.4Mb (http://www.aida32.hu/aida32.php)

or

Belarc Advisor - 546Kb (http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html)

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Binoculars,

TCS covered all the points.

What speed is your computer's CPU and how much RAM do you have?

Take Care,

Richard

P.S. I sell the Lite-On Drives with comps I build. They do burn very quickly when setup properly in a system that can deliver the data to the drive. We will get you there. ;)

[Binoculars]

Thanks folks. The beast in question is a Celeron 900 with 384Mb RAM. When I'm burning I never have anything else running to minimise the chance of burning coasters, and all my blanks are rated at least 40x. Can enabling DMA really make a big difference on its own?

I did read a review of the Liteon , after I bought it :uhoh: which suggested it was blindingly fast on burning data, not so on music?

With reference to the processor speed, I have SiS Sandra installed on mine, the question was more in terms of how to find it on somebody else's computer. Control Panel System certainly doesn't give that information on mine, just Windows98 under System, and under Computer; Genuine Intel x86, Family 6 Model 8, Stepping 10. whatever that means. (x86?????)

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Binoculars,

Your computer should be able to burn without issues, you have the horsepower to do so.

Do make sure you have the latest Drivers for your motherboard. In your Device Manager make sure you are in DMA and not PIO Mode for the Lite-On, it will make that much of a difference.

If you have all that setup correctly and it is still slow, try changing media. (Make it name brand media.)

Take Care,

Richard

P.S. Almost forgot, disable any Antivirus Programs when burning.