My mate has a 24 speed writer but he's not sure if he's actually writing at 24 speed.

I have a 1800 celeron processor with no intention of upgrading any time soon. I have a 12 speed writer right now, a Plextor 12/10/32A - which used to be the dogs bollox! but it seems a bit slow with todays standards.
I'd like to buy a new writer but I don't want to buy 40 speed when there is no chance of me writing that fast.
Is there a rough guide to how fast you can burn with which processor? I realise it wouldn't be exact because of other variables.

My mate has a 1gh processor - can he be writing at 24 speed?

Also I don't think I'd buy anything like a Plextor again. I paid a fortune for it a few years back. My mate bought a Liteon and both are still going strong. I haven't been able to do anything that he can't so I'm afraid I'll be going for cheapest this time.

Any help or guidance here would be appreciated. Cheers.

Well it really isn't that simple.

There are sooooooooo many factors involved in this. Some of which are the speed of processor, RAM, drive set-up, Reader, Temp, software used, progs running in background etc, etc, etc...

All I can say is I myself have zero problems burning OTF with a 1.8 XP+ with 512 DDR RAM, Asus A7V333 mobo burning with a LiteOn 40125S and using a LiteOn Ltd-163 for reader using NTI CD Maker Pro/Clone/Fantom CD or any other software I've tried.

It's a case of set it all up and gp from there I'm afraid.

I know,
you need a 24X CPU
(hehe)

sorry I had to do that

I think with your 1800 celeron processor you can Burn @ 24X , but I don't think you will do on the fly over 16X, that's because of the reader and not the CDRW

just waste a disc and find out, though you should be fine, i burn at 24x with a 1.4g athlon thunderbird with 512 ddr on a ga-7dxr and have no bad burns

try and see

Cd burning is very low on processor demand, you can burn at any speed with a 400 + processor. You will need a good reader though if you want to do on the fly copies at 24x. Also if you are burning from mp3,s on the fly at 24x about 600 mhz would be the minimum. Your 1800 celeron would be capable of burning at least 100x if there was a writer that fast.

That's not what I've been led to believe. I've always been told the processor does have a bearing on the speed at which you burn. One guy who told me that is the owner of a pc hardware store.
But basically there is no way to approximate a burn speed by processor size.
Thanx for all the help.

That's true/ IDE interface requires a lot of CPU usage, the faster your CPU the faster it can write to your CDRW. I have a 1 GHz AMD and it can only write no more than 12x on the fly but from HD to CDRW, I can achieve 40x at times when there is not a lot of programs running in the background.

I guess I'm not 100% correct. I just changed the config of my cdrw from Master on IDE 3 to Master on IDE 2. On IDE 3 ATA RAID, it cosumes 100% of my CPU but on my IDE 2, it consumes very little less than 10%. This is of course burning by making of an image. I'm going to try and burn on the fly and see how much CPU it consumes. I expect it will take a lot of CPU since my other CD Readers are on my IDE 3 ATA RAID. If this is so, then the config would be optimum if CD Recorders and Readers are Masters on a IDE 1 and 2.

In terms of IDE channels, where should I put my CD Reader and CDRW?

A 1 Ghz processor should be capable of letting you write at 12x speed. However you need to keep a few important things in mind...
1. Your writer still needs to write the CD lead-in and lead-out. This can only be done at 1x speed (150k/sec)
2. CD's contain several sectors that can handle specific speeds. In the sector that can handle 8x speed only, 12x speed is useless.
3. The CD's you are using will need to support the maximum writing speed of your burner.

These and may other factors will determine the writing speed...

Really dont know where people get the idea you need a fast pc to burn cd's, 24x 150kb/sec = 3.6mb/sec, a p100 could manage that. I've only just upgraded from 600 cel which could burn at 24x with less than 20% cpu usage.

if you can get a p100 to burn at 24x then i will eat my hat.




Originally posted by MrMP
Really dont know where people get the idea you need a fast pc to burn cd's, 24x 150kb/sec = 3.6mb/sec, a p100 could manage that. I've only just upgraded from 600 cel which could burn at 24x with less than 20% cpu usage.

Start eating then, from feurio web site;


"The CD Writer need just about 4% of CPU time (Basis: 166 Mhz Pentium)"

I use a Duron 700 and a lite On 24x no problems burning at 24x I don't think the CPU has much to do with it. If you are copying on the Fly I think you shoul have you reading and writer on different IDE channels. Put the Hard drive as master on IDE 1 The reader as slave on IDE 1 and the writer as master IDE 2. If anyone disagrees please say so and also why, This is just my opinion this way you always have your source (HDD or reader) on a different channel than your writer.

From my experience it would appear that the processor has only a slight bearing on the speed of writing. It is more down to how fast the IDE bus on the motherboard is performing which is also down to a combination of having the correct IDE Bus Master drivers installed to give optimum performance (ie, Via Chipset 4 in 1 driver). Assuming you are copying "on the fly" the reading drive has to be fast and reliable as many struggle to keep up at higher speeds.

A good example was my current set up until recently, I had a Plextor 24x Writer and a Pioneer A03 DVD writer (as the source drive). I found that using this combination would not allow copying on the fly any faster than about 12x. Taking the A03 out of the machine and replacing it with a dedicated DVD-ROM drive (Pioneer 106S) now allows me to copy at up to 24x without problems and no buffer-underuns. So the source reading drive has a great difference! Incidently the CPU in the machine was an Athlon XP 1500+ so it had plenty of power in reserve but I've been able to do the same on machines around the 400 MHz mark.

I use a 750 oc 810mhz Duron and writes at 40x LiteOn np's at all.