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Review: Asus DRW-1612BL |
ASUS USA was kind enough to send us their latest Multi Function (X Multi) DVD Burner: the Asus DRW-1612BL internal IDE drive. ASUS' newest DVD burner incorporates DVD-RAM recording, creating a true DVD Multi drive. Single layer 4.7GB DVD burning is supported at 16X max. Double Layer and Dual Layer Recording speed is 8X max. DVD Rewriteable speeds are 8X max for DVD+RW and 6X max for DVD-RW respectively. DVD-RAM recording is supported at 12X max. Very fast 48X max CD-R burning and 32X max CD-RW.
In this article we will show the performance of the DRW-1612BL by running the drive through many tests on a considerable amount of various CD/DVD media.
Corporate Information:
We took a quick look at the company information found at ASUS web pages:
ASUS, a technology-oriented company blessed with one of the world's top R&D teams, is well known for high-quality and innovative technology. As a leading provider of 3C (computers, communications and consumer electronics) total solutions, ASUS offers a complete product portfolio to compete in the new millennium.
In 2005, ASUS shipped 52 million motherboards, which means one out of every 3 desktop PCs sold last year was powered by an ASUS motherboard. If we line them up side by side, the length will be longer than the distance from New York to San Francisco.
ASUS products' top quality stems from product development. Besides innovating cutting-edge features, ASUS engineers also pay special attention to EMI (electromagnetic interference), thermal, acoustics and details that usually go unnoticed to achieve complete customer satisfaction. ASUS notebooks are the first TCO'99-certified notebooks worldwide. The requirements for this honour include radiation emission control, energy (battery consumption), ecology (environment friendly) and ergonomics.
To succeed in this ultra-competitive industry, great products need to be complimented by speed-to-market, cost and service. That's why all 58,000 employees of ASUS strive for the "ASUS Way of Total Quality Management" to offer the best quality without compromising cost and time-to-market while providing maximum value to all customers through world-class services.
ASUS won 1706 awards in 2005 from the world's most respected IT media and organizations. Business Week ranked ASUS amongst its "InfoTech 100" for eight straight years. The readers of Tom's Hardware Guide, the world's largest IT website, selected ASUS as the best maker of motherboards (4 consecutive years) and graphics cards (two consecutive years). Furthermore, the company took home the prestigious "National Award of Excellence" presented by the Ministry of Economics Affairs and Germany's Industrie Forum (iF) Gold Award for industrial design excellence.
Drive Overview:
Asus’ newest Internal IDE drive supports all available DVD formats including single layer 4.7GB DVD±R /±RW, 8.5 GB Double/Dual Layer DVD±R DL, and DVD-RAM discs. The drive also supports CD-R discs at 48X CD-R / 32X CD-RW.
- Max. 16X DVD±R / 8X DVD+RW / 6X DVD-RW / 8X DVD±R (DL)
- Max. 48X CD-R / 32X CD-RW
- Max. 16X DVD-ROM / 48X CD-ROM
- Max: 12X DVD-RAM Write / Read
Drive specifications:
Now let us take a look at the detailed specifications of the Asus DRW-1612BL.
Drive Technology
LightScribe:
LightScribe Direct Disc Labeling technology that offers consumers and businesses a simple, no-hassle way to burn professional, silk-screen quality labels on their CDs and DVDs.
FlextraLink™:
Built-in FlextraLink™ prevents users from buffer underrun problems and eliminates the creation of unusable discs. Throughout the recording process, FlextraLink™ consistently monitors the data buffer status to ensure best recording quality under high-speed operation.
FlextraSpeed™:
Built-in FlextraSpeed™ and AI Auto Speed Adjustment Tech. enhance accuracy and reliability when reading / writing / re-writing across a broad range of certified media in different formats. FlextraSpeed™ continuously monitors the recording media and sets the optimal writing speeds to ensure best recording quality. The ASUS proprietary FlextraSpeed™ occupies minimal system resources so the PC remains full operational and available for other applications even during recording process.
Superior Stability with DDSSII:
The DDSSII technology is designed to minimize the vibration caused by the spindle motor and resonance between components as well as the drive and PC cases. The ASUS patented DDSSII stabilizes, both horizontally and vertically, the pick-up head, achieving more precise tracking and focusing, while reducing vibration and noise caused by high-revolution spindle motors.
Test machine
For this review we will be using a computer with the following configuration:
Test Machine:
Processor: AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 165 @ 2.7GHz
RAM: 2x 1GB G.SKILL Extreme Series 2GBZX @ 250MHz
Motherboard: eVGA / Jetway 939GT4-SLI
Graphic Card: eVGA 7900GT 512 KO with Zalman vf900 @ 650/1600
Sound: Onboard AC97
Hard Disk: 2x 200GB SATA Maxtor, 1x 320GB SATA Seagate
Optical Drives: Lite-On LH-18A1P, ASUS DRW-1612BL, BenQ DW1655, LITE-ON LTR-52327S
Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 is installed on this machine.
We will be using the following software in this review:
- Nero 7.5.1.1 Ultra Edition Enhanced
- Nero CD/DVD Speed
- Nero InfoTool 4.0.3.0
- K-Probe v2.5.2
Installation and Supported Features:
The installation was flawless; we hooked the drive up as the primary master using a standard 80-wire Ultra133 EIDE ribbon cable
Here is the Nero InfoTool output for drive and the supported features
Let’s head to the next page where we will run through What’s Inside the Box.
