Today we present you Optiarc's 2nd generation 24x burner, the Optiarc AD-7260S. The drive is available at the market for quite some time now and it is actually not very different than the company's previous series of 24x DVD burners, the AD-7240S, at least in terms of specifications. We decided to present this drive after numerous requests from our users.

The Optiarc iAD-7260S supports 24X burning with specific DVD±R media, 12x with DVD±R DL, 8x with DVD+RW, 6X with DVD-RW and 12x with DVD-RAM.

Sony Optiarc, a subsidiary of Sony Group, has also released a Lightscribe and Labelflash versions of the AD-7260S, the AD-7261S and the AD-7263S, respectively.

The Super-multi DVD burner features an Auto Strategy Technology, which was first seen in the predecessor series AD-7200. When you burn a DVD, the drive always reads a section of the media in advance so that the writing head can be optimally adjusted. Adaptive Self Tuning also delivers high performance because the drive automatically adapts to the disc and the hardware environment in every burning process to compensate quality fluctuation.

Specifications:

We received the bulk version of the drive, which comes with both black and beige bezel colors:

The rear panel is typical and has a power and SATA interfaces:

Let's take a look at the drive's internal board. It is recommended not to open the case of your drive since that would void the warranty.

You can click on each picture for a larger view:

The drive is based on the NEC MC-10045 system LSI (SCOMBO 8). The same LSI was also the 'heart' of the company's AD-7240S DVD burner.

The NEC MC-10045 SoC supports:

• DVD reading : Max 16x
• DVD writing : Max 24x (DVD-RAM : 16x)
• CD reading : Max 48x
• CD writing : Max 48x

Its basic functions include:

• RF signal processing circuit
• Onboard digital servo functionality
• Auto laser power control circuit
• Decoding and encoding for each disc format
• Onboard digital read channel
• Onboard high-precision write strategy circuit (1/32T resolution)
• Buffer manager
• Built-in content protection (CSS/ CPRM/ VCPS)
• Power management functionality

Built-in CPU functionality

• Onboard 32-bit RISC CPU (V850ES core)
• Built-in RAM (14KB)
• Power management functionality
• Built-in peripheral circuits (timer, interrupt controller, serial interface)

The drive was installed on our test PC and was recognized under Windows XP as "Optiarc DVD RW AD-7260S":