Plextor PX-716A Burner - Page 12

- Writing Performance

The maximum supported speed for DVD±R formats are 16X (CAV) , for DVD+RW 8X (PCAV), 4X CLV for DVD-RW and 4X CLV for DVD+R DL media. The current firmware revisions (1.02/1.03) doesn't support the 8X +RW writing with 8X +RW media, probably the upcoming 1.04 will fix this. Nero Burning Rom reported speeds are shown below.

We used Nero CD-DVD Speed's "create disc" function, in order to confirm the 8X, 12X and 16X recording strategies. Click on the images below for the full CDSpeed screenshots.

• 16X DVD+R Single Layer writing

Despite the fact that the PX-716A is advertised as a 16X +R burner, the drive didn't manage to reach the 16X writing speed, instead dropping its writing speed to 12X at the 4.0GB point. Its quite possible that Plextor will further improves the drive's performance with a firmware upgrade.

• 12X DVD+R Single Layer writing

A nice P-CAV writing graph from the PX-716A with a total recording time of 6:26mins.

• 8X DVD+R Single Layer writing

P-CAV also for the 8X writing speed...

• 16X DVD-R Single Layer writing

The 16X -R writing graph was rather strange, the drive's writing speed jumps up at 4.0GB from 14X to 16X...

Below is a Plextools writing graph showing the writing strategy for 16X/12X/8X when using Verbatim 16X +R media:

- Supported media list/Burning Tests

We burned 4315MB of data on various DVD±R, DVD±RW media. We used the maximum allowed writing speed for each disc. The drive proved capable of recording at higher speeds than that certified for many media brands.

- Writing Time Results

• DVD+R media

• DVD-R media

- Comparison with other drives

As it can been seen from the graphs above, there's not a whole lot between the burners with possibly the Sony drive providing the best overall performance being fastest in 3 out of the 4 formats.

- DVD Overburning Test

The drive supports overburning for the DVD+R format.

Unfortunately, this is not something that you'll see with DVD-R media.

The Plextor PX-716A supports writing of BeALL 4.85GB DVD-R media as CDSpeed showed:

- DVD+MRW Tests

This feature is also not supported.