CD-RW Speed, 16 or 12?

[thebeerdude]

Plextor seems to be the best regarded name in CD-RW. They offer 12X and 16X write-speed drives that are about $200 and $233 respectively (for IDE which I assume is appropriate for my Dell XPSR450). I've only used a Backpack CD-RW at 4X and am looking for practical advice about which speed to buy. $33 is not a big deal, but is the only difference going to be 1 or 2 min. in overall burn time? Buffer is 2MB on both units and both have Burnproof. Advice is always appreciated.
Cheers

 

[Boonesmi]

i have a 12x plextor burner, and althought i doubt the 16x would be much faster i would still go for it if money was no issue.

 

[Dark4ng3l]

for 33$ I would get the 16x anyways. The difference wont be that big since it's already plenty fast but 33$ is not very much.

 

[Linh]

ditto darkangel

 

[aGeNt73]

Why not go for 16..33 bux shouldnt burn that big a hole in your pocket.


-aGeNt73

 

[divinemartyr]

If you're mostly using the CD-RW functions, both the 16x and 12x drives have 10x re-write. If you're using the CD-R function equally as much, your burn times will go from about 7 minutes to about 5 minutes. With burnproof the whole point is to be able to do other things while you burn, so unless you're burning mass quantities, I see no reason to spend the extra cash at this point. The 12x is a proven drive, they both have the same re-write speed, and with firmware updates the 12x rips at 32x just like the 16x. Unless you just have $33 to waste for an extra 4x, I'd stick with the 12x drive as there aren't too many advantages to the 16x drive.

dm

 

[SendTrash]

ditto, no need to pay for unused speed... like I mean.. wtf is the diff btw 5 and 7 mins? what kind of rush are you in?

 

[JMF]

I agree with the others - why pay $33 for two minutes - would you pay that much for a long distance telephone call!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You get what you pay for :frown:

 

[yobarman]

glad somebody posted this topic because i was debating the same thing. I'm going to go for the 12x, cause im kinda short on cash, and it's not like i burn a lot of CDs anyways. im gonna get it at buy.com, free shippin :]

On second thought there's extra regular CD read, upto 40x...

hmm

 

[GoldenTiger]

The difference is:

16x = 5 mins for a disc
12x = 5 mins 40 secs for a disc

Not much of a difference... I'd go for the 12x and buy a stockpile of discs or spend the other $33 toward paying CC bills .

 

[HomerSapien]

I went from a 4x to 16x burner. Go for the 16x. It has a faster DAE speed. $33 is not much considering that you are already willing to pay $200+ for a burner.

 

[nortexoid]

i thought i read somehwere that the 16x don't necessarily write at 16x (from start to finish), or that they only reach 16x for packet writing...or something....an example is the 16x yamaha drive..not sure if this applies to the plextor/tdk models.

this is not the case w/ 12x drives.

 

[divinemartyr]

<< i thought i read somehwere that the 16x don't necessarily write at 16x (from start to finish), or that they only reach 16x for packet writing...or something....an example is the 16x yamaha drive..not sure if this applies to the plextor/tdk models. >>



This only applied to the Yamaha drive. They wanted to get it out faster and at the time, had that technology available to them at a reasonable price. The difference between partial 16x and full 16x is next to nothing, less than a few seconds. The Yamaha more or less is a 16x drive.



<< 12x = 5 mins 40 secs for a disc >>



Actually it's more like 7 minutes. 12x write is 1800k/s, effectively taking 6 minutes 15 seconds to write the data, and then you have some additional time left over to write the table of contents. After this you're close to 7 minutes. Keep in mind this is for 650mb discs.

With a 16x drive your write speed is 2400k/s effectively taking 4 minutes 35 seconds to write data, and a bit more time to write your TOC. The difference is more than 40 seconds, it's closer to 2 minutes. Either way, small sacrifice in speed.



<< On second thought there's extra regular CD read, upto 40x... >>



True, but the only time your drive takes advantage of this is when you run something off of CD (which is rare) and when you install something. 8x isn't that large of a speed difference on installs.



<< I went from a 4x to 16x burner. Go for the 16x. It has a faster DAE speed. >>



Actually the 16x plextors have 32x DAE, the same as the 12x drive with firmware updates.

dm