Nero 6.6 buffer issue using NF4

[eoniverse]

Ever since moving to the NF4 chipset - only 6 weeks ago - I am getting wild fluctuations in my Nero 6.6.?? buffer when burning both SL and DL DVD's. It'll mostly stay between 76% and 94%... but will shoot down to 23% about 10 times during the SL burn. Now my SL burns are completing but I am running about 70% success on DL. On my last 2 previous 2 VIA boards - same HW setup - I never had one DL failure and the only new pieces of H/W are my M/B and my video card.

My system specs are:
A8N5X BIOS 0609
1500MB RAM PC3200
x2 3800 @ 2600mhz
Windows XP Home SP2
EVGA 7600GT
Hauppauge WINPVR-250
3 EIDE HDD's

Some other things of note. This is a fresh install. 3 HDD's. No RAID. Two seagates and One Hitachi. Primary IDE has System (Seagate) as Master and Storage (Hitachi) as slave. Secondary IDE has DVD Writer as master and storage (Seagate) as slave. Not using cable select on any. In BIOS sata is disabled as is RAID and LAN. FWIW I have had the DVD Writer also as primary slave and had these same fluctuations.

1. Have tried burning from both primary IDE HDD's to DVD Writer. Same fluctuation in buffer.

2. It's NOT the Media or the .vob file. Verbatim DL. And After 2 failures on my PC I burned with the same media and same .vob file's successfully on my wife's PC first shot and buffer stood between 72% and 96%. Her system only has one IDE cable with the DVD writer as slave. So it's not the media. She has a Benq DW1620 and I use a Benq DW1650. Again fwiw my DW1650 burned these DL fine on my old A8V dlx board... only 6 weeks earlier.

3. It's NOT DMA. It's all enabled. I also uninstalled driver's and reinstalled to be certain. I have tried both the Microsoft IDE driver's and the Nvidea IDE driver's.I have tried the new 6.86 Nvidea's = no difference. DMA enabled in BIOS. When I had it on the Nvidea IDE controller I could tell DMA was def enabled. Testing on the drives had burst around 105 and sustained no lower than 60. (Approximate. Not at home to look at what I wrote down.)

4. Don't recall the BIOS on the board, but it's not the new 0906 (?) BIOS. However I have installed the new BIOS last night. Just haven't created any.vob DVD files to attempt this with.

5. System is overclocked but I get these fluctuations at stock as well.

6. Not Nero's buffer/cache size. Not at home to get this right but one is set to 80MB and the other is set to 400MB.

7. I have messed with the system's page file also to see if it makes a difference. Moved the page file to the master on the secondary cable. Tried both system controlled and fixed at ??? 2300 MB ??? Didn't make a difference, so I moved it back to the primary as system controlled last night. Didn't have to mess with any of this on my A8V dlx.

Last night I went back to a fresh install using Acronis and I also uninstalled Nero, ran a Nero cleaner. and re-installed. Then I updated the M/B BIOS. I also ran a registry cleaner ... but - again - I don't have any files created to test all this with. I probably will by the week-end.

Hopefully this takes care of it. But I am also looking for solutions I may have missed just in case. I do not believe my board supports NCQ but I will look tonight when I get home. I'd also like to see if anyone can tell me something about nTune software and if it's at least something that is compatible with my board and a possible solution.

 

[eoniverse]

Anyone?

 

[joe360]

Well, you're not alone.

I was just about to post about something very similar. Im using a LG GSA 4167B DVD bruner, and it took me 40mins to burn a 4.4 GB movie at 16x. I also get huge fluctuations in buffer..

 

[INM8]

I use Nero and have an nf4 chipset and I havent had any problems like that at all. My dvd burner is a BenQ DW1640, the motherboard is an Asus A8N SLI premium, and I am using Nero 7. The only thng I can suggest is to try upgrading the firmware on your dvd drives. BenQ release firrmware updates for their drives reasonably often, and upgrading to the latest version fixed some of the other issues I was having with my drives. Try it out, and if that does work, it may be time to try out Nero 7 or a different buring application.

 

[eoniverse]

joe360: Do you have another burner/different system to test on? Otherwise it may be the media. Have you tried a different brand with the same issues? Still a chance the media manufacturer is the same but at least it would indicate probably not media related if problem persists. I have also seen your issu by not having DMA enabled. Check to make sure you are not in PIO mode in device manager.

Have the most recent Benq firmware... so that isn't it. Same firmware that worked great on my A8V dlx.

Appreciate the Nero 7 advise... but google search on N7 shows many people who think it's a bloated P*S. Scares me to consider that option - but it might work. Def my last resort.

 

[joe360]

Hey thanks eoniverse that fixed it, good luck with yours..

 

[JimPhelpsMI]

Hi, That's what buffers are for. The system fills the buffer with Data. The burner uses the data. At a predetermined point and when the processor can spare the time, the buffer is filled again. May just depend on what else you are running while you are burning.

Good Luck, Jim

 

[eoniverse]

Thanks for that. I keep forgetting to turn off my AV when burning. I have used some of the old BV notes to shut down a lot of background processes but still compling media to burn DL and see what's up.