In order to confirm the drive's CD reading specifications, we used one CD pressed media, a copy on each of CD-R and HS-RW media. The results are given in the following graphs.

- CD Format

The overall performance of the ASUS drive was very good, being always slightly slower than the LiteOn reader.

- DVD Format

We repeated the same tests with DVD media this time.

Although the starting speed was low enough, at 5.61x, the drive immediately increased speed to almost 7x. The average reading speed was slightly slower than the other two drives, at just above 12X.

The following DVD is a PTP DVD-ROM where the two layers of disc are read sequentially with the drive starting reading from the inner part of the disc, which is the beginning of each layer, progressing towards the outer range for each layer.

The ASUS DVD-E616A was the fastest drive of all, with an impressive 7.71X average speed.

The graph shown below, indicates the reading performance of the three drives with an OTP dual layer media. The first layer of an OTP dual layer DVD-ROM is read exactly the same way as the first layer of the PTP disc we tested previously. The difference here is the reading strategy of the second layer of the disc. The beginning of the second layer is located in the outer part of the disc, so the drive starts reading from the outer tracks towards the inner part of the disc.

As with the PTP disc, the ASUS drive was the fastest drive in this comparison with the OTP disc.

The two following graphs show the reading performance with recordable and rewritable media, where again the ASUS drive proved fastest, due to its higher supported speed.

With WriteOnce and ReWritable media, the ASUS reader, posted exceptional, high reading speeds.

We ripped the contents of a pressed Double Layer movie to the hard disk. The results are summarized below:

The E616P2 model is one of the fastest DVD rippers we have seen. The new E616A ripper reported very good ripping speeds, but unfortunately slower than the E616P2 and slightly slower than the other two drives in this comparison.

The ASUS and Samsung drives are the only drives that support DVD-RAM reading, a feature that differentiates the E616A from the E616P2:

-Appendix Nero CD-DVD Speed Graphs

• CD Pressed / CD-R / US-RW
• DVD Pressed SL / DVD Pressed DL / DVD Pressed DL OTP / DVD-R / DVD-RW / DVD+R / DVD+RW / DVD-RAM