ASUS CRW5224 CD-RW - Page 6

CDR Tests

The ASUS CRW5224 supports 4X, 8X, 12X, 16X (CLV), 24X (P-CAV), 32X (P-CAV), 40X (P-CAV), 48X (P-CAV) and 23-52X (CAV) writing speeds.

The drive's FlextraSpeed system will reduce the maximum writing speed in order to maintain the best writing quality for the inserted media. User will notice this effect within Nero Burning Rom since the maximum burning speed will be lower than the drive's maximum supported.

- Recording Tests

The amount of the data we burned was 704MB (80:01:26), for all the drives. The SONY CRX220E1 finishes the task first with 149secs (2:29mins) and the AOpen CRW5224 comes second with 151secs (2:31mins, while the ASUS CRW5224 takes the last place with 154secs (2:34mins). The CDSpeed writing test may showed 40.10X average writing speed, but the drive manages to finish last.

How can this be possible? The answer can be found when monitoring the burning process. The drive takes too much time during the lead-in area (almost 20secs). The track starts recording after 23secs so the final burning time is higher than we could expected. This behaviour wasn't noticed for the 48X writing speed. Maybe with future firmware upgrades, ASUS CRW5224 could become faster...

The above graph shows the differences of the recording performances for the three tested drives in all the supported writing speeds. The results are the best we had for each speed. As we can see the AOpen CRW5224 was the slower drive in almost all the recording speeds with an exception at the maximum (52X) where it takes the second place. The SONY CRX220E1 is the faster drive for the 16X, 24X and 52X recording speeds. The ASUS CRW5224 takes the lead at 32X, 40X and 48X.

Below is a table that shows the time differences compared to the 16X (CLV) recording speed for each drive. We also calculated the % difference for each recording speed (% gain in recording time).

User will notice a major performance difference compared to the 16X (CLV) at 40X, 48X and 52X recording speeds. On the other hand, the difference between the 48X and the 52X speeds is only 3secs!

- ASUS CRW5224 recording results

- Overburning Tests

The ASUS drive can overburn up to 99mins without any problems.

- CD-Text Results

Both drives can read/write CD-Text without any problems.

- CloneCD Writing Tests

The CloneCD software reports that the drive supports the DAO-RAW feature. With the use of proper media, DAO-RAW writing can be performed at 52X (CAV). For checking the drive's EFM correction status, we used 3 different game titles with different SafeDisc 2 versions with the latest software patches installed. We used the drive as reader/writer at maximum reading/recording speed. Two discs were burned for each game. One disc was burned with PadusDJ and the other with CloneCD (Amplify Weak Sectors On). The results are posted in the following table:

As you can see, both the Sony and the AOpen drives didn't have any problems backup SafeDisc v2.5x.xx ~ 2.80.xx builds.