AnandTech: MSI DR12-A Preview: Still pushing for 12X DVDR

Introduction and Construction

We have seen a few interesting technologies from MSI, including the first unbridged SATA burner. Unfortunately, MSI's SATA controller only seems to talk to Intel's ICH5/ICH6 southbridge, making adoption difficult.

We got our hands on MSI's newest burner in hopes that there might be a less expensive alternative to Plextor's PX-712A or LG's GSA-412B - this time, we were armed with a stack of 16X and 12X media. We all want to know if the DR12-A is just a revision of the DR8-A, or if there is something truly unique in this drive.

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Below is a quick overview of specifications on the drive:

MSI DR12-A DVD-/+R Drive
Interface	PATA
CD Write Speed	40X, 32X, 24X (Z-CLV) 16X, 12X, 8X, 4X (CLV)
CD Rewrite Speed	24X (Z-CLV) 16X, 12X, 8X, 4X (CLV)
CD Read Speed	40X Max (CAV)
DVD-R Write Speed	8X (Z-CLV) 4X, 2X (CLV)
DVD-RW Rewrite Speed	4X, 2X, 1X (CLV)
DVD+R Write Speed	12X, 8X (Z-CLV) 4X, 2X (CLV)
DVD+RW Rewrite Speed	4X, 2.4X (CLV)
DVD-RAM Write Speed	5X (CLV)
DVD Read Speed	16X Max (CAV)
Supported Modes	DAO / DAO-RAW 16 & 96 TAO SAO / SAO 16 & 96 Packet Write Multi-Session
Supported Formats	DVD+R (DAO, incremental, seq) DVD+RW (random) DVD-R (DAO, incremental, seq) DVD-RW (restricted overwrite) CD-R, CD-RW, CD-ROM, CD-DA, Mixed Mode, CD Extra Photo CD, CD Text, Bootable CD, UDF
Access Time	CD: 100ms DVD: 150ms
Buffer	2MB

Above, you can see the MSI DR12-A and the Plextor 712A are essentially identical. MSI does not advertise the 2MB buffer on its retail box, which we find particularly unusual, since the drive utilizes the Sanyo LC897491 chipset. You may notice in the chipset white page that Sanyo recommends an 8MB buffer with this LSI. This does not bode well for the drive, unfortunately.

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Oddly, the drive took uncommonly long to probe for revision information. Loading discs also seemed problematic for the drive - sometimes, we experienced load times over two minutes for unwritten media. Notice the unusual name under which the drive shows up.

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Below, you can see the Sanyo chipset mentioned earlier. Even though both the PX-712A and the DR12-A use the same chipset, they have radically different designs. Except for the chipset, almost every other component is different between these two drives. The one exception to this is the AK8584 analog signal processor, also used on the PX-712A.

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There are no official booktype setting capabilities for this drive. Since the drive is fairly similar to the Plextor PX-712A, it may be possible for creative users to flash an unofficial PX-712 firmware onto the drive and enable unsupported booktype functionality. This is not recommended.

The drive supports MSI's HD-BURN, which is extremely similar to Plextor's GigarRec. We are capable technically of burning 1.4GB onto a CD using HD-BURN, but we will not particularly focus on HD-BURN in this review, since we covered it during our DR8-A review a few months ago.