Plextor 708A: First exclusive look at 8X DVD+R

Testing the Drive

We used the following configuration to test our DRW-0402P/D:

Gigabyte GA-7VRX
AMD Athlon MP 2100+
2 x 128 DDR Corsair XMS 2400
Maxtor 80GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache
Windows XP SP1

Using CD Speed 2.02 and DVD Speed, we had run a battery of read, write and rewrite tests on the drive. The following read speeds are for a pressed HP System Recovery CD.

Click to enlarge.

The drive has no problems with CD media, as obtaining 40X CAV was no challenge. In fact, since we only used a 70min CD, reading speeds for 80min CDs might be even closer to 48X read. However, take notice of the horrible access times. What good is a 22MB/s burst rate if it takes 339ms to seek? Below is a table of some media read times and their respective mappings in Nero CD Speed.

	Average Transfer	Seek Random	Seek 1/3	Seek Full	Media Length
Pressed HP System Recovery (Turbo)	30.25X	110ms	116ms	339ms	69:18.41
Pressed DAE Global Underground 24 CD2	31.85X	N/A	N/A	N/A	73:20.15
Burned PNY 48X CDR Dummy File	31.95X	112ms	119ms	119ms	74:00.05
Burned Mitsubishi 32X CDRW Dummy File	30.85X	86ms	110ms	168ms	71.28.40
Pressed DVD The Matrix	6.12X	N/A	N/A	N/A	7.82GB
Pressed Mixed DVD The Animatrix	6.14X	N/A	N/A	N/A	7.92GB
TDK 4X DVD-R Data CD	6.03X	88ms	102ms	181ms	4.38GB
FujiFilm 4X DVD+R Data CD	6.05X	91ms	102ms	182ms	4.38GB
Imation 4X DVD+R Data CD	4.61X	136ms	164ms	311ms	4.38GB
FujiFilm 4X DVD-RW Data CD	4.62X	139ms	170ms	316ms	4.38GB
FujiFilm 2.4X DVD+RW Data CD	6.11X	387ms	421ms	717ms	4.38GB

We never really saw the 12X DVD read claimed by Plextor. On the other hand, the read speeds certainly do not disappoint either. Typical reads ended up around 8X (6X average), which out-performs the only 4-5X capable A06. For whatever reason, the CPU usage seems slightly excessive, and we really have no idea what is going on in the DVD+RW read test.

DVD access times are very good. The drive clearly seeks on DVDs 10-15% quicker than the Pioneer A06.