Het volk van cdrlabs.com brengt ons een review van Acer's CRW2010A brander. Deze brander schrijft CD's op 20x (Zone-CLV), herschrijft op 10x en leest op 40x. De brander beschikt over een buffer van 2MB en de gebruikte anti-coaster technologie is Seamless Link. Bij het retail-pakket wordt software van Veritas meegeleverd (PrimoCD Plus en Veritas Direct Letter Acess). De resultaten van de CD Winbench 99 vielen behoorlijk tegen. De overall CD Winbench score was slechts 412KB/sec en de access times lagen rond de 500ms. Na een nieuwe firmware versie (VH.MF) was het probleem met de access time gerepareerd (96ms), maar de overall score was nog steeds erg laag. Andere CD-RW drivers van Acer behaalden scores van 1100 - 1200 in deze test. De DAE-speeds en de kwaliteit van het beestje zijn ook niet al te best. Hieronder de logische conclusie die hieruit voortvloeit:
When it comes down to it though, writing 650Mb of data in 3.7 minutes with this drive is a pipe dream. Most likely that number is how long it might take the drive to write the data and does not include the time the drive tests the media or when it writes the lead-in/lead-out areas of the CD. In our tests we saw the drive take over 5 minutes to write 650Mb of data from start to finish . The drive's writing times come very close to (and in some cases higher than) a 16x CLV drive! Much of this has to do with the way Acer's drive writes. While the drive uses Z-CLV writing technology to allow the drive to reach its high speeds, it has been designed in such a way that it reaches its maximum speed very late in the writing session. This gives the drive its very low overall average speed.
It wouldn't be fair to only point out the negative things about this drive. Acer's new drive did fairly well in the reading tests and was able to reach its rated speeds for pressed and CD-R media. It's seek times were also lower than most drives I've tested. As a rewriter, the drive actually performed quite well. The CRW2010A was able to rewrite with the best of them, having good writing and erasing times.Highs:
- Seamless Link is a great alternative to other buffer underrun protection technologies.
- Very good seek times.
- Fairly decent transfer rates for CD-R and pressed media. Slow starting, but reached its rated 40x speed.
- Includes Acer's own Optimum Write Speed Control technology to detect media speed.
- Prassi's PrimoCD Plus is a welcome change from Easy CD Creator.
Lows:
- Slowest 20x drive currently available. Not much faster and in some cases slower than 16x CLV drives.
- While the drive uses Z-CLV to write at 20x, it doesn't reach this speed until the 40 minute mark.
- DAE speeds are relatively slow compared to other 16x and 20x drives.
- High CPU usage when reading CD's.
- Only supports PIO Mode 4. No UDMA 33 support.
- The drive is expensive.
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