- Well Priced
- 8X DVD+R and DVD-R Ability
- Good CD-R Performance
- Quirky CPU Usage with DVD-R Media
- Slower DVD Read Speeds w/Recordable Media
- Slow Spin-Up Times
- 8x DVD+R and DVD-R Recording Speeds
- 4x DVD+RW and DVD-RW Recording Speeds
- 12x DVD-ROM Reading Speeds
- 40x CD-R Recording Speeds
- 24x CD-RW Recording Speeds
- 40x CD-ROM Reading Speeds
- 2MB Buffer
- EIDE (ATAPI) Interface
- Available in Beige (DR8-A2) or Black (DR8-A2B)
- Nero 6 Express, Sonic MyDVD v4.5 and ArcSoft ShowBiz DVD Software
6/21/04 - Technology is chaging very rapidly in the DVD storage market such that purchasing the top of the line drive is hard to justify. Thankfully a number of lower cost optical drive manufacturers are beginning to offer feature rich DVD burners. MSI, best known for their motherboards, offers the DR8-A2 as a low cost 8x dual format DVD burner.
The DR8-A2 is a dual format drive meaning that it can support both the +R and -R standards. This is now commonplace for DVD burners making the format wars a thing of the past. It is capable of 8x recording speeds for the recordable media and 4x speeds for rewritable. It also has very strong CD-R performance offering 40x recording speeds and 24x rewritable speeds.
During testing, performance of the drive was very close to the specifications. It was a bit slower in reading the DVD recordable media compared to a printed DVD-ROM disk, but this is somehwat to be expected. CPU usage when using the DVD-R media was a bit erractic compared to other media types, but most users probably will not notice.
The drive did take about twice the amount of time of previously tested drives to spin up. This is the amount of time the drive takes after a disk is put in to get the disc up to maximum speed and determine what type of disc was inserted. It should be noted that once up to speed, the drive did run at fairly low noise levels.
While not offering the best performance on the market, the DR8-A2 still does a very good job for the price.
