MSI DR8-A: The Plextor 708A's little brother
by Kristopher Kubicki on April 7, 2004 11:05 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Final Thoughts
MSI's DR8-A became an instant favorite around the lab for two reasons: HD-BURN and price. Plextor's 708A still does a better job on 8X DVD+R write descriptors; although, hopefully, new firmware revisions on the DR8-A can compensate for this in the future. The inability to burn cheap media on either burner is unfortunate, but understandable. Our largest surprise was that the DR4-A and DR8-A, which look identical on the outside, perform so differently. The DR8-A is much more stable, supports more media and burns faster.The main difference between the Plextor 708A and the MSI DR8-A is the price (remember, they use identical chipsets). The DR8-A does not have Plextor's PowerRec, but it does equal the 708A in virtually every benchmark. The MSI DR8-A delivers almost the same performance as the Plextor 708A for $40 less. We have seen several incredible drives for $100, including the NuTech DDW-081 and the NEC 2500A. MSI's DR8-A retails for a little more, around $120. The drive is priced a little high when compared to NuTech or NEC's 8X solutions, but if you are intrigued by HD-BURN or 99-min CDR, you may be able to justify the extra cost.
Also consider when buying a burner like the NEC-2500A or Sony DRU-530, you may have to spend extra on specifically marked "8X DVD+R" media, while burners like the NuTech DDW-081 and MSI DR8-A will burn 8X on most 4X discs. On the other hand, the Pioneer 107D has no problems burning on low quality DVD-R media, which plagues the Plextor 708A and MSI DR8-A.
Stay tuned as we have more 8X DVD+R and DVD-R drives in the next few weeks, as well as more info on HD-DVD, BluRay and DVD DL.
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jonahXP - Thursday, April 15, 2004 - link
"Before our 8x dual DVD roundup..."When will this article be online? I'm looking forward to reading it before I buy a DVD burner.
richardkenward - Tuesday, April 13, 2004 - link
I bought one of these drives in the UK a month ago and had nothing but trouble from the start and MSI were no help. On Verbatum data life CD's it starts writing about 1cm from the centre. I write image files on this writer and want them to be read on both PC's and Macs. The CD's have been unreliable on the PC's and failed on the Mac...well only a few images open then one will totally lock it up. The write veridfication always shows up errors. A trial DVD write was sucesssful but took perhaps an hour to complete!Tried a TDK R74 CD and the write started in the centre but the image files opened sooo slowly on the MSI drive, and the CD was not seen at all on the Mac! BTW latest firmware was installed and no improvement seen.
Supplier has sent a replacement and much the same result. Has suggested that I need to update the Chipset on the M board and install SP 4 inplace of 3 on the win2k computer I am using with the MSI drive. Surely this should not be necessary? BTW this box has been running a PlextorW2410TA perfectly for ages, and was only changed to get the facility to burn DVD's.
Thanks for reading. Any help would be appreciated.
Ian@CDRlabs - Sunday, April 11, 2004 - link
You had it finished back in February? Why the wait?KristopherKubicki - Sunday, April 11, 2004 - link
Lan,We had the review finished before the 130D firmware came out. We have a nice sized roundup coming up with the MSI retested at the new firmware.
Krisotpher
Ian@CDRlabs - Friday, April 9, 2004 - link
After reading it over, I have a couple of other comments.While MSI claims that the DR8-A supports 99 minute discs, it really doesn't. It can recognize discs up to 93:58 in size and overburn to about that limit as well.
Kristopher you also make it sound like the NEC 2500A cannot write to 4x DVD+R media at 8x. It can.. just not as well as some drives, like the DR8-A.
Any reason why you didn't use the 130D firmware?
Ian@CDRlabs - Friday, April 9, 2004 - link
ViRGE brings up a good point. However, the error correction HD-Burn uses is not CIRC (nor is it overburning). It's a more efficient algorythm that requires less disc space for error correction info. Even then, I do have to agree with some of the people at CD Freaks. The quality of the written data is questionable with some media.KristopherKubicki - Friday, April 9, 2004 - link
Virge: Youre not really halving the error correction, youre halving the tolerance for error. However, this isnt much different than people who overburn their CDs either. In some cases it may make more sense.Whether you want to use it or not is entirely determined by the user of course. For noncritical data, it is a nice convienence.
Kristopher
MadAd - Thursday, April 8, 2004 - link
I take it HD-Burn disks will only play in compliant drives and not in any old cd-rom? I cant seem to find the answer on any of the links given.#3 ... Perhaps half the error correction wouldnt be so bad if we are talking about cds of mp3s?
ViRGE - Thursday, April 8, 2004 - link
I don't think it's really a good idea to call HD-Burn a good feature on this drive. Why? Take a look at this post from CD-Freaks(http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/6823)HD-Burn will just *halve* the pit length on the CD, so double the data (and effectively half the error correction).
Now I don't know about you, but CDs are bad enough as is as far as integrity goes. I'm not about to try to halve the error correction, even for another 700MB of space.
kuk - Thursday, April 8, 2004 - link
I'm afraid of Mr. CD-R ... I think he'll eat my CD collection at night.