16x DVD reported as 2x

[Guest]

Hi,

I've got a Samsung 16x DVD in my new rig and running SiSoft Sandra benchmarks against it and Sandra seems to think its only a 2x (tested with a movie DVD in the drive). Is the 16x rate only achievable with a data DVD? I've checked that DMA is enabled for the channel and that's all fine so there must be something else I don't understand.

Any clues?

Sos

<b>Style is when you lean against a lamppost and it looks as though you're doing it a favour</b>

 

[AMD_cErTiFiEd]

Dont worry about it all DVD's spin at the same speed.
It's like having a VCR from 10 yrs ago and a new one playing movies faster

Blame the newbies not the technology

 

[redstar]

ok so what is the advantage of having a 16x vs a 2x.

are we just falling for marketing hype?

 

[Guest]

you're making a mistake that the marketing people want you to make. the 16x only means the maximum reachable speed for that drive. but a lot of factors have an influence on the read speed. the position on the disc for example. CD's and DVD's are read from the inside to the outside. on the inside the tracks are smaller and the effective speed of the track is slower than on the outside (check you physics notes from highschool). so the possible read speed is slower at constant spin speed. the qality of the disc is important too. all drives have error correction and attempt reading data at least five times over before reporting that the reading failed. even very small scratches on a disc can slow things down considerably. and so on.
in essence it's very rare that a drive ever achives the maximum stated read speed.

on the other hand it doesn't really matter too much if you only wanna watch DVD movies since your drive only needs single speed for them or maybe 1.5x-2x if it reads ahead and buffers the data.

respect!