Philips 20x10x40 CD-RW Drive
Philips has recently begun production of a top-of-the-line internal IDE CD-RW drive, model number PCRW2010. The drive features "Seamless Link" technology, which protects against buffer underrun errors...commonly known as "coasters" to CD burner veterans. Having used prominently named brands such as Plextor, the Philips unit had tough competition to stand up to in my testing. Read on and see if Philips lives up to its statement "Greatest Burner on Earth" (printed on the product packaging).
Technical Specifications:
| Drive Interface | E-IDE / ATAPI (Ultra DMA Mode 2) |
| Capacity | up to 700 KB/s |
| 20x Write | 3000 KB/s |
| 10x Rewrite | 1500 KB/s |
| 40x Read | 6000 KB/s |
| Data Buffer | 2 MB |
| Random Access Time | Avg. 100 ms |
| Compatibility | all popular CD formats/CD-R/CD-RW |
| Drive Interface | E-IDE / ATAPI (Ultra DMA Mode 2) |
| Capacity | up to 700 KB/s |
| 20x Write | 3000 KB/s |
| 10x Rewrite | 1500 KB/s |
| Formats Supported | CD-Audio/CD-ROM (XA)/CD-Bridge/CD-I/Video-CD/CD-Extra |
| Write Methods | TAO (Track at Once)/DAO (Disk at Once)/MS (multi-session)/SAO (Session at Once)/IPW (Incremental Packet Writing) |
| Operating System | Window 95/98/Me/NT 4.0/2000/XP |
Minimum System Requirements :
| Pentium II 300 MHz or higher (or equivalent) |
| Windows 95/98/Me/NT 4.0/2000/XP |
| Minimum 55MB free hard drive space (90MB recommended) |
| Minimum 32MB RAM (slightly higher for NT 4.0/2000/Me) |
Test System:
| AMD 1.0 GHz Thunderbird cpu (200MHz FSB) |
| Asus A7V Motherboard |
| Philips Acoustic Edge Sound Card |
| 640MB PC133 SDRAM |
| ATI Radeon VIVO 64MB Display Adapter |
| Windows 2000 Pro w/ SP2 |
Installation:
Adding the Philips burner to the test system was a simple task of setting the jumper to slave, securing it in a drive bay, and connecting the IDE cable and power adapter. I powered up the system and checked Device Manager to verify that Windows had found the new drive, which it did.
Testing Software:
Nero 5.5 (OEM version bundled with the drive).
Nero CD Speed v0.83 (Beta version)
Transfer Speed v0.99.2 (Smart Projects freeware)
SiSoft Sandra (trial version)
Testing Results
Sandra:
Sandra results show the Philips edging out 32x drives in overall performance. A 40x drive choice was not available as a comparison within the utility.
CD Speed:
Results above show the drive averaging nearly 32x speeds for reading, with lowest speeds of 18.6x (inner tracks) and fastest of 41.7x (outer tracks). CD Speed also tests DAE (digital audio extraction) speeds...resulting in an average of 29.32x (below). "On The Fly Copying" shows the drive is capable of CD-to-CD copying speeds of up to 16x or greater (this utility only validates up to 16x, but 20x was successfully done with other software).
Finally, CD Speed gave respectable scores on other important aspects of the drive:
| Spinup Time | 1.80 s |
| Spindown Time | 3.13 s |
| Disc Eject Time | 1.08 s |
| Disc Load Time | 0.76 s |
| Disc Recognition Time | 4.45 s |
Transfer Speed:
Another test of the drive's data reading performance. This agrees with CD Speed's results, showing a low of 18.55x (inner) and 41.42x (outer). Highest burst speed topped out at 45x, which is well above the drives specifications of a 40x reader.
Nero:
This is a 731MB audio CD burn performed in 4.53 minutes (4min 32sec) at 20x. Is that fast enough for you? While burning I took a snapshot of the Windows Task Manager to show cpu usage during a 20x burn (below). 9% utilization is minimal considering the IDE interface (a common complaint of IDE fans/foes is the high cpu utilization versus the low % when on a SCSI interface).
Pros:
Fast 20x CDR / 10x CDRW
Good software bundle (Nero 5.5)
Seamless Link technology prevents coasters
Extremely quiet
Cons:
Not yet available in the United States (that I can find from online vendors at the time of review)
Conclusion:
The Philips PCRW2010 burner is definitely a speed demon. Quality of the drive is excellent, as well as the bundled software (Nero 5.5). Thanks to the Seamless Link technology, coasters are a thing of the past. Even with a small data buffer of 2MB, the drive maintains CD burn integrity. This drive performs as well, or better, than all other burners I have used to date. Does it deserve the title "Greatest Burner on Earth"? Since there are 24x burners out...and SCSI drives as well...this should be changed to "Greatest 20x IDE Burner on Earth". With that minor correction, then yes, it very well may be a suitable title.
OVERALL RATING: 10/10
review by b-man1
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