Replacement burner for low-spec PC

[Ionakana]

Hi everyone

As my LiteOn SOHW-1653 no longer works, I am now looking for a new DVD burner. My system is an AMD Duron 950Mhz with 128MB of RAM, running WinXP. Note that this was within the system requirements stated by LiteOn, and the burner previously worked on my system with no problems at all (the fault that killed it was purely mechanical).

I am considering either the LG 4163B or the Pioneer DVR 109 as a replacement. Having looked at LG's and Pioneer's websites, however, I am a little put off by the claimed system requirements. Pioneer specify that at least 256MB of RAM is necessary for their burners, whereas LG recommend 512MB. My question is, do some burners really have higher RAM requirements than others? Or is this simply down to the requirements of the bundled software?

Can I safely take it that if the LiteOn worked satisfactorily in my system, then any other burner should work equally well? Note that I only burn at 4x with no other applications running - I'm not concerned about being able to burn at high speeds.

Thanks in anticipation, any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Jayhawk]

Some may disagree (I don't really see how) but there are no physical memory requirements for hardware outside of the operating system and drivers required to operate them. You are correct that the system requirements are for the bundled software that comes with the drives.

Having said that, it is possible for newer, faster drives (12X, 16X) to cause some problems with some burning applications IF allowed to attempt a burn at max speed and a number of other apps running. The buffer software / firmware should take care of it but I've noticed occasionaly it doesn't. A good burning app will allow you to dictate the burn speed (4X). In that case, if your previous burner worked fine, than your new burner should work fine.

[ccbadd]

You can use any of the new burners with your PC, you just might not be able to get 16X burns. Try running a transfer rate test in HD-Tach or some other benchmark app and see what thoughput you get with large block sizes. If you can sustain over 23MBs, you should be fine. I am surprised however that you can run anything under XP reliable with only 128MB ram!

[normcar]

First, I would add ram until you have 512MB or you are maxed out. XP really needs at least 256MB or more.

As for the DVD Burner, I recommend the Benq 1620 or the newer version. If you read enough posts, most of the other brands have problems or require hacked firmware, but as long as DMA is set properly, and you use the Benq utility to Bit Set for +R burning, you will not have any problems with the Benq.