x8 and x16 dvds

[Boother84]

Noob question i am sure but could someone kindly tell me the difference between x8 and x16 dvds as im looking to purchase some to do some burning.
Thanks in advance
David

[Richard_G]

It is the maximum speed they can be written at. Providing you have a modern writer woth up to date firmware, it will write 8x discs at 8x and 16x at 16x However, I have found that anything much faster than 8xis a bit of a waste as it only achieves maximum speed at the end of the burn, burning the majority of the disc at 8x then 12x and finally hitting 16x.

[Nilfennasion]

Not exactly.

Depending on the mode of burning used (constant angular or constant linear etc), the burning cycles through a lot of speeds. On most 16X media, DVDDecrypter will slowly and gradually increase from 8X to 16X over a period of several minutes. The average speed I usually get when burning 4.2 GB is about 14.5X, which is obviously quite a substantial improvement upon 8X.