Is my computer fast enough for a DVD burner?

[hiflyact]

Just wanted a 2nd opinion on this. This is what I'm running:

Windows 2000 SP4
Pentium 3 500 mhz
512MB PC100 SDRAM
8MB AGP Onboard Video
WD 40GB, and 8.4 Quantum Fireball hard drives running off a ATA 100 card.

From the specs I've read on certain models of burners, I'm at the minimum of requirements. Am I going to run into problems if I get a DVD burner, like making coasters, longer burn times, etc.

Thanks

[BJ_M]

u will be ok

[ztank]

Just keep in mind that a 4x burner burns at about 5500 KB/s. As long as your hard disks can sustain that read speed when burning, you'll be fine at 4x. Otherwise drop to a lower speed.

[Greenspock]

Looks like you're good to go. No problems with your system Just don't think about burning 'on-the-fly' which isn't a good idea for most of us.

[trhouse]

I would agree for burning DVD's there should be no problem. I have a similar computer and it worked fine. The problems occurred when we wanted to archive VHS tapes to DVD. Then the capture software partly worked because there was not enough video memory available to show what was being captured. The work around was just to feed the VCR output into a TV instead of using the software to view the capture.

[Hardcoreruss]

Yeah no probs, just make sure when you burn that is all you do.

[SaSi]

You remind me of the days I replaced my 386 DX40 system because it couldn't cope with 1x CD recording .

Your system should be fine. To explain this, memory is not an issue. NERO for example can use up to a max of 80MB for RAM cache.

If your disks are at least UDMA33, then you will also be fine.

DVDVideo is mainly large files (not thousands of small files), so Disk IO speed and CPU speed are not that important.

My system (P4/2.67) while recording is using 3% of the CPU for NERO. I can also rip DVDs at the same time and also do MPEG2 encoding (or DVD2One transcoding).

The only part where you may face problems is CPU speed for re-encoding and transcoding. Using DVD2One for a DVDVideo disk should take you about 1 hour ~ 1hour 30 minutes to complete, so you will have to be patient.