new hp630i burner vs older hardware

[vrdvd]

i'm considering getting a new HP DVD630I d/l DVD Writer. the tech specs for this drive list it as requiring 800mhz Pentium III, 1.6ghz Intel Pentium IV, i currently hav a p3 running at 800mhz with 512 ram. will this drive be able to run under my current chipset hardware? will it simply run slower or will my bios and hardware reject it outright? shuld i upgrade my hardware b4 even consider purchasing? do all dual layers require 1gh or beyond?

does the new dual layer format have any hidden problems or is it as relaible and widespread readable as the older single layer format?

any one have anything bad to say about the newer hp drives? i know their older models were problematic.

thanks.

[budz]

in my opinion your cpu speed is too slow. the only problem you'll probably have is you may not be able to burn at high speeds like 8x - 12x speed. the drive is a BENQ. if it's a rebadged BENQ 1620 then it's a good drive to purchase for DVD+R media. i used a LITEON 411@811 DVDRW with a 933 mhz chip which worked fine but 800 mhz chip is cutting it close. i would suggest you purchase a DVDRW that is 4x speed or purchase the HP but just burn at 4x speed.

[vrdvd]

in my opinion your cpu speed is too slow. the only problem you'll probably have is you may not be able to burn at high speeds like 8x - 12x speed. the drive is a BENQ. if it's a rebadged BENQ 1620 then it's a good drive to purchase for DVD+R media. i used a LITEON 411@811 DVDRW with a 933 mhz chip which worked fine but 800 mhz chip is cutting it close. i would suggest you purchase a DVDRW that is 4x speed or purchase the HP but just burn at 4x speed.

i have a phillips 228 +r/rw drive already. wanted to upgrade to dual layers and faster burner and one that is compatible with more media. since most burners coming out are +- compatible do some still do one over the other better? what company are BenQ from. i never heard of that brand.

thxs for the info.

[budz]

BENQ can be purchased from newegg.com. the BENQ 1620 drive has gotten rave reviews, it prefers DVD+R media than DVD-R. if you want dual layer burning you're going to have a faster computer to optimize the dual layer features. i'd wait ahwile before purchasing a dual layer burner because the media is still expensive compared to single layer dvd media.

[Marty2003]

I'm running a BENQ 1610 on a 850mhz AMD Duron, 320MB ram. So far I haven't had any problems burning. Not a single coaster so far. Using the Nero registry trick to show the true burn speed it usually fluctuates between 3.5x and 3.9x The minimum for the 1610 states a 500mhz CPU as the minimum. I haven't tried burning anything faster than 4x, so I'm guessing as long as you burn at 4x you probably won't have any problems at all.

[Forum Troll]

I bot the 630I at wal-mart for 80 bucks. Burns +R and DL +R no problem, but I did have some problems with -R that I burned playing on my standalone players. Updating the firmware of the drive fixed this. You can get the firmware at the below URL.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?dlc=en&lc=en&os=228&product=4...tem=dv-25773-1