Performance

CD WinBench 99

To get an estimate of the drive’s performance I run CD WinBench 99 first:

I took a PX-712A drive from Plextor for the comparison’s sake as it is close to the Lite-On SOHW-1213S in characteristics (but not in functionality!) The Plextor got a higher overall score, but only due to its smaller access time. The Lite-On, however, develops a much higher velocity both on the inner and outer tracks (the difference is most noticeable on the outer tracks). The Lite-On consumes less of CPU resources, too (below 1 percent). Thus, the SOHW-1213S can quickly perform linear reading (by the way, it is the fastest DVD-burner I have tested so far), but can’t be boastful of its access time.

CD-R Burning

I took Verbatim DataLifePlus 52x Crystal blanks for this test:

I burned the discs at the maximum (48x) as well as 24x and 16x speeds. The Plextor can’t write to CD-R discs at 24x, so we can only base our comparisons on the remaining two speeds. The Plextor was 3 seconds faster at 48x, while the Lite-On was 5 seconds ahead at 16x. This is yet another confirmation of the fact that it takes about the same time for different optical drives to burn CD-R media at the same speed. The difference, if any, is negligible.

Lite-On SOHW-1213S’s graph for reading
the CD-R disc written at 48x

The reading graph above is good – the drive reaches its max declared speed, but there’s a slump between minutes 20 and 30. Otherwise, I have no complains.

Here are the results of Nero CD Speed for the CD-R written at 48x. The average read speed is reported to be similar to the CD WinBench result – the Lite-On SOHW-1213S is faster than the PX-712A and once again confirms the title I’ve ascribed to it above – the fastest DVD-burner I’ve ever tested (I mean, with CD media). The seek time is still high, though. It is not just higher than that of the PX-712A, but is also higher than that of “any DVD-burner I’ve ever tested”. Before that, the Pioneer DRV-108 drive was holding the “record” of the slowest random seek (122msec). The new record is 139 milliseconds. The Lite-On wins the ergonomics test (the total time it takes to load and recognize the disc) with an advantage of 1 second over the PX-712A. However, with an absolute result of 16 seconds it is still among the category of “ruminative” devices. The SOHW-1213S also shows a slightly faster burst rate than the Plextor, but its result is anyway rather average – a long way to the Pioneer DRV-108’s 35MB/s.