NEC ND-4550A Super-Multi DVD±RW/RAM

While CPU, memory, OS and other variables don't often make a huge difference, there are some nonetheless. We have a computer that is used only for testing hardware. We do this so all tests can be compared reliably.

Test System:

For DVD writers the performance tests are broken down into four sections: CD read, CD write, DVD read and DVD write tests. Each benchmark test has been run three times. The score given is an average of the three. DMA has been enabled in device manager for all IDE devices supporting it.

CD Read Tests: For the read performance section of the CD-ROM benchmarks, CD WinBench 99 v3.0 and CD Speed v4.10 are used to test read speeds, seek times and CPU usage. For DAE testing both CD Speed and CD DAE are used. CD Speed is used to give an overall DAE speed rating and CD DAE is used to give the track by track extraction speeds and to check the extracted tracks for errors the drive may have created.

CD Write Tests: To test the write speeds, Nero Burning Rom is used to write 650MB and 700MB to our test media. Times are recorded. To test rewrite scores, Nero is used again to time how long it takes to write 400MB of random files and directories. Then Sonic's DLA is used to test packet writing speeds. The same files are copied and pasted in Windows Explorer and timed.

DVD Read Tests: For the read performance section of the DVD benchmarks CD Speed v4.10 is used to test read speeds, seek times, and CPU usage.

DVD Write Tests: To test the DVD write speeds, Nero Burning Rom is used to write 4GB to our test media. Times are recorded. Then Sonic's DLA is used to test packet writing speeds. The same files are copied and pasted in Windows Explorer and timed.

CD Winbench 99 Scores:

The CD Winbench test is as close as we can get to testing every day usage. It fires off eight different applications using scripts. This tries to mimic the activities of a person loading these programs onto their own computer.

NEC's new "Super-Multi" drive did pretty well in the CD Winbench portion of our tests. While the ND-4550A's overall score wasn't as high as some of the other drives, its transfer rates were quite good.It started reading at 20.4x (3060 / 150) and reached a maximum speed of about 43.5x (6400 / 150) on the outside. For whatever reason, its CPU utilization was a little on the high side.

CD Speed v4.10 - Pressed CD:

For this test I used a pressed CD containing one Mode 1 data track. The disc is 74:38 in size and is full of data and directories.

	NEC ND-4550A	LG GSA-4167B	Sony DRU-810A	Plextor PX-716A
Transfer Speed Average: Start: End:	35.60x 20.54x 47.09x	35.63x 20.45x 47.28x	36.39x 20.64x 48.13x	35.46x 20.50x 46.90x
Seek Times Random: 1/3: Full:	137ms 145ms 219ms	114ms 126ms 183ms	106ms 123ms 176ms	102ms 120ms 172ms
CPU Usage 1x: 2x: 4x: 8x:	17% 1% 3% 6%	1% 1% 3% 36%	1% 1% 3% 6%	0% 1% 2% 3%

When reading pressed CD's, the ND-4550A is rated at 48x. Unfortunately, like the GSA-4167B and the PX-716A, it came up short of this mark. In our tests, the drive started reading at a respectable 20.54x but reached a maximum transfer speed of only 47.09x.

CD Speed v4.10 - CD-R Media:

For this test I made a copy of our pressed test CD. I used 12x rated Memorex Gold 74 minute media for the tests.

Like the other drives, the ND-4550A was a little faster when reading CD-R media.Thanks to this small speed boost, it had no problems reaching a maximum transfer speed of 48x in our tests.

NEC's new DVD writer also had some trouble reading our 99 minute CompUSA media. If the session on the CD was larger than 90 minutes in size, the ND-4550A would not recognize the disc correctly. Using a disc with about 90 minutes worth of data, I was able to reach a maximum read speed of about 48.04x.

CD Speed v4.10 - CD-RW Media:

For this test I made a copy of a pressed test CD. I used some PNY 80 minute CD-RW media for the tests.

While the ND-4550A can read pressed and CD-R media at speeds as high as 48x, its CD-RW read speeds are limited to 40x. As you can see, it had no problem reaching this speed in our tests.

CD DAE and CD Speed v4.10 - Pressed CD:

For this test I used Pure Funk. The CD is almost exactly 74 minutes. This helps to squeeze the maximum performance out of the CD.

Exact Audio Copy can tell us a lot about a drive's capabilities. You can see from the screen shot that while the NEC ND-4550A supports accurate stream and has the ability to retrieve C2 error information from the CD, it does not cache audio data.

CD Speed	NEC ND-4550A	LG GSA-4167B	Sony DRU-810A	Plextor PX-716A
Average: Start: End: DAE Quality: Accurate Stream:	30.94x 17.99x 40.12x 10 Yes	30.81x 17.50x 40.79x 10 Yes	36.76x 20.90x 48.59x 10 Yes	31.45x 18.20x 41.55x 10 Yes

The ND-4550A did pretty well in our DAE tests. While not nearly as fast as the drive from Sony, it hadno problems reading pressed audio CD's at 40x.

To get a better look at the quality of the extracted audio we use CD DAE. CD DAE is actually designed to be an audio ripping program. It converts the CD-DA on the CD to .wav files. We use it in our testing because it can also be used as a quick and easy way to test the quality. Where CD Speed tests the DAE as one large session, CD DAE extracts each CD track individually. It actually extracts each track twice and then compares them to check for any errors. Every error a drive creates could be a hiss or pop you would hear later in the audio tracks.

While NEC's new DVD writer started out a little faster when extracting our test CD with CD DAE, its average and maximum speeds were slower than what we saw with CD Speed.

CD DAE and CD Speed v4.10 - CD-R Media:

For this test I used a copy of the Pure Funk CD. It's burned onto the same Memorex Gold 74 minute media I used in the CD Speed tests.

While the ND-4550A was a little slower when extracting audio from CD-R media, this didn't keep it from reaching amaximum DAE speed of 40x in our tests. So how did it do in CD Speed's advanced DAE tests? Take a look below.

NEC's new DVD writer completed CD Speed's advanced DAE tests with an average score of 29.17x. The drive had no problems passing all of the on-the-fly tests and did not create any errors. If you look at the advanced features, you can see that the ND-3540A was able to read the CD-Text and subchannel data but failed to read the lead in and lead out sections of the CD.

To see how well NEC's "Super-Multi" drive can read scratched and dirty discs, I used CD Speed's ScanDisc utility to see how many sectors were damaged or unreadable. This is a very rough, but good way to test the drive's error correcting abilities.

CD Speed - ScanDisc

The ND-4550A didn't handle scratched discs as well as some of the other DVD writers we've looked at recently. While there weren't any unreadable sectors on the disc, the drive considered more than 71% of the CD to be "damaged."

You can also get an idea of how well the drive can read scratched and dirty discs by using CD DAE. CD DAE will extract the audio tracks twice and then compare them. From this information we can see what the drive's average speed was and how many errors it generated.

The ND-4550A didn't do as well as some of the other drives in this test either. The scratches on the disc not only slowed it down considerably, the number of errors was higher than what we'd like to see.