Hi,

does anybody have a clue why my writing curves with BenQ 1640 do not look smooth but rather rippled like this? My system is fast enough (Athlon 64 3200+, 1 Gig RAM) and DMA is enabled.

What do you think?

Thanks,

Jackie

I used to have a problem like that, i was using those round ide cables, switched back to a good flat 80pin ribbon, was fine after that.

To get the real WOPC ripple, go to File/Options/TransferRate, enable the 'High resolution graph' checkboxes for Read and Write test. Also set 'Test length' to Accuracy.

ala42 those boxes are checked by default, i had a problem last yr using a NEC3500 and was annoyed for weeks by the same graph results...until i by chance changed over my ide cable, been fine since.

Hi
The fluctuations in graph are due to WOPC
Having written disc do second transfer rate this time read to see difference
Here's two with CD
DVD will produce similar results

Hi
Here's DVD results

Hi

Budman62

It's interesting as in theory round are superior to flat
However a good flat is better than a poor round
Round is much more expensive if quality is to be assured Most round cables are cheap (quality) so what your paying for is purely cosmetic(& may benefit air flow producing some overall efect)
I use round & on average get at least 15% improvement all "round"
In the UK good flat IDE £2 max My round IDE cable custom made (from British Aerospace spec cable) £19

How can a round cable be better than a flat cable in theory when the only thing a round cable does is to make a flat cable round?

Hi
As I understand it a good round cable has strands individually shielded
Then cable is twisted to improve bidirectional flow by reducing magnetic effects
When a cable is drawn (made) it's even possible to make it directional (not a ideal property in this case)
The cable that I am using is the same as B.A.C use in its aircraft & if commercially available would probably cost hundreds of UK pounds
When using flat cable the spacing between each cable would need to be greater reduce magnetic effects thus taking up even more space
Ideally cable would be hard wired(so little or no loss in connection) & rigid (due sheilding) to be fully superior

My round cable's were cheapy's bought at a local computer fair a few years ago, as my pooter here has 5 hard drives and 4 dvd/cd drives i needed the room.
So if your using known good quality cables you should be ok, my problem was just a fluke.

I also have a Lian-Li rounded IDE cable plus some over 10 cheaper rounded IDE cables for HDD/ODD/FDDs. How can that "shield" make rounded cables better than flat ones? Wasn't it just for overcoming the interference in rounded cables? What do you mean by "15% improvement" when you use them? At least 15% improvement should mean 5:15 recording time for a 16x DVD writing shortened to under 4:30.

Hi
Thanks
In case your interested I have 3 pairs of Maxtor's raided 0
Plus 4 DVDRW's 1 Plextor 716 1 NEC 3540 2 BenQ 1640's
Even with my SATA leads I have found a difference in the quality of cables

Omitting commas and periods (and hyphens and semicolons, too) can confuse a lot of non-native English readers like me. I have hundreds of IDE/SCSI cables but still can't see any performance difference between different cables for DVD burning but then it's very rare to have bad IDE cables. Easier to find bad LAN cables and bad 4-pin power connectors.

Hi
Yes your right although hardware limitations (my cable will not speed up my drive or that of any media)plus that of software would reduce any performance tweak considerably
However I have made a mistake I've left out a decimal point ie: should be at least 1.5% improvement overall
I can only apologise for this earlier error & although 1.5% doesn't sound much it's significant
Reliability is also improved
I promise to read carefully in future before posting as this is not my first error

Hi
Just for those of you who are wondering I did get 15% improvement when testing cable for resistance
Yes this time I'm reading this before posting

Perhaps it'd be easier to test the differences with HDDs using different cables. It's easy to achieve 5:20 or shorter full 4.7GB writing in GSA-4163/5163 using flat IDE cables so even 1.5% improvement can shorten 5:20 to around 5:15 and 5:15 to around 5:10.

I now changed settings to "high resolution graph", do you think this is WOPC or is there still a problem? I also changed my cable (40 wire) to a high-quality asus 80 wire straigt cable.

I did a 12x burn of course




And here the corresponding read-graph: I like it




Thanks (especially to ala42, you gave the hint ) and

Well, talking about cables, I don't think round or not makes a difference to signal quality at all - round cables may probably improve airflow inside a pc housing -, rather important is an overall good cable quality I believe.

I know there are very good round cables around with good shielding, but moist of the cheap stuff you can buy here in germany at online stores is the cheapest crap, as kenshin mentioned it's normal flat cable "cut" and bound together - I believe this makes the cables rather worse

cu,

Jackie

Are we back on topic now ?
The high res graph looks like it should, the burn speed is also fine.

Yes, officer sir, back on topic Thanks again

cu,

Jackie