Since this morning we can find a new review on the CDRLabs.com website. This time Ian has taken a look at the MSI StarSpeed writer, a drive capable of 32X recording, 12X re-writing and 40X reading:
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MSI's 32/12/40 CD-RW is not the fastest drive we've had the chance to look at lately but it does deliver all around good performance and a long list of features at a very decent price. Other than the higher than average full seek times, the MS-8332 did pretty well in CD read tests. The drive had no problems exceeding its rated speed with pressed and CD-R media and did much better than what I expected when reading CD-RW media. The drive's DAE performance was a mixed bag. While the MS-8332 was able to rip audio CD's at a pretty decent clip, it failed to complete our scratched and dirty disc tests.
With its five zones and relatively slow average writing speed, I really did not expect the MS-8332 to do as well as it did in our writing tests. Surprisingly, MSI's drive was able to complete our writing tests faster than many 32x writers with much faster average writing speeds. The only problem I ran into was when writing to Verbatim media at 32x. Hopefully MSI can get a fix out for this because the drive's media compatibility is otherwise very good. Unfortunately, the MS-8332's CD-RW media compatibility was not nearly as good. The only high speed CD-RW media I could find that would work at 12x was the disc that came with the drive.
As always you can find the complete review on CDRLabs.com. The MSI StarSpeed drive gets an overall score of 8. Interested in discussing more hardware related issues? Then please check out our General Hardware Forum!
Source: CDRLabs.com
