Test Software
Nero CD/DVD Speed test

Media used
Nero CD
Lemony Snickets: A Series of Unfortunate Events DVD
Blank DVD+RW 8x media

Performance on the Gigabyte DVD drive is inline with what I expect from a 16x DVD-ROM drive. I don’t have any 16x DVD + or – media, having only 8x media. Average read speed on the drive using Nero’s Speed test is around 12x with an average access time of 103ms. The GO-W1616a is rated at 160ms average access time, meaning the performance is actually better than the rated speed. CD speeds were about 33x average speed using Nero’s Speed test. This compares favorably to AOpen’s 8X DVD+/- RW drive’s speed of 5.71x and 26x. The average speed using an 8x media is about 7.51x. In testing I used the Nero CD containing 650MB of information to test CD speeds. Limony Snickets: A Series of Unfortunate Events was used to test DVD speed and I used blank DVD-RW media to test and burn a DVD movie and data disc. A year or so ago, DVD XCopy Xpress was the most popular DVD copy software. Unfortunately, due to legal problems the product is now off the market. The Gigabyte drive was able to burn a full DVD of data in just a few minutes.