While pretty much everyone knows that Blu-ray is the High Definition successor to DVD, the actual technical specifications for this new optical technology get a little more complicated. The 'blu' in Blu-ray refers to the blue wavelength of light emitted from the laser used to read the Blu-ray discs. The shorter-wavelength light (405nm to be specific) means more information can be packed into a the same space because a finer stream of light is reading the data. By comparison, red lasers operate around 650nm, so less data can be stored in the same space.

Put another way, the capacity of Blu-Ray media is far greater than what you'd get with DVD - up to 50GB of storage on a single disc, nearly six times more information than a dual-layer DVD, which is 8.5GB.

The other benefit to Blu-ray is that the greater density media means faster reading and writing speeds. The default read rate for Blu-ray media is 4.5 megabytes per second (also referred to as 1x speed), so the 5x ROM speed of the Plextor PX-B310U being reviewed today is equivalent to 22.5 megabytes per second of bandwidth!

To convert all of that into actual video playback numbers, a regular Blu-ray disc has enough bandwidth to play back 1920 x 1080 resolution at 24 frames per second in progressive (rather than interlaced) mode, which is more commonly known as the 1080p video standard. Standard 50GB dual-layer Blu-ray media can have this information encoded in a variety of formats, with the most efficient codecs capable of around four hours of video playback at 1080p resolution.

Future Blu-ray media will expand beyond the 50GB storage limit by allowing multiple layers of data to be added on to a single media disc, in much the same way that dual-layer DVD media is created today. These multi-layer discs should be backwards compatible with any Blu-ray player, and recently introduced prototype 16-layer discs are capable of storing over 400GB of data!

Prelude to Benchmarks

The details of how the Plextor PX-B310U External Blu-Ray USB DVD Writer was configured for benchmarking, including the specific hardware, software drivers, operating system and benchmark versions are indicated below. The general specs for the reference platforms are the same. Please take a moment to look over PCSTATS test system configurations before moving on to the individual benchmark results.

PCSTATS Test System Specs:

processor: intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Clock Speed: 8 x 333 MHz = 2.66 GHz Motherboards: MSI X48 Platinum Videocard: MSI NX8800GTS-T2D320E Memory: 2x 1024MB Corsair Twin2X2048-6400C4 Hard Drive: 74GB Western Digital Raptor WD740 CDROM: ASUS BC-PT1205-BD Heatsink: Intel Reference Cooler PowerSupply: PC Power & Cooling TurboCool 510 SLI Software Setup Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Intel INF 9.0.0.1003 nVIDIA Forceware 169.25 Workstation Benchmarks SiSoft Sandra 2008 Nero CD Speed

Nero CD Speed: Data

Source: Ahead Software

CD Speed is a CD/DVD-ROM benchmark which can test the most important features of an optical drive. In this particular benchmark, we use a pressed CD-ROM with about 640MB of data as the test disk. Using a CDR or CDRW as the test disk may impact the results slightly, so a pressed disk is the standard testing tool.

Nero CD Speed: Data

				Nero CD Speed: Data Benchmark Results
Optical Drive	ASUS BC-1205PT	LG GSA-H62N	Plextor PXB310U	AOpen DSW1812P	Samsung WriteMaster SE-W164	Gigabyte GO-W1616A	MSI DR16-B	AOpen DRW8800	AOpen 5232 Combo	LG GSA-4082B
Disc Type	Data	Data	Data	Data	Data	Data	Data	Data	Data	Data
Avg Speed	23.17x	33.4x	33.67x	34.11x	28.94x	34.47x	28.93x	30.05x	36.07x	23.08x
Random Seek Time	138ms	122ms	130ms	88ms	85ms	124ms	100ms	113ms	87ms	108ms
1/3 Seek Time	149ms	118ms	142ms	99ms	84ms	126ms	109ms	111ms	88ms	142ms
Full Seek Time	267ms	115ms	197ms	140ms	142ms	209ms	155ms	154ms	132ms	195ms
CPU Use: 1x	0%	1%	1%	2%	3%	1%	1%	0%	4%	1%
CPU Use: 2x	1%	2%	2%	4%	6%	6%	2%	1%	2%	2%
CPU Use: 4x	2%	3%	4%	7%	3%	8%	4%	2%	3%	4%
CPU Use: 8x	4%	27%	8%	12%	7%	11%	7%	5%	7%	3%
Disc recognition Time	0.05s	10.68s	10.27s	8.34s	10.64s	12.4s	6.04s	8.73s	8.17s	7.68s
Disc Eject Time	1.22s	2.82s	2.79	1.3s	1.92s	1.23s	1.85s	1.71s	1.4s	4.61s
Disc Load Time	16.54s	1.49s	1.60	1.27s	1.18s	1.18s	1.32s	0s	1.03s	0.98s

The average read speed in Nero CD Speed shows the Plextor PX-B310U near the top of the pack, AOpen's drives are a touch faster.

Nero CD Speed: Audio

Source: Ahead Software

CD Speed is a CD-ROM benchmark which can test the most important features of a CD-ROM drive. In this particular benchmark we use a pressed Audio CD with about 65 minutes of audio on it as the test disk. CDROMs in general have a harder time processing audio data, and hence the results can be drastically slower than equivalent 'pure' data tests.

Nero CD Speed: Audio

Nero CD Speed: Audio Benchmark Results
Optical Drive	ASUS BC-1205PT	AOpen DSW1812P	Plextor PXB310U	Samsung WriteMaster SE-W164		Gigabyte GO-W1616A	MSI DR16-B	AOpen DRW8800	AOpen 5232 Combo	LG GSA-4082B
Disc Type	Audio	Audio	Audio	Audio		Audio	Audio	Audio	Audio	Audio
Avg Speed	24.65x	33.19x	12.30x	28.34x		30.04x	8.21x	24.02x	32.74x	18.46x
Random Seek Time	178ms	99ms	149ms	95ms		141ms	140ms	114ms	95ms	114ms
1/3 Seek Time	193ms	106ms	172ms	103ms		146ms	240ms	121ms	105ms	137ms
Full Seek Time	332ms	159ms	250ms	175ms		276mx	272ms	171ms	186ms	204ms
DAE Quality	10	10	10	10		10	10	10	10	10
CPU Use: 1x	1%	1%	1%	19%		12%	1%	1%	1%	1%
CPU Use: 2x	2%	1%	2%	2%		3%	3%	1%	2%	2%
CPU Use: 4x	5%	3%	5%	4%		10%	6%	3%	4%	5%
CPU Use: 8x	11%	6%	N/A	7%		15%	10%	7%	8%	9%
Disc recognition Time	0.03s	9.99s	19.28s	8.46s		9.9s	6.17s	8.23s	6.59s	7.79s
Disc Eject Time	1.23	1.29s	2.50s	1.92s		1.22s	1.79s	1.71s	1.04s	2.01s
Disc Load Time	15.38s	1.26s	1.62s	1.26s		1.18s	1.32s	0.13s	1.41s	1.33

The Plextor's results here aren't particularly special. Random seek times are low, but the average read speed is 12x.