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DVD and CD burners could be considered more of a luxury when speaking specifically of gaming computers. The primary purpose of a gaming computer is to play games. In this manner of speaking you would only need a CD drive to load and play your games. However, with games becoming more advanced and much larger you will find that for some only come on DVD which makes a DVD drive necessary as well. Considering that most people will be using their gaming computer for more than just gaming, it is convenient and now inexpensive to equip your gaming machine with a DVD/CD burner.
In order to select the best DVD drive it is first necessary to have a brief understanding of the DVD technology, i.e. the disks/media used. There are several different formats that are used. Here is a list of common terms and definitions.
- DVD = Digital Versatile/Video Disk
- DVD-R = common recordable DVD technology (largest market share for recordable DVDs).
- DVD-RW = common rewritable DVD technology (largest market share for rewritable DVDs)
- DVD+R = similar to DVD-R just a different format
- DVD+RW = similar to DVD-RW just a different format
- DVD+R DL = new recordable DVD technology called "dual layer". It increases the capacity of DVDs nearly doubling the capacity of DVD+R.
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DVD-R was the first DVD recording format that was compatible with standalone DVD players. It is non-rewritable, which means you can only use the disk once. One of the main benefits of DVD-R is that it is compatible with roughly 93% of all DVD players. DVD-RW is a rewritable format that is usually good for around 1000 rewrites. It is also compatible with nearly 80% of standalone DVD players. Both support single sided 4.37 GB DVDs (DVD-5) and double sided 8.75 GB DVDs (DVD-10). As mentioned above these formats dominate the market for recordable and rewritable DVDs.
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DVD+R and DVD+RW formats are very similar to DVD-R/-RW. They have been gaining market share. They also support single sided 4.37 GB DVDs (DVD-5) and double sided 8.75 GB DVDs (DVD-10). The only real drawback is that the DVD+R is only compatible with 89% of DVD players and DVD+RW is only compatible with 79% of DVD players.
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DVD-R was the first DVD recording format that was compatible with standalone DVD players. It is non-rewritable, which means you can only use the disk once. One of the main benefits of DVD-R is that it is compatible with roughly 93% of all DVD players. DVD-RW is a rewritable format that is usually good for around 1000 rewrites. It is also compatible with nearly 80% of standalone DVD players. Both support single sided 4.37 GB DVDs (DVD-5) and double sided 8.75 GB DVDs (DVD-10). As mentioned above these formats dominate the market for recordable and rewritable DVDs.
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Recordable Dual Layer technology has been around for several years. Hollywood has been using the technology to record movies to DVDs. Up until now the technology was too expensive to bring to the public. This has changed and you can now get your hands on a DVD burner that will record dual layer for just over $100. Chances are you can get by without this technology unless you frequently record movies or have many gigabytes of data that you need to backup. If this is the case one dual layer disk will hold up to 8.5GB.
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The only benefit to getting a DVD drive over a DVD burner is the cost. You can pick up a DVD ROM drive for as little as $20. However you can get a DVD burner that will support all of the formats we discussed starting around $50-$60. Of course the lower priced burners will sacrifice a little speed. Some of the top DVD burners currently offer speeds of 16x8x16x. Which means it will write DVD+-R at 16x, it will write DVD+-RW at 8x and it will read the disks at 16x. To give you an idea of the speed of a 16x DVD burner, you can transfer 2hrs of VHS movies, thousands of photos, or 4.37GB of data in about 5 minutes. Be sure to read the full system specifications though. Often the drive will have different read/write speeds for DVD-R and -RW than it does for DVD+R and +RW.
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The answer is no. DVD burners will read and write DVDs and CDs. So in truth you could get by with just this one drive. If you want to copy from disk to disk without having to copy it to your hard drive first then you might want to get a second drive. It really isn't necessary to get a CD drive. CD burners are a little faster and a CD drive will read CDs faster, however the difference will likely be negligible.
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