I was ready to declare the PNY Technologies card the winner in my recent Compact Flash Card Speed Tests when my buddy Scott Kelby reminded me that it’s not only about how fast the card reads data, but also how fast the card writes data. So this lead me to do some more testing.
For those of you who haven’t been following along, this all began with my recent purchase of the CFExpressPro+ PCIe ExpressCard to CompactFlash Memory Card Adapter 2.5Gbps. This ExpressCard Compact Flash Card Reader boasts the ability to operate at the ExpressCard slot’s true PCIe speeds. My first tests with Lexar Pro media yielded horrible results in that I either have a bad card or their write acceleration is just not compatible with this reader. So I went out and bought some different cards. I bought a couple of SanDisk’s Extreme III and IV cards and I bought the PNY Technologies Optimal PRO and Optima PRO UDMA cards. These cards were rated at 133x and 266x by their respective manufacturers. I was shocked that the PNY cards were much faster than the SanDisk cards on READING my 1.1GB test folder. Like I said, I was ready to declare PNY the winner until I ran some WRITE tests. The results put SanDisk back on top. Using the Sychnrotech ExpressCard PCIe Reader, here’s what I got:
| Card | Read 1.1GB | Write 1.1 GB |
| PNY Technologies Optima Pro 133x 2GB Card | 40.9 seconds | 56.9 seconds |
| PNY Technologies Optima Pro UDMA 266x 2GB Card | 35.7 seconds | 45.2 seconds |
| SanDisk Extreme III 133x 2GB Card | 70.8 seconds | 71.1 seconds |
SanDisk Extreme IV 266x 2GB Card |
41.6 seconds | 29.4 seconds |
While the PNY card did win the Read tests hands down, what really matters to a digital photographer the most (besides reliability) is the speed at which images can be written to the card and the SanDisk Extreme IV edges out the PNY card by 18% margin!
Also no matter how you slice it having the Synchrotech ExpressCard Memory Adapter ($65) blows away USB card readers. In all of my tests the fastest time I could achieve with my USB card reader was just over 2 minutes whereas with the ExpressCard adapter I achieved 35.7 seconds and 41.6 second read times. If you’re a pro digital photographer and have a notebook with an ExpressCard slot, this is a must purchase. Time is money.
Just looking at the numbers listed in the table its not possible that the speed difference is 18 percent. I haven’t run the numbers but it appears to be an apples and oranges comparison by comparing Write speed to Read speed.
The Write speed difference between the PNY Technologies Optima Pro UDMA 266x 2GB Card and the Sandisk Extreme IV is at least 30 percent.
Terry…
Are there limitations on which cameras will write to the SanDisk Extreme IV Compact Flash card? I’m specifically looking at getting this card to use in a Canon 40D and a Canon D60.
Joe,
4 out of 3 people have problems with fractions 🙂
Marty,
The newer cameras that you mentioned shouldn’t have any problems with the cards I’ve mentioned here.
Terry, for those of us who use Lexar Pro cards, did you do any retesting on different cards? You mentioned that the cards may have been bad or incompatible. Any other readers other than the syncrotech that may lend different, faster, results?
thanks,
Mike
Mike,
I don’t have any other Lexar cards. I will buy one and report back soon. As far as other readers go, the Synchrotech reader is the only one that I know of that operates at the PCIe speeds. The other ExpressCard readers operate at USB speeds.
Terry,
I know that Scott is using the Expresscard CF adapter from Delkin. Do you have any comparisons between that unit and the Syncrotech? Or is the Delkin one of those devices that you said was operating at USB2 speeds?
Jeff
Jeff,
Scott just ordered the Synchrotech. As soon as he gets it we will do a comparison. However, the Delkin operates at slower speeds. Looking at their site, they claim 20mbs:
http://www.delkin.com/products/adapters/expresscard34/
Synchrotech claims 2.5Gbs.
http://www.synchrotech.com/
Synchrotech does offer a slower/cheaper one that would be more in line with the Delkin reader:
http://www.synchrotech.com/products-expc/expresscard-memory-card-adapters_01-compactflash.html
For us high volume shooters, read speed is much more important that write speed. With my compact flash cards, data is only written to them in the camera, and any camera I’m using that’s fast enough to take advantage of these ultrafast cards also has a buffer I’ll never fill, even shooting RAW.
FYI, my Thunderbolt ($12) USB CF reader gets 17.5Mb/s and transfer 205 NEF files (1.1GB) in 66 seconds from a Extreme III card, and in 62 seconds from a generic Microcenter 266x card. Too bad the reader is discontinued.
UPDATE: I did finally get a hold of a NEW Lexar Professional UDMA 2GB 300x speed card and the results are:
Write 1.1GB
42.4 seconds
Read 1.1GB
38.4 seconds
So it is slightly faster on the read, but slower on the write. So depending on how you look at it, this may be the best choice. Since you’re usually not writing that many images that fast (unless you’re doing sports photography), you probably spend most of your time downloading images. If that’s the case you can’t go wrong with the faster Lexar media.
Terry,
Nobody uses card readers/adapters to write their files – they use cameras. 🙂 How about doing some write tests with a CAMERA before declaring a winner?
Chuck
Terry,
I have a Nikon D70 camera. Will the SanDisk Extreme IV Compact Flash card work with this camera?
Boy choices n choices we need to make! I am also a proud D-300 owner. Need to purchase one of those CF cards. I’m looking at 8gb ones. How about Kingston 8gb 266x card? would this also be a good one? Should I stick with Lexar 8gb UDMA 300x or Sandisk 8gb Extreme IV?
Those are from B & H photo that I plan to order from. Your feedback/advise would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you
At the current time, the only cameras that truly take full advantage of the enhanced UDMA write speed are the Nikon D3 and D300, where an Extreme IV card is required in order to reach the maximum specified “buffer” depth..
All this talk of faster & faster write-speeds, 200x, 300x & now 600x…. (30, 45 & 60MB per second.)
Can my camera even take advantage of these super-fast write-speeds?
I know that my older DSLR (Nikon D200) could not; but I’m not sure about the newest DSLR bodies; including my new D300S.
The camera ‘manual’ says that 300x cards (up to 16GB) have been tested and are approved for use. But does that mean that the camera is really able to fully use the 45MB second speeds or is it just compatible?
I’ll pay a bit more for super-fast cards (Sandisk’s ‘new’ 600x or for the Hoodman product) but wish I knew if my camera was really taking advantage of their capability…? {Or if I’m just wasting money; like when I was using 300x cards with my D200.}
I called Nikon and they won’t ’say’ (tell you) what the exact write-speed capability is… Go Figure… ;-(
P.S. I used cards that were much larger {4GB+} than what was ‘approved’ in my older D200 and they worked just fine. So using that ’same logic’ will a 32GB card work just fine in my D300S; even though (only) a 16GB card had been tested at the time that the camera was released for sale???
If you’re not shooting sports or other high speed action, then it’s probably not worth it.
UDMA cards are also supported by the EOS 1ds mark III.
I also disagree that read speeds aren’t important.
In some ways, as long as my card is fast enough for my buffer i’d prefer a fast read speed to get them onto my pc faster 🙂
Great information to know