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1GB CompactFlash Roundup
An anonymous reader writes "In an article from AnandTech, Purav Sanghani focuses on the most widely used flash media, the 1GB CompactFlash cards. AnandTech has taken ten of the most well-known and unknown brands and put them through three tests: real world file system task test, HDTach 3 RW and SiSoft Sandra's File System Benchmark." From the article: "All of these cards are standard CompactFlash Type I media cards with varying speeds with exception of the Lexar Professional series media, which features its 'Write Acceleration Technology', said to improve image write speeds by up to 23% with compatible cameras. This is done with the aid of special firmware on the media as well as the cameras themselves, which allow them to work together to improve the write algorithms. However, we have also seen an improvement in write speeds in our benchmarks as well, but we'll let you see for yourself."
Don't forget Rob Galbraith's CF comparison for many dSLR cameras (you gotta use these cards somewhere!)
I've been using 2 gig and 4 gig 80x Transcend Compactflash cards in my Rebel XT, and have been very impressed with their speed, and they're a great value. Lexar's 4 gig cost more than twice as much, and the performance of the Transcend card is close enough for me. I would definitely recommend Transcend's cards to anyone looking for good performance on a budget.
I've got a Rosewill case, SanDisk 512mb flash memory chip, Kingston system memory, PNY video card, Lexar 1GB flash stick, and some Rosewill memory on top of that. It seems as though companies are taking bits and pieces from each pie instead of one entire pie (wow, that was the worst analogy I've ever given -- must sleep...).
Most Canon users prefer Sandisk Ultra II or Sandisk Extreme III THere have been reports of lexar cards failing.
Mobile phones, PDAs and cameras seem to be SD/MMC based, at least in the UK. Only higher end gear uses compact flash.
Seriously. The Sandisk Extreme III blows the lexar out of the water. Why would they miss such an obvious product? They price at b&h photo or any other photo place is about $59 to 69 after rebate.
Only reason you need 80X and above is if you are taking RAW or RAW+JPEG on a digital SLR and need to shoot at the 3-4 FPS continuos rate until the card is full lol.
most consumer cameras are too slow to write that fast.
Nope not all others,
Pentax *ist DS, DS2 and DL
Here :
C TION=3700&PRIMID=&FileName=TOSHIBA.apr2004.HTML
http://www.edn.com/article-partner/CA503389.html
"The endurance of MLC Flash memory is a minimum of 10,000 write/erase cycles per cell, compared to around 100,000 cycles for SLC Flash."
http://www.electronicproducts.com/ShowPage.asp?SE
"Currently, life expectancy of SLC flash is rated at approximately 100,000 cycles and MLC flash is rated to have approximately 10,000 cycles."
and so on, better? Anybody with a clue about flash memory knows that. Guy from Anandtech was a consumer, not an engineer, that why this "test" is just a "test".
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
I agree... what in the world does comparing average and best write ratios have to do with 'endurance' ??