Conclusion
Samsung’s Plus card runs behind competition—no surprise given its emphasis on ruggedness rather than speed. However, because Samsung's offering seems to be the only card based on SLC flash memory, this is the only card able to deliver acceptable I/O performance. Most likely, this is relevant for those of you looking for a CompactFlash system drive for embedded systems, and even then, only for potential customers in Europe (we couldn't find this submission for sale in North America).
Everyone else will probably be more interested in throughput. Silicon Power leaves a mixed impression. The company's 600x 16GB card holds the speed record at 91 MB/s for sequential reads. Silicon Power fares well on writes, too, averaging 78 MB/s. However, the minimum write throughput result, important for photographers, drops far more than cards from Lexar, Transcend, or SanDisk.
SanDisk focuses on maximum sustainable write throughput. The card's 59.8 MB/s minimum write result tops our charts, and is most suitable for professional photography, where results matter more than the time it takes to copy data off the memory card. Transcend and Lexar provide more balanced results, with Lexar attracting customers through its bonus file restoration software.
In the end, price will have a significant impact on your buying decision, but we’d go with Lexar and SanDisk for professional photography and Silicon Power or Transcend for all other applications.
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I am rather impressed that these little chips have this much throughput.
Just a request, but, how about comparing a average SD, microSD, SDD and HDD just for a reference point?
What kind of CF reader did you use for these benchmarks?
Windows Vista? Haven't you heard Windows 7 is out?
Lexar seems to be the overall winner for sure. I'd definitely be buying that. I'm currently a SanDisk using for my pro work, but Lexar sure looks good in this category. Congrats to Transcend for putting up a good showing. They provide great value. Good article. As anamaniac pointed out, what device did you use for the reader?
The only speed metric that really matters is when the card is in the camera and the camera is writing sequentially to it. They aren't commonly used for random access and if you are reading from them you are probably limited by the reader or something else along the USB path. I have 4 different card readers and their performance varies widely.
The speed and price of these is very unimpressive compared to current SSD's, but they are a bit smaller. However if you need to shoot raw at high framerates then there aren't any other options.
Interesting recommendation for professional photography.
I forgot to put this in my previous post...
A good test of these cards would be to get a DSLR, put the card in it, set it on raw and continuous and start timing. If possible you guys should add a test like this to your review.
Lol, can't wait for 5 years to pass so I can pick up a 64GB CF for £20.
Windows Vista? Haven't you heard Windows 7 is out?
LoL. But seriously, they use Vista because its their standard testing environment. It would be unscientific to move to Windows 7, and compare the new results to anything they test on Vista. And I doubt they still have half the cards they tested on Vista to retest on 7, if they even wanted to do that.
I mean, unless you know something about how Vista handles these CF cards, and can give a compelling technical reason to move to Vista?
Good to know that nothing is spared any mercy when it comes to benchmarking it here. I must say I was surprised to see Samsung's offering readily exceeding its rated speed of x233, which'd work out to about 35MB/sec. Instead, for reads we see it tearing things up an nearly hitting 50MB/sec.
And yes, I'll give another second on wanting to know what reader is used... And perhaps better yet, I wonder if Tom's might follow this up with another review of flash card readers?
What kind of card reader were used for the tests?
If it was USB can you repeat the tests using Firewire?
Why are there no SATA card readers on the market?
(Only Addonics makes one as far as I know and very expensive here in Europe)
Windows Vista? Haven't you heard Windows 7 is out?
Windows 7 still has a very small market share (10%) compared to Vista (20%). If anything they should have tested these cards on Win XP as it still has the highest market share (60-70%).