Which CF card is the fastest?

[PointyTeeth]

I see the SanDisk Ultra cards, and I also noticed Lexar has 12x cards available... so which is faster? Which one will give me the most bang for my buck?

Anyone have experience, good or bad, with either of these cards?

Any and all recommendations are greatly appreciated.

THANX

[Jason Dunn]

If it's for your Pocket PC, any brand will do - even the "slowest" CF card can keep up with the read/write speeds on a Pocket PC. Same with consumer-level digital cameras. If you have a high-end prosumer digital camera, it's a different story, but for most people, simply buy a reasonably priced card and you're good.

[ECOslin]

Difference between brands, I've heard, is mainly size.

One brand says 128mb or whatever but really has less. I'm not sure, but in recent discussions Sandisk may have been mentioned.

I'm particular to Mr. Flash, myself.

Edward

[Jason Dunn]

Difference between brands, I've heard, is mainly size. One brand says 128mb or whatever but really has less. I'm not sure, but in recent discussions Sandisk may have been mentioned.

That's not entirely accurate - it's just the same old confusion about ALL storage devices with bits and bytes not totalling exactly 40 gigs or whatever the capacity on the sticker is. A 256 meg CF card will get you 255,541,248 bytes which is 243 megabytes. Someone smarter than me can explain the math, but it's nothing specific to any one vendor.

[JonnoB]

For the most part, memory and rotating storage media (floppy and disk platter drives) have been based on 'mb' meaning megabyte. The same is true in the Windows OS where the 'mb' short-hand has meant megabyte as a graduation from the kilobyte. So when CF vendors (most publicly SanDisk) labeled their cards as 128mb, it is a consumer's assumption that this means 128 megabytes.... it just so happened, that they are not. It is not wrong or right per se, but it sure left created some wrinkles among some.

[brntcrsp]

I'm particular to Mr. Flash, myself.

also be forewarned that some have noticed greater power consumption with certain CF cards. Mr. Flash comes to mind.

Also, PointyTeeth, nice avatar, PA I believe.

[jdhill]

Also, Sandisk cards seem to have more than their share of compatibility problems. I don't buy Sandisk cards any longer due to the problems that I have had with them in the past in my Casio E-200.

[ECOslin]

While I don't have exactly comparable CF cards at the moment.

This is what Windows XP tells me the totals of these cards are:

Mr Flash(128mb) has 130,785,280 bytes and 124mb

Sandisk(64mb) has 63,995,904 bytes and 61.0mb

I've not yet noticed any power problems with my Mr.Flash cards, though I've not run any active tests and my z50 hpc has a 16hr extended battery and runs off the power adapter most times as a ebook reading terminal.

[Viper118]

Well I guess I can clear up the size question going on here.

People thing that there are 1000 megs in a gig and 1000 kilobytes in a meg. This is not exactly correct. The multiple is actually 1024 and not 1000.

[ECOslin]

1024 is a Kbyte, always.

But in this question, bytes rule.

Edward

[Viper118]

Your point? There are 1024 bytes in a kilobyte.

[ECOslin]

The Mr Flash(divided by 2) 65,392,640bytes is more than the 63,995,904 bytes of my Sandisk.

A Mr Flash card would be 63.860 megs. (This is a guess by dividing the total bytes of an existing 128mb card by 2 and dividing by 1024.)

A Sandisk card would be 62.496 megs. (dividing the total bytes of the existing 64mb card by 1024.)

Can anyone give their byte count from other card manufacturers?

Edward

"your point" he say's, like I have to have a point. :D

[duckie201]

Since there is no speed standard for Flash cards, their performance differs with the brand of device it is used on.

http://www.steves-digicams.com/digi_accessories.html#cards

They give a good review on what type of flash cards perform better when what brand of digital camera if your interested.