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Menu Introduction Sandisk Standard (2 GB) Sandisk Ultra II (2 GB) Sandisk Extreme III (2 GB) Sandisk Extreme IV (2 GB) Peak Xtreme 120X (2 GB) Transcend 120X (2 GB) TwinMOS Ultra-X 140X (4 GB) Conclusion |
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ConclusionAs expected, there is a big performance difference between the SanDisk cards. The read speed ranges from 11 MB/s (Ultra II) to a whopping 34 MB/s (Extreme IV). Oddly the read speed of the standard SanDisk card is higher than the read speed of the Ultra II card.The write speed differences are much bigger, ranging from 4 MB/s (Standard) to 35 MB/s (Extreme IV). The performance of the Peak and Transcend cards is about the same as the SanDisk Extreme III so they are pretty good alternatives, especially if you consider the much lower price tag. The TwinMOS card on the other hand performed much worse. Unlike the other cards, it doesn't even come close to its rated speed. The SanDisk Extreme IV is the clear winner of this test but it comes with a hefty price tag. The question is: do you really need a superfast (but expensive) card? When using high speed cards, the bottleneck is usually the card reader or the camera. A fast USB card reader is good enough for most cards but to get the high performance from the Extreme IV card you need an expensive Firewire card reader or a CF to IDE adapter. The latter is not recommended because the cards are not hotswappable due to the limitations of the IDE standard (you have to change the card when the computer is turned off). If you're using the card in a camera you probably won't notice much of a difference when using high speed cards unless you do a lot of burst shooting. You will only start noticing the performance difference when the camera's internal buffer is full. But even then you will not gain much by using a superfast card like the Extreme IV because the camera simply cannot handle this high speed. |
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