Now there are only two faster transfer modes missing to keep CF cards future-proof.
Note: 888x would be the highest acceptable rating, the theoretical limit would be 868x with exact calculations. However, I would not trust any rating above 800x.
- USB 3.0: Host controllers are available, and seem to work fine. The eSATA and FireWire killer is unleashed...
- CFast: A few cards were already available last year. The question is, whether a camera manufacturer will be brave enough to add an additional CFast slot to one of the professional camera models. Unfortunately, CFast and CompactFlash can't be used in one shared slot.
- Secure Digital: The SD Association is still busy creating compatibility issues. While the first SDXC cards of 48GB and 64GB are supposed to hit the market, the next standard will be published soon.
- Memory Stick: SONY renamed their "Expanded" standard to "XC", replacing the term "PRO". There are no cards announced, yet.
- Filesystems: SDXC and Memory Stick XC with media sizes of more than 32GB are supposed to use the exFAT filesystem. Some people think that FAT32 has a limit of 32GB, but this is not true. FAT32 supports up to 2TB, the only limitation is the file size of less than 4GB.
Now the table with the UDMA CF Test Results shows more detail regarding the alignment.
Basic explanations are given in the notes . However, it is worth mentioning that the percentage values only tell how the card performed during this specific test run.
The Benchmarks for the PhotoFast GMonster 533x CF 64GB are already finished. The card shows slightly lower read and slightly higher write rates than the 32GB version of the same series. The short drops in the write rate, that are typical for MLC flash, are better visible than with the 32GB version.
Important note: It looks like the camera manufacturers did not learn from their own mistakes and those of the harddisk manufacturers. Although LBA was introduced in the early 1990s, some cameras seem to have problems with CF cards of more than 32GB. The Canon EOS-1D Mark II (1.2.6), for example, will format the card to 7.3GB only. However, the camera is able to recognize and use a pre-formatted 64GB CF card.
The PhotoFast 533x Plus series offers high read and write performance, the PhotoFast 533x series offers about half the write rate, but at a more competitive price, and up to twice the storage.
Testing cards of such high speed rating is a real challenge. UDMA CF cards don't work directly connected to my PC, most likey due to too long traces on the Mainboard. It turned out that my CF-SATA adapter only supports UDMA-5, and seems to slow down the transfer rate before reaching the UDMA-5 limit. The test results with the Express/34 CF adapter are more reliable, and match the expectations I had for these cards. I was also surprised by the high read rate with the FireWire 800 reader.
The
PhotoFast 533x Plus CF 16GB
showed an average sustained read rate of
83.8MB/s (572x),
and an average sustained write rate of
84.2MB/s (575x).
The
PhotoFast 533x CF 32GB
showed an average sustained read rate of
88.4MB/s (603x),
and an average sustained write rate of
47.7MB/s (325x).
Please note that this card shows the typical MLC slowdown
for frequent write operations to the same cells.
This effect does not show up during the sustained write tests.
Both cards will be availble at twice the capacity, soon...
