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Hardware

1GB CompactFlash Roundup 95

Posted by Zonk from the tiny-bits-of-memory-in-our-things dept.
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."
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1GB CompactFlash Roundup More

1GB CompactFlash Roundup

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  • Link. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ScaryFroMan ( 901163 ) <scaryfroman&hotmail,com> on Saturday December 24, 2005 @03:22AM (#14331306)
    The link provided is to the single-page, non-ad filled "print version." Good move. Very un-slashdot like.

    • Re:Link. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gladmac ( 729908 ) on Saturday December 24, 2005 @04:13AM (#14331399) Homepage
      That's probably not such a good thing... we should give servers that we're about to murder some compensation. I think it's even very bad tone to do this.
      • [Linking directly to the print/nonAd version is] probably not such a good thing... we should give servers that we're about to murder some compensation.

        Does this mean people shouldn't skip ads on Tivo?

        • Does this mean people shouldn't skip ads on Tivo?

          There are some technical differences, but they might be insignificant. I'd say that the largest difference is that we typically care [slightly or a lot] more for the news sources we link to from /. than for some TV corporation.

          • There are some technical differences [between viewing print/nonAd web pages vs using Tivo to skip ads], but they might be insignificant. I'd say that the largest difference is that we typically care [slightly or a lot] more for the news sources we link to from /. than for some TV corporation.

            I sometimes care about my ability to watch a tv show free of advertisements as much as I care about my ability to see ad-free content on the web. Are you saying that tv/web comparisons for the sake of determining ad

    • Re:Link. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by DrXym ( 126579 )
      Why is it a good move from Anandtech's perspective. They get slashdotted and don't even get to recoup that expense through advertising views / clicks.

      • Re:Link. (Score:1, Troll)

        by jrockway ( 229604 ) *
        Maybe AnandTech shouldn't provide the printing functionality. When was the last time you actually printed out a review of CF cards?
      • Views, maybe. Clicks, not so much. It would be interesting to see if there's any adverstising revenue coming from a Slashdotting. I would guess it's very little. The only indirect gain is the small boost in Page Rank, being linked from such a high traffic site.
        • Why don't you think there is revenu from clicks? I run a technical site and about 0.5% of visitors click on an advert on my site. It might not sound much but I bet just this level of revenue from a slashdotting would run into the hundreds, possibly thousands of dollars.
      • Uhhm... I saw ads on that page. You must have adblock turned on or something.

        Keep in mind this is actually GOOD for them; it probably takes less server resources to serve that page than the regular "pretty" one.. so the Slashdotting is a lot less painful for them.

        -Z
    • The link provided is to the single-page, non-ad filled "print version." Good move. Very un-slashdot like

      Not to digress: But if you use a browser called "Firefox" you can say goodbye to all ad's on your page - you need a simple plugin called AdBlock. It has been such a long time that I have seen ads on any page that now I have begun to miss snippetty distractions.....

      A

  • Lexar (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24, 2005 @03:28AM (#14331316)
    The fastest is $65.95 for Lexar Professional series media, but lasts 5 times less than the slowest ones.... price wise, I'd go with Viking, but how often do people go through these cards?

    Would you actually need one for longer than how long Lexar's will last?

    • Re:Lexar (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Gubbe ( 705219 ) on Saturday December 24, 2005 @08:17AM (#14331814)
      I would think that by the time the card dies, new 1 gig cards cost $5 and are as useful as 16MB cards today. I've never heard anyone say that their flash card died of old age. Those endurance numbers weren't discovered by throwing data at each card until they died. They were obtained by calculating the average amount of writes per allocation unit or something like that.

      When taking pictures or storing music, you're not overwriting any allocation unit more than once. Considering any allocation unit in flash memory can endure hundreds of thousands of writes, you can, in theory anyway, fill the card with pictures at least 100k times before it fails. This means millions of pictures.

      My semi-educated hunch is that flash endurance is a moot point when using the memory for storage. It only matters when using the drive as swap space where it's written to and read from constantly.

      If there are flaws in my reasoning, please do point them out. This is just my current understanding regarding this issue.
      • >>I've never heard anyone say that their flash card died of old age.

        I've had CF cards go bad after a number of years - did they die of old age? You can come up with your own theory.

        Yet the real problem for professional photographers would be losing a gig of images to a bad card.
      • Some of us don't store pictures on our CF. I have handhelds with their root filesystem on a CF card, which means thousands of writes on a slow day.
        • I know kingston has built in ciruitry to allow for wear optimization. So file systems shoud not be a problem. I would think they all have this feature by now.
      • I think you got it right.

        A 1 Gig flash card for my camera could hold about 600 images. Considering 100,000 writes is usually given as a minimum failure point that means the total number of images written can easily be in the billions. If I took 1 photo every second it would still take 31 years (!) to get to a billion. (31 years = 978 264 705 seconds, ask Google).

        With the application of wear leveling algorithms even swap space applications are viable.
        My site http://www.mattscomputertrends.com/flashvsharddi [mattscomputertrends.com]
    • (i am a pro photographer)

      I have a sandisk Ultra II 1 gb that ive had for about a year. These cards are not especially noted for their ruggedness, and occasionally the card burps - the camera says its not in the camera, the total number of images on a freshly formatted card has decreased all of a sudden (by about 15 images) - i suspect that due to the daily usage and abusage the card has gone through may have damaged some internal structure. its been dropped, shaken, heated, chilled, inserted and pulled ou

  • CF write speeds depend on more than that! (Score:5, Informative)

    by zippity8 ( 446412 ) on Saturday December 24, 2005 @03:34AM (#14331329)
    Don't forget Rob Galbraith's CF comparison for many dSLR cameras [robgalbraith.com] (you gotta use these cards somewhere!)

  • Transcend 80x Compactflash (Score:5, Informative)

    by RandyOo ( 61821 ) on Saturday December 24, 2005 @03:39AM (#14331340) Homepage
    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.

  • Companies sure are getting around these days.. (Score:3, Informative)

    by BugsPray ( 940704 ) on Saturday December 24, 2005 @03:40AM (#14331342) Homepage
    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...).

  • sandisk (Score:2, Informative)

    by felix21685 ( 941140 )
    Most Canon users prefer Sandisk Ultra II or Sandisk Extreme III THere have been reports of lexar cards failing.
    • indeed - and the opposite has been reported on Sony (eg: Sandisk best w/Canon, Sony&Lexar w/Sony). basically, when purchasing it's most important to look at compatibility (ref Galbraith's test mention above) - as only certain manufacturers use Lexar's WA tech, and Lexar/Sandisk/etc all have one or more manufacturer where their compatibility is suspect. high-end cards (80x+) are so fast anyway that the differences are generally less than the brain can register on individual files. clearing 25 RAW's ou
  • I'm getting the impression that sandisk's having sorta been-there-first element isn't going to serve as an asset of protection for them when we're seeing improvements/innovation left and right in an industry in which specs matter, not brands. Should I tell my broker to keep shopping around?

  • Graphs (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gladmac ( 729908 ) on Saturday December 24, 2005 @04:20AM (#14331412) Homepage

    You can't really trust somebody who makes a line graph when there is no notion of sequence! Thinking about this one:

    http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/1gb%20compactfl ash%20roundup_12210581203/10365.png [anandtech.com]

    Especially the interpolation gets really ridiculous... they have this "nice" interconnecting line segments that represent what - a combination of two cards?

    It would have made some sense to have the lines in the other dimension, with three points on the line, one for each size of file and then one line for each card. The interpolation that the line represents would then have a meaning - files of other sizes. That would get a little messy though. But seriously, how often did a line graph make sense with the lines in either dimension? :) There is at most one correct choice...

    • And what about the conclusion of the endurance test? "We assume this is because the high performance products perform a lot more read, write, and erase operations on average compared to the lower end cards." Huh? From sisoft help: "As the [endurance] factor is a ratio, it is useful only in comparing devices rather than having a direct, physical interpretation associated to its numerical value." Could the autor be comparing apples to oranges? SLC vs MLC?
    • ok, I'm just glad I'm not the only one that noticed this. I tried my damnedest, but could only come to the conclusion of "WTF, over?"

  • Endurance Factor is a total BS (Score:3, Interesting)

    by citizenr ( 871508 ) on Saturday December 24, 2005 @04:39AM (#14331446) Homepage
    Kingston is MLC based and has the WORST life cycle,
    Fast cards are SLC based are and on average ~10 times better.

    Here is a proof : http://www.achieva.com.au/news_slcvsmlc.htm [achieva.com.au]
    • I agree... what in the world does comparing average and best write ratios have to do with 'endurance' ??
    • So what?

      I recently bought a 2GB Kingston card for my Canon, which gets an average 3.3 MB per picture at full resolution. Let's say for arguments sake that I can only get 500 pictures on the card. If I can fully rewrite the card 10000 times, then that's 5000000 (five million) photos. If you do some more math, you find that if I want the card to last five years, I can take up to 2700 photos each day, every day.

      What does this mean? Well, I was not aware before I bought the card what type of memory it used,
  • Mobile phones, PDAs and cameras seem to be SD/MMC based, at least in the UK. Only higher end gear uses compact flash.
    • Ironically, CF tends to be used in the upper and lower ends of the spectrum. The cheapest cameras are often still CF based because they're old technology and a few years ago _everybody_ used CF. These days the middle of the road cameras are getting smaller and smaller, so they tend to go with media with a smaller footprint (CF or xD). Upper end cameras still use CF because there is high end CF (like in this article) that outperforms most other media and comes in higher capacities than SD or xD media.
    • As far as I know, only some old digital cameras use CF cards, and then some big DSLR cameras. I'd have been much more interested in an SD Card comparison myself.

      I did buy a 150x 2GB SD card (Transcend) for my Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX1 camera, and it'd have been nice to see more reviews.
    • Both my camera and palmtop use CF type II cards (can accept type I, but I only have a type II card). Both are very old though (The palmtop runs Windows CE 2.0, the camera was state-of-the-art with 1.5 megapixels).
  • They considered the latest Lexar cards, but not the Sandisk Extreme III, which has a quite higher performance than the Ultra II.

  • They forget Sandisk Extreme III it seems.. (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.
  • I bought a nice 4GB thumbdrive from Apacer a few months ago in Taiwan, for the equivalent of about $200. It's nice and fast, and with 4GB, I haven't run out of room yet. Here's the link: http://www.apacer.com/en/products/Handy_Steno_HT2 0 3_200X_specs.htm [apacer.com] I don't think they sell over the internet, but you can probably try to look for it, if you're in the market for high-capacity flash drives.
  • I was hoping for maybe 4gb or more solid state CF's.
  • But my main camera manufacturer of choice (Canon) has switched over to SD cards [wikipedia.org], I hear, at very least for the smaller cameras. Boooo.
  • Posted by Zonk on 24-12-05 2:10
    > In an article from AnandTech, Purav Sanghani focuses on the most widely used flash media,
    > the 1GB CompactFlash cards [...]

    The actual article says "One of the most common types of flash media is the CompactFlash digital media" (emphasis mine).

    The most widely used is SD.

    Way to go, Zonk!
  • This is probably going against the corporate googledot sanctions, but microdrives have been a better experience than flash 4 me. Spent 3 years using flash cards. The flash cards started dropping bits after 3 years, long before the rated erase cycles and they cost a rediculous amount. It's been the same with all flash devices including embedded, microprocessor, and digital cameras.

    While being just as unreliable as flash, microdrives have been a much better deal because of the cost. Although I never had b
    • [i]Most importantly, why would you pay a rediculous [sic] amount of money for a smaller amount of flash storage than a microdrive, if something even better than both these solutions is just around the corner?[/i] When I bought my 4G CF card, it wasn't substantially more expensive than a 4G microdrive. It still has no moving parts and has weathered a number of jolts. It also still pulls less current.

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