LEXAR Compact Flash (80x, 1GB): Speed King!
Written: Nov 17 '04 (Updated Nov 19 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Speed (80x), 1GB enough for most applications, $80 (after rebate)
Cons: 1GByte may not be that much anymore for professional applications, not USB enabled
The Bottom Line: Speed and capacity are good arguments for the 1GB Lexar Pro 80x as of 2004.
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| theuerkorn's Full Review: Lexar cf1gb-80-380 80x CompactFlash Card |
Lexar is one of the few manufacturers that still list speed ratings on their compact flash cards based on 150kByte/sec as the speed of an original CD and therefor 1x. Currently the fastest cards in the market are 80x. As prices go down, the 1 GByte version now even dropped significantly below $100. Considering that the 40x / 1 GByte version cost more than $1000 about 2 years ago, times are really good for demanding photographers these days.
Sure it will continue the get cheaper, bigger and faster but we are currently reaching very tempting pricing for the 1 GB from almost all manufacturers and competition drove prices down. Lexar lost ground to SanDisk's Ultra II (60x) and recently upped the ante to 80x ... the speediest compact flash in the market for 2004.
The Lexar 80x is available in capacities of 512 MB, 1 GB, 2 GB, 4 GB and 8 GB. I got the 1 GB version since it's currently the only GByte range Lexar card that's rated at 80x and still below $100.
Lexar Professional main features
Use with Canon's Digital Rebel real life data
- Capacity how much is 1 GByte
- Speed what's the gain
Use with Sony's Clie NX60 more real life data
Summary in a nutshell
Lexar Professional
Naming is changing and what used to be Professional when 40x was the highest speed, is now called high speed (by Lexar Terms) and surrenders the 'Professional' title to the 80x series.
As most CF cards, the Lexar Pro 80x is a CF Type I and that ensures usability in pretty much every CF based device (mostly cameras).
Lexar's own Write Acceleration WA is proprietary technology that allows to increase write speed by 23% above and beyond the standard capability (80x, 12 MByte/sec). However, the device must support WA in order to achieve such lofty heights. http://www.lexar.com/digfilm/wa_cf.html
Lexar includes image recovery software on the drive and new packaging makes sure that the user is aware of it before formatting the drive for the device he's using. (Recommended to allow the correct file structure, but not mandatory.) Make sure to copy the software to the hard drive before formatting.
Lexar's 40x drives were USB Enabled which allowed to use the card directly on a USB port (with the JumpShot adapter). The professional series lost this ability but judging from the weak performance of the 40x in some applications, that may be a good thing.
I focus at this point on the real life use in digital cameras like the Canon Digital Rebel (EOS 300D), since theoretical benchmarks don't reflect typical applications.
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Test w/ Canon's Digital Rebel (EOS300D)
In this test I am going to use my Digital Rebel and compare this card to previously tested models like SanDisk's Ultra II, Lexar's 40X 256MByte Pro and a generic 14X card (PNY).
Capacity: The 1GByte (FAT16) is roughly equivalent to four 36-exposure rolls of film when using the RAW format in the Digital Rebel (6.3 MPx). That's interesting for semi-professional photographers and allows 140 pictures in maximum quality (6.3MPx RAW). If versatility is not needed, the best JPG format (6.3MPx, low compression) allows to capture more than 315 pictures. Watch out for optimistic estimates as posted on the packaging of the Lexar media which claims that 1GB should accommodate 320 picture in 6 MPx RAW format, but as shown above that's more the number of pics for a good JPEG.
Speed: Data transfer is the major argument for high-speed CF cards and Lexar's claim to fame. With a proper card reader, the transfer to the computer is greatly affected. The camera speed is slightly different and factors like image capturing and processing speed as well as data transfer contribute to the performance.
I don't have a scientific method for measuring the exact time the Digital Rebel spent on data storage. Burst speed is independent from the storage anyway, and Canon's DiG!C processor may be fast but not instant either. Please note that the following tests factor all that in.
Writing Performance: I took a sequence of 4 identical pictures (5,765 kB/ea.) in RAW format to fill the buffer with data. The times below represent the time needed from the last shutter noise until the camera was available for more pictures.
- PNY Compact Flash(14x): ~30 sec.
- Lexar Pro 40x WA: ~27 sec.
- Sandisk Ultra II (60x): ~24 sec.
- Lexar Pro 80x WA: ~22 sec.
Reading Performance: The total time to flip through 10 identical pictures of the above sample was measured.
- PNY Compact Flash(14x): ~25 sec.
- Lexar Pro 40x WA: ~19 sec.
- Sandisk Ultra II (66x): ~16 sec.
- Lexar Pro 80x WA: ~13 sec.
Interpretation: The combination Digital Rebel / Lexar Pro 80x takes about 1.3 seconds to read and display one picture, but 5.5 seconds to capture, process, and save. Compare that to the SanDisk Ultra II with 1.6 and 6 seconds respectively. The major time is still spent by the camera's processor before actually writing to the flash memory. However, the advantage of the Lexar 80x is more visible in reading than writing mostly because WA is not supported by the Digital Rebel (or any other Canon model for that matter).
Startup time didn't change with the Lexar Pro 80x when compared to the SanDisk Ultra II, but too short for reliable measurements with my 'test setup' anyway. (2 - 3 sec.)
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Use with Sony Clie NX60
Using CFMagic 2.5, even the older Sony CLie NX60 can read Compact Flash cards and the standard test program on the Palm is VFSMark. The results below show how the Lexar 80x compares to the other tested cards in this more complex test than the previous camera application.
VFSMark (MSPro vs Ultra II vs. Lexar40x vs PNY14x vs. Lexar80x)
- File Create: 164% / 286% / 128% / 255% / 304%
- File Delete: 60% / 166% / 64% / 165% / 155%
- File Write: 35% / 39% / 30% / 100% / 67%
- File Read: 219% / 229% / 182% / 154% / 250%
- File Seek: 240% / 200% / 178% / 196% / 200%
- DB Export: 107% / 255% / 89% / 179% / 268%
- DB Import: 333% / 201% / 179% / 200% / 200%
- Record Access: 301% / 270%/ 244% / 241% / 270%
- Resource Access: 284% / 237% / 200% / 202% / 237%
- VFS Mark: 193 / 209 / 143 / 188 / 216 (average)
Interpretation: Given that the Sony NX60 is not optimized for using CF cards, the performance seems to be limited by the integrated controller. However, the Lexar Pro 80x remains the fastest card of the tested ones. Another surprise is the marginal performance of the Lexar Pro 40x card, but somewhat in line with the 80x by pure math. The 40x version is the only USB enabled drive in the test.
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Summary
The Lexar 80x is the the fastest Compact Flash card in the market right now -- no doubt about that. The test results show that in the application with my Digital Rebel and the more theoretical test using my NX60. Expect even more of an impact for devices that support WA.
With the price dropping below $100 (or 1/10 of the price from more than a year ago), it's a speedy way to get 1 GByte capacity for your camera. How many pictures that actually translates to depends on your model. For instance, owners of the new Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II will quickly demand more than about 30 pictures in RAW format (16 MPx). However, in the 6 MPx class it's quite reasonable with at least 140 pictures (RAW).
Nevertheless, most applications may not see a big difference to SanDisk's Ultra II (66x) in speed. Realistically, most point and shoot cameras will not be able to utilize any of the speed provided by these fast drives anyway.
With all the rage about 80x (12 Mbyte/sec) look out for SanDisk's answer called Extreme III. It's rumored to sport 20 MByte/sec write speed (!!!) and sure enough may conquer the lead for SanDisk in the race for the fastest flash memory -- at least for a few months.
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© 2004, theuerkorn
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