Sandisk 512MB Ultra II: Slightly less Extreme.
Written: Jul 08 '04 (Updated Jul 15 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: low price, good performance, CF Type I versatility
Cons: not USB enabled (for use in JumpShot ect.), actual capacity is only 487 MByte
The Bottom Line: High speed at a low price, a 60x/66x CF with 512MB should be enough for most 6 MPx cameras.
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| theuerkorn's Full Review: SanDisk (SDCFH-512-A10) 60x (512 MB) CF Card |
Sandisk, mostly known for budget priced storage media, enters the high-speed arena with a serious offer by the names 'Ultra II' and 'Extreme'. I got the 512 MByte Ultra II Compact Flash for use in a digital camera.
Ultra II vs Extreme main difference
Use with Canon's Digital Rebel real life data
- Capacity how much is 512 MB
- Speed what's the gain
Use with Sony's Clie NX60 more real life data
Summary in a nutshell
Ultra II vs. Extreme
SanDisk is playing the naming game and comparison is not the easiest that way, between products and different vendors. Basically Ultra II and Extreme mean the same thing regarding speed, power consumption and capacity.
Maximum Read is 10 MByte/sec and max. Write is 9 MByte/sec. (That is pretty much 3x the speed of the Ultra series and 6x of the standard Sandisk.) This may not sound as impressive as Lexar's 80X Professional series (12 MB/sec), but not only is the Ultra II cheaper, it may also be more than your camera can handle. Chances are that most point'n'shoot cameras would not benefit from memory cards faster than 14x. Unfortunately, camera makers are very secretive about the maximum speed any given camera could handle.
The 'Extreme' series targets the professional, when the camera has to work under 'severe' conditions. It's tested in extreme temperature ranges from -13F to +185F (-25C to +85C). This takes the worries off the memory at either end of the spectrum, and the weakest link is most likely the camera.
For most users the Ultra II will be sufficient, unless rugged design, lifetime warranty, a dedicated technical support line, a travel case, and the added mini-CD for data recovery software (RescuePRO) sounds like something you need.
The name 'Ultra II' might be easily confused with CF Type II. Sandisk points out that any of the Ultra II and Extreme Compact Flash cards are CF Type I and fit into all CF type devices. (CF Type II is slightly thicker.)
I focus at this point on the use in digital cameras like the Canon Digital Rebel (EOS 300D), since that's my application.
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Test w/ Canon's Digital Rebel (EOS300D)
In this test I am going to use my Digital Rebel and compare the Ultra II to Lexar's 40X 256MByte Pro and a generic 14X card (PNY). Data transfer from and to a desktop computer tested right around the rated speed. So let's see how the speed impacts use in mentioned camera.
Capacity: The 512Mbyte (FAT16) are roughly equivalent to two 36-exposure rolls of film when using the RAW format (6.3 MPx). Enough to capture an average weekend trip in maximum quality (6.3MPx RAW). If versatility is not needed, the best JPG format (6.3MPx, low compression) allows to capture more than 160 pictures and that sure should be enough for most users. (Exception: Wedding photographers probably need more than 1 GByte to capture the event on one memory card in JPG.)
By the way, MByte are used a little to loosely lately. I guess we all remember that 1 MByte needs 1,048,576 bytes and not just 1,000,000. That seems little known at Sandisk since 'their' 512 MByte are actually 511,663,xxx bytes and that by regular math is only 487 MByte. But before you scream "bloody murder" be advised that Lexar's 256 MByte actually represent 257,400,xxx bytes (245 MByte). Ahhh, the wonderful world of advertising.
Speed: Data transfer is the major argument for high-speed CF cards and with it the Ultra II. 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.
Reading Performance: The total time to flip thru 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.
Interpretation: It takes about 1.6 seconds to read and display one picture, but 6 seconds to capture, process and save. This suggests that the major time is spent by the camera's processor before actually writing to the flash memory. Taking this part out by only replay a picture, the improvements of faster cards becomes more visible and significant.
Startup time seemed to be slightly improved by faster memory, but too short for reliable measurements with my 'test setup'. (2 - 3 sec.)
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Use with Sony Clie NX60
For more data on how this memory card performed in Sony's Clie NX60 PDA please refer to my review of Sandisk's Memory Stick Pro This review contains a comparison to the Ultra II CF when used in this PDA.
VFSMark (MSPro vs Ultra II vs. Lexar40x vs PNY14x)
- File Create: 164% / 286% / 128% / 255%
- File Delete: 60% / 166% / 64% / 165%
- File Write: 35% / 39% / 30% / 100%
- File Read: 219% / 229% / 182% / 154%
- File Seek: 240% / 200% / 178% / 196%
- DB Export: 107% / 255% / 89% / 179%
- DB Import: 333% / 201% / 179% / 200%
- Record Access: 301% / 270%/ 244% / 241%
- Resource Access: 284% / 237% / 200% / 202%
- VFS Mark: 193 / 209 / 143 / 188 (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 SanDisk Ultra II remains the fastest card of the tested ones and the PNY 14x CF does surprisingly well. Another surprise is the marginal performance of the Lexar Pro 40x card which is the only USB enabled card in this test. Maybe the NX60 gets confused?
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Summary
SanDisk sure offers a fast CF memory technology at the lowest price these days. Improvements are significant with cameras that can take advantage of the provided access speed. The impact may not be as dramatic as the rated transfer speed suggests (afterall a 6 MByte should store in less than a seconds), but welcome for daily operation.
There is little the Ultra II offers beyond price, speed and capacity. However, there is not much else to expect from a memory card. The price tag of around $90 for the 512 MByte version is great and one will be hard-pressed to find a better deal brandname memory card for that kind of money. (Well, for now that is.)
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© 2004, theuerkorn
Recommended:
Yes
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