In this review we test SanDisk's Extreme IV cutting edge compact flash and Firewire 800 combo
We think the Extreme Firewire card reader is a star in its own right.
Discuss this story on the DPNow Discussion Forum.
Pricing and availability table.
Read the official SanDisk press release.
SanDisk has just shipped us their brand new Extreme IV compact flash memory card and Extreme Firewire 800 card reader. We've not only been putting the supplied Extreme IV card through its paces, but also the card reader, which is a bit of a star performer in its own right. And we have compared Extreme IV compact flash performance with 'earlier' generation high-speed compact flash cards too.
What is new about SanDisk's Extreme IV technology?
The industry has made several performance steps in flash memory semiconductor technology recently and this has moved the performance bottleneck down the pipeline. In other words, premium flash memory has, until now, been able to operate faster than the memory controllers and data transfer environments have allowed.
Cards claiming 20MB/second performance have been available for 18 months, but few card readers or cameras have been able to fully exploit that limit. Extreme IV features the latest in flash memory controller systems, using improved parallel processing to perform the task of getting data into and out of the flash memory cells. Parallel processing lets the controller move several data bytes in one operation and just like your supermarket opening extra checkouts on a busy Saturday morning, the queues can move noticeably faster.
With Extreme IV SanDisk now claims a 40MB/sec transfer rate, or 266x performance.
Firewire 800
But it's all very well if you can do your shopping and get to your car in the car park more quickly, but no good if there is a traffic jam at the car park exit. This is where the SanDisk Extreme FireWire 800 compatible card reader makes its mark. SanDisk's Extreme FireWire Reader is IEEE1394b (Firewire 800) compliant and needs a matching cable. Luckily the SanDisk Extreme FireWire Reader is backwards compatible and both a 1394b-1394b and 1394b-standard Firewire cable are supplied in the box. IEEE1394b-equipped computers are still relatively rare, but you can upgrade a PC using an IEEE1394b Firewire 800 interface card.
That's a Firewire 800 connector on the back
FireWire 800 is, as its name suggests, theoretically capable of 800MB/sec transfer rates. SanDisk only claims 40MB/sec maximum sustained transfer rate for Extreme IV cards, but the number '800' is a bit of a red herring. What FireWire 800 offers is lower protocol latency so there is less time for the reader waiting around for the next bunch of data to be transferred.
SanDisk also offers a USB 2.0 High-Speed Extreme Reader. Even with much slower compact flash cards, I have noticed that FireWire card readers extract marginally more performance from a compact flash card and the likelihood is that the difference will be even greater – after all SanDisk wanted me to test the Firewire solution first!
All this impressive theory is one thing, but in a review like this it's that really counts...
Testing
We tested a 2GB SanDisk Extreme IV compact flash card, both using the Extreme Firewire card reader and a conventional Fujifilm USB 2.0 DCR2-161 USB High-Speed card reader. In this review we also compared the test performance of a 4GB Kingston Ultimate 100x compact flash card and a 133x rated 1GB card from Memory Corp. The MB/sec rates quoted in our tests are for 1024x1024 'mega' bytes, not decimal 'million' bytes, so if you prefer the latter, the numbers will be slightly higher. The tests involved reading and writing a half gigabyte folder of RAW and JPEG image files to and from a 7200RPM SATA hard disk drive in a Windows XP SP2 PC, running an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ processor and 2GB RAM.
We tested the Extreme Firewire card reader using an IEEE1394b 64-bit PCI interface card, but only attached to a 32-bit PCI slot. This means the maximum (theoretical) transfer rate of the interface was limited to 400MB/sec. It's unlikely that 800MB/sec mode would make much difference, but we'll test this later when we get the opportunity.
Read performance
When using the conventional Fujifilm reader, it's clear that there is no performance benefit from Extreme IV when reading data off the card. All three cards operated at about 8MB/sec.
It's a very different story when using the SanDisk Extreme Firewire card reader, especially when connected to the FireWire 800 interface. All three cards received a significant performance boost though, as expected, the SanDisk Extreme IV card's performance was boosted the most, seeing transfer rates rising to nearly three times those achieved via the USB 2.0 reader. The other cards were boosted by between 40 and 80 percent.
When the SanDisk Extreme Firewire card reader was hooked up via a conventional Firewire port, strangely, all three cards measured marginally faster when reading data off them. But as we shall see, write performance was lower.
The fastest read transfer rate we saw from the 2GB SanDisk Extreme IV compact flash card was 23MB/sec, more than double we have seen from any other card. But we also saw the Kingston Ultimate 100x card hit an impressive 16MB/sec thanks to the SanDisk Extreme Firewire card reader.
Write performance
It's when writing to a SanDisk Extreme IV card that its superiority really tells. In all test situations, the 2GB SanDisk Extreme IV compact flash card was at least comfortably faster than the other two cards.
But in the optimal test, with Extreme Firewire card reader hooked up to the Firewire 800 interface, the Extreme IV card operated at 22.1MB/sec, or twice as fast as the fastest other card. The Extreme IV card was also the only one to perform at a comparable rate both in read and write operations.
Camera performance
Clearly, with around 22MB/sec read and write rates at your disposal using the Extreme card reader and Firewire 800 interface, you will be waiting a lot less to copy images to and from your cards. Before, you might be waiting 15-20 minutes to download an entire 8GB card, but now you are talking about 5-6 minutes. But what about benefits in the camera?
Older cameras can benefit from faster cards, of that there is no doubt. A good quality 100x card will reduce the buffer emptying wait in a three year old Olympus E-1 from 2 minutes to just 40 seconds, but the Extreme IV card only reduced that by a further second.
Newer cameras should be able to benefit from Extreme IV more radically, but at the moment we don't have any specific data. As soon we do, we'll let you know.
Conclusion
SanDisk's Extreme IV technology is a remarkable performance step and especially worthwhile when working with very large capacity cards. It's likely to be very handy in cameras that can use the performance benefits, but not for older cameras.
On its performance alone even with less exotic cards than Extreme IV, the SanDisk Extreme Firewire card reader is a of considerable benefit in its own right and surely worth serious consideration too.
Before we forget, you also get a free copy of SanDisk's very handy image file recovery utility, RescuePRO Deluxe, which I have successfully turned to myself on more than one occasion. There were also a couple of CDs included containing a free 30-day introductory Adobe Photoshop CS2 trial package.
DPNow congratulates SanDisk on delivering another important and impressive improvement in memory card technology for photographers and we are pleased to award the 2GB SanDisk Extreme IV Compact Flash card and SanDisk Extreme Firewire compact flash card reader our
Editors Choice review rating.
Pricing and Availability
SanDisk Extreme IV CompactFlash cards and new reader will be available at the following suggested retail prices:
| |
Capacities |
US$ |
Euros, Ex VAT |
Availability
|
| SanDisk Extreme IV CompactFlash
| 2GB
| $159.99
| €128
| July
|
| Introductory Bundle Pack
| 4GB
| $319.99
| €255
| July |
8GB
| $639.99
| €509
| July |
2GB Card & Reader
| $239.99
| €197
| July |
4GB Card & Reader
| $399.99
| €323
| July
| | SanDisk Extreme FireWire Reader
| |
$79.99
| €69
| July
|
| SanDisk Extreme USB 2.0 Reader
|
| $24.99
| €22
| August
|
