Verbatim ExpressCard, PCI-Express interface, write up to 30MB/sec
 

Maybe this will work with EX1/3:

Verbatim has announced its new 34mm ExpressCard SSD for PC and Mac users, which promises to be some five times faster than USB-based ExpressCards thanks to its true PCI-Express interface. The drives will ship at the end of next month in 16/32/64GB sizes, and we're told to expect read speeds of up to 125MB/sec and write speeds of up to 30MB/sec. Curious about pricing? Try $99.99, $149.99 and $299.99


FROM: Verbatim cranks out ExpressCard SSD for PC and Mac users - Engadget

Not as cheap as SDHC but certainly much faster. From the specs they should be an interesting true alternative to SxS. Time will tell I guess.

I'd definitely buy a couple for overcranking work. My 8GB ones are just kinda small. However, I have to admit that I LOVE just pulling an SD card out of the camera and sliding it into my card reader bay. I need a PCI-based ExpressCard reader (that includes an SD reader in the same bay) that is hot-swappable.

I agree! Especially now that we have 32GB SDHC cards for $150!

I bought 2 Sandisk Ultra II 32GB cards at that price. Nearly 4 hours of record time!

It'll be interesting to see those Verbatim cards when they finally arrive.

So $299 for a 64Gb card? Two of those and 8 hours recording. For $600 you should be able to get all record speeds. And those are not street prices either, so we can probably knock another 100 off that figure.

Glad I am nowhere near a P2 camera!

I don't think any of these cards are on the market yet. It was a very long time between the Sandisk's announcement of 32GB and actual availability of the cards. I see the Sandisk Press release on that was about a year ago
SanDisk | Corporate | Press Room | Press Releases
and it's only in the last few weeks one has been able to get the card. That's was nearly a year wait.

I think Craig might be right there.... It could be some time before we see these cards on the actual market.

Also, you need to realise that it's not only the outright "read/write" speed of the card, but - to put it in very simple terms - also latency (or time-delay) that it takes the card to respond to instructions it receives from the camera (or laptop or whatever)... You might have memory that can transfer at blisteringly high data rates, but if it takes too long to respond to a given command, the camera might still reject it at being too slow.... I don't know if anyone has bothered checking their Sony or Sandisk cards, but they can SUSTAIN a write speed in excess of 80MB/sec and a read speed of over 100MB/S - both at a very low latency..... These are very fast cards! Not wanting to put a damper on the euphoria of cheaper cards but the claimed 30MB/s write speed of the Verbatim would still have me a little worried...

R

And it would only need probably 12MB/s of sustained write rate to support full overcranking. Currently the problem is the 8.5MB/s write limit in expresscard's USB interface within the camera. This Card wouldn't fall into same category with any other non-SxS expresscards or SDHC readers since it uses PCI-express, which has no such limitations, to connect.

Why? The card is big enough to hold two flash chips and a memory controller to write to them in parallel. The claim may be true.

There may be potential issues since as we've seen even with USB SDHC and MxR that not all cards claiming a given speed are and that not all adaptors claiming to be a certain thing are equally reliable. If they were, then there would have been no issue of Kensington or Delkin, etc. adaptors and a whole bunch of other class 6 SDHC cards would have also worked.

Even a card claiming to be PCIe and 30MB/s writes may have throughput issues. I'm not saying they won't work but I'm saying a "spec sheet" from a company may not reveal all.

Yes, I agree... and I'm certainly not doubting their claim of 30MB/sec.... My question is "why only 30MB/sec"? I guess what I was really highlighting was the fact that there is still such a discrepancy between the speed of the "Sony/Sandisk" cards that we work now and those that have been announced. If - as they are claiming - the cards are capable of a write speed of 30MB/sec, then to me, it doesn't sound like they plan on using the "best" chips that they can find - either in the interface/controller or in the flash chips themselves. Some applications may be able to live with the compromises... but then others might not..... :)

These things will be built to a price to meet the greater market (laptops/miniPC's etc, not the EX1/EX3 market)... and not necessarily to a specification that we are at least hoping for... (but I guess we can still hope....).

As Alister said above, Time will tell.... :)

Craig said: "Even a card claiming to be PCIe and 30MB/s writes may have throughput issues. I'm not saying they won't work but I'm saying a "spec sheet" from a company may not reveal all."

Spot on, Craig....

I think it's worth noting that 30MB/s (240Mbs) is the same quoted rating as ExtremeIII CF cards. I don't for one moment think you'd be able to write to it at that rate sustained - but is it not this grade of CF card that has been found fine with the XDR up to at least 100Mbs?

Together with the PCI-Express interface, it does at least leave me feeling very optimistic, though obviously only practical tests will say for sure.

No, the memory may not be as fast as true SxS cards, but isn't the whole point of the MxR/SDHC combination to prove that for the majority of users that level of performance (and price) is unnecessary? As with the SDHC cards being used, most people actually WANT cheaper cards and are prepared to put up with lower than SxS performance - as long as it's "good enough".

Verbatim announced they will be shipping the end of February.

One might hope they send someone a "reviewer's copy" to test.

I've spoken to their "powers that be" and initially they don't think it's compatible with the EX (and they certainly do seem aware of the EX cameras). Their engineering department will double check this though to confirm. It may take as long as 6 weeks for that though given their production time line.