Transend CF faster than Kingston!
 

I bought three CF chips to try with my new Z7: two Kingston Memory and one Transcend. They were all 16GB and rated at 133x speed. The Kingston Memory cards were more expensive and I was pretty sure they would work, but I couldn't resist trying the Transcend 16GB card because it was so cheap and if by chance it did work, it was only $79.

Strangely, I have been having problems with dropped frames on the Kingston CF but not the Transcend (at least not yet). This seemed strange so I downloaded a utility that can test memory card read and write speed and ran the test on both the Kingston and Transcend CF.

To my surprise, the Transcend outperforms the Kingston! I'll post screenshots of the results as soon as I figure out how to post pictures here.

The first test is the Transcend. The second is the Kingston.

Laurence, look for a "Manage Attachments" button in the Additional Options box below the text area input field when making a post. That should allow you to upload images.

Thanks for the info Laurence! I don't use CF cards for video, but I'm definitely going to buy this for my Rebel XTi! What an amazing price!

Here is where you can download the test:

http://www.flashmemorytoolkit.com/

You can run the speed test without registering the program.

I would love to see the results for the 32GB Transcend card. Could anyone with this card do it?

I'm doing a write-up of several cards, including Sandisk, Kingston, Transcend, A-Data, and Lexar. It's quite interesting thus far, but I, too have been surprised by Transcend being faster in many cases than a few others.

I am using a benchmark routine as well as other methods and am hoping to be finished by the weekend - finally.

That is awesome Marshall. Please let us know what you find.

The difficulty I've found with this sort of testing is knowing whether what is being measured is the speed of the card......... or the reader, port, computer, drive being written to or a combination of the lot!! Any ideas how to overcome this? Certainly people seem to be finding widely differing transfer times off SxS cards depending whether they are put directly into a laptop, or used with USB or Firewire readers.

Well remember that the Compact Flash unit on the Z7 and 270 is fed via firewire. If the card is any faster than the firewire link to the camera, that exta speed really doesn't matter. Well maybe it would transfer files a little quicker to the hard drive in the right reader, but it would make no difference whatsoever in how well the footage was captured. Also remember, that firewire can actually handle several streams of HDV footage at once, so write speed should only matter if it's below a certain point.

I just ran the program on my 32GB Transcend card. I ran the test twice to see if there was any kind of variance.

I'm doing as unbiased of testing as I can, based on the speed of the cards with regards to the actual card itself and not relying on a computer, reader, etc. It tends to be a bit more controlled that way.

There are numerous variants when using computers, readers, and so forth as the speed variations and throughputs are so inconsistent.

I'll report back over the weekend for sure.

mll

Thanks Chad. Those numbers are even better than the ones I got with my 16GB card. Now I feel safe enough to buy this card. Especially considering the excellent Tapeworks Texas price, the Transcend 32GB CF is definitely the card to get for this camcorder.

By the way, video files are always large, so the fastest numbers on the chart: the 5 MB ones are the ones that most closely rate to what one would expect in using this card with a Z7 or 270.

thank you very much for that comprehensive test!! great to read that not only the expensive stuff is the best.

by the way.. heard last week, that sandisk is going to launch a 16 GB extreme IV compact flash card.

clemens from vienna.

Yeah, I tried getting a hold of one, but that was an impossible task. Same with the Sony's at that time, too.

All the transfer rates that I read on that thread are much too slow.
I use two Sandisk 16Go 133X with my Z7, and it take 17 minutes to transfer the full card on my computer, aproximatively 1Go/mn, 16Mo/s... simply using a Sandisk Extreme USB 2.0 reader.

Arnaud, even your rates are only half of what they could be. Using the supplied ILink attachment (powered by a Sony Series L battery) to the CF recorder and a Firewire cable, my full Transcend 32GB card transfers to my PC in 18 minutes. By the time we're talking about these speeds, I wonder if the discrepancies would above remain the same. Either way, MUCH faster than real-time capturing!

so long as you can edit with m2t files - in my case Edius takes real time to subsequently convert to Canopus HQ so total time is longer :(. Still, I can transfer quickly after a wedding and then leave the PC running overnight to do the conversion.

Where have people found the best place to get the 32gb Transcend cards from? They don't seem to be widely available here in Australia yet and I don't want to end up with fake ones like I did with a Sandisk 4gb card a year ago which was meant to be express 4 but was much slower.

I use 16gb trancend cars as they give 73 mins and match the HDV tape size of 63 mins with a bit extra for safety.

I get them on e-bay for around £55 GBP

Hi Matt, I'm in New Zealand and after WEEKS of searching, have found 1 online US place selling them for a reasonable price, AND reasonable international USPS shipping... I ordered today for US$156 + US$13.50 postage. Delivery is a couple of weeks so hold fire and I'll report if the goods arrive safely and work as expected....

http://www.memoryten.com (Don't tell anyone!)

Hi John,

Thanks. They look like a good site. I have been looking for AGES as well. I have ordered 2 32gb cards, and needed them rather urgently, and didn't want to risk the slow shipping so I ordered via fedex. So I should have by Monday. Fingers crossed they work! Otherwise I can always use them in my SLRs. Much cheaper than prices locally.

Thanks,
Matt

Well my two cards arrived today and seem to be working fine! Very fast shipping and good communication also helped. Now to really test them out when I take the camera to Africa for 5 weeks. (Leave in 3 weeks!)

Hi Matt - my card arrived today (30th) after being shipping normal USPS to New Zealand on the 22nd - 8 days - nice! Testing now... all looking good so far...

Oh GOD!!! Oh GOD!!!!!! My CF card reader has FAILED ME BEYOND WORDS!!!! Oh hang on, whoops, forgot to turn it on.... sorry about that.

I got mine at Newegg for $95.

Newegg.com - Transcend 32GB Compact Flash (CF) Flash Card Model TS32GCF133 - Flash Memory

I just ordered two of the 32gb Transcend cards from Amazon for $92.45 each with free shipping.

Amazon.com | 32gb Transcend 133x CF Card

Traxdata 32GB 233x performance
 

Hi there,
Today I tested these CF-cards which I bought for €78 (that would be a little above $100 ???) with the Flash memory toolkit.

Quite nice theoretical results considering the price:
Write is between 1.5x and 2x the speed of the Transcend 133x
Read is between 3x and 4x the speed of the Transcend 133x

Practical results:
2 hours of m2t files (about 23 GB) took almost 18 minutes to transfer to my laptop using a usb card reader
with the unit (MRC1k) attached to the laptop via firewire it took 15 minutes