Windows Phone Thoughts: Memory Card Shoot-Out: Four 512 MB Secure Digital Cards Compared

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Monday, July 26, 2004

Memory Card Shoot-Out: Four 512 MB Secure Digital Cards Compared

Posted by Jason Dunn in "HARDWARE" @ 09:00 AM


Results: Read 256 KB


Figure 2: 256 KB data read test.

Surprisingly, the consumer-grade Simpletech card pulled ahead of the pack with a speed of 6194 KB/s. Besting the more expensive pro card is no mean feat, but the slowest card in the pack, the Delkin, still hit 6092 KB/s. Bottom line: with small 256 KB files, all these cards are extremely fast and there's little significant difference between them.

WINNER: Simpletech

Results: Read 1000 KB (1 MB)


Figure 3: 1000 KB/s (1 MB) data read test.

This is where we start to see more significant gaps – the Delkin eFilm Pro, which trailed the Sandisk Ultra II in the 256 KB test, pulls ahead here with a score of 6246 KB/s. It's interesting to note that the consumer-grade Simpletech card is matching the more expensive Sandisk Ultra II card. The Delkin eFilm card is dead last, and when reading 1 MB files the difference between these cards starts to become more obvious.

WINNER: Delkin eFilm Pro

Results: Read 16000 KB (16 MB)


Figure 4: 16000 KB data read test.

This test proved to be the most interesting because as you can see, all the cards ranked the same. Each card proved to be equally capable of reading big 16 MB chunks of data. Why? I'm not entirely sure – at first glance I thought with such exacting speed matches (6552 KB/s) it was a limitation of the memory card reader, but at USB 2.0 speeds of 480 mbps, it should theoretically have a hard limit of 60 MB/s. Even if we factor in 50% overhead, we're still at 30 MB/s. So why did these cards top out at 6.5 MB/s? It's likely that the Sandisk USB 2.0 card reader and the ports on my laptop top out at 6552 KB/s, which is more than a little disappointing if that's the case. 6.5 MB/s is a long way from 60 MB/s! I'd be interested in hearing opinions from readers on this test. I'm going to acquire a different brand of memory card reader and will try this test again on my desktop computer to see if any differences are discovered.

WINNER: Four way tie under suspicious circumstances

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