Digital Camera News, Reviews and Tips
SanDisk has announced its new Ultra 64GB SDXC card. The Ultra-series card has a write speed of 9Mbps and a read speed of 15MB/s, which makes it properly suited for SDXC compatible video cameras.
The SanDisk Ultra 64GB SDXC card carries an initial retail price of $349.99 and should be available immediately. Check availability on Amazon.com.
More details in the press release below. [Read more…]
SanDisk has announced a new series of faster CF cards – the Extreme Pro cards. The big number that SanDisk is throwing out there is 90MB per second max read/write speeds. The question is: “Does it make a difference?”
Well, I haven’t gotten my hands on one yet; however, spec-wise the Canon 5D Mark II and Canon 50D should be able to take advantage of the speed boost. Both cameras feature UDMA support up to Mode 6 for a maximum theoretical transfer rate of 133MB/s, which is well within the new SanDisk cards specs.
Lori Grunin over at Cnet’s Crave took the new Extreme Pro cards for a spin the the Nikon D300s (I couldn’t find any documentation confirming the extent of UDMA support for the D300s) and the Canon 5D Mark II. The differences were minimal in both cases. The D300s produced the same frame rate with Extreme Pro and 60MB/s flavor of Extreme cards. The Pro version was able to give about a 10% savings on buffer emptying after a burst of shots. The results were similar in the 5D Mark II, which got a boost of 0.2 frames per second with the Pro model and an almost 20% discount emptying the buffer after a burst of shots. Hit up Lori’s test for all the facts. [50 kudos to Lori for the hard work.]
Prices? The 64GB model will set you back $811.99 direct from SanDisk – I’ll say that again . . . $811.99! $507.99 for the 32GB model and $304.00 for the 16GB model. Hardly a bargain for a 0.2 fps advantage…
Get the full run down on these new cards in the news release below.
Company Introduces World’s First Commercial 16-gigabit, 3-Bit-Per-Cell NAND Flash ChipSAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, February 6, 2008 – Reaching a new threshold in the development of flash memory, SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK) today announced that it expects to start mass production of the world’s first commercial three-bit-per-cell (x3) NAND flash memory in March/April 2008. The 16-gigabit (Gb) x3 NAND flash employs SanDisk’s standard 56 nanometer (nm) flash technology and provides over 20 percent more die per wafer compared to standard NAND Multi-Level Cell (MLC) memory (2-bits-per-cell) on the same technology node. x3 enables higher manufacturing efficiency and lower die cost for the same capital investment. The new x3 flash architecture has been in development for the past two years and employs SanDisk’s most advanced patented design innovations to achieve the same performance and high reliability found in SanDisk’s 2-bits-per-cell chips. [Read more…]