The Sports Photo Guy

Ridata has released a new series of “Supreme” CompactFlash cards, upping their claimed speed to 266x. Does it perform better than the disappointing 233x “Lightning” series? Click through to see my test results.

Ridata’s “Supreme” Series actually consists of two types of card: a UDMA-enabled 266x card, and a 150x card that has a write-protection feature.  I’ve only tested the former.

In the D300 JPG burst test, the Ridata 266x posted a barely passing score of 62 (D-), beating its slower 233x cousin which scored 55.  In the RAW burst test, the Ridata 266x achieved an effective fps rate of 4.0, with a throughput of 14 MB/sec, considerably faster than the 233x’s figures of 2.3 fps and 8 MB/sec but not fast enough to compete with true high-performance cards.

Read speeds were respectable, posting a 34 MB/sec rate in the Delkin Firewire 800 card reader, compared to the 233x’s 29 MB/sec rate.