The third time’s a charm for memory maker Transcend as their new, black-labeled 300x UDMA CompactFlash cards can at last compete with the big boys in the Nikon D300.
The new cards rate a respectable score of 89 in our JPG write tests and throughput of 24 MB/sec in our RAW burst test. The card also averaged read speeds of 34-35 MB/sec under Vista SP1 with our trio of FireWire 800 readers from SanDisk, Lexar, and Delkin (actually a tad slower than the Transcend 266x card’s speeds of 35-36 MB/sec read speed).
Get yours from Newegg.com:
Transcend 4GB Compact Flash (CF) Flash Card
Transcend 8GB Compact Flash (CF) Flash Card
Transcend 16GB Compact Flash (CF) Flash Card
4 responses so far ↓
1 abbilder // Aug 14, 2008 at 5:54 pm
the Transcend 300 sounds good. But what about a the fastest non-UDMA-cards like Sandisk Extreme III 30 Mbit?
2 The Sports Photo Guy // Aug 14, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Actually, the newer, high-capacity Extreme III cards (advertised at 30 MB/sec) are in fact UDMA-enabled. I’m planning to test one of these cards soon.
3 Bill // Jul 3, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Has anyone compared the transcend 300x UDMA to the same in lexar? And does anyone know the difference in in write speed from transcend 300x UDMA to transcend 266x? Finally since Canon won’t state max write speed for 50D or any do these new UDMA crds or any really make a difference if the canera only writes at alowere speed which is unknown , to me anyway. Thanks
4 The Sports Photo Guy // Jul 3, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Apparently, my internal links in this article were broken, but I’ve fixed them now.
If you follow the links for the JPG write tests, you will see that the Transcend 300x and Lexar 300x UDMA cards both have identical scores of 89 (B+), while the Transcend 266x lags far behind at 63 (D).
Looking at the RAW burst test results, both the Transcend 300x and Lexar 300x UDMA cards landed in the “Recommended” range while the Transcend 266x warranted a “Marginal” rating.
Finally, for a look at how the Canon 50D specifically fares with a variety of cards, try Rob Galbraith’s site.
Leave a Comment