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Corsair Flash Media: 40X CF & 60X SD


Date
: 10/5/05 – 04:21:55 AM

Author
:

Category
: Storage

Page 1 : Index

Manufacturer
: Corsair Memory

Price
: $67.00 1GB 40X CF & $68.00 1GB 60X SD

Corsair has been regarded as one of the top memory makers in the market, and as with any successful line of products, they've expanded upon it. Many of you have probably heard of the Corsair XMS line and their new Corsair COOL, a watercooling solution developed by the memory giant. There was also the Corsair Flash Voyager; a robust little device that would still operate if you so happened to drop it into your drink. What few people have looked at is the rest of the
Corsair Flash Media Card Lineup
.

We're going to give our undivided attention to two of Corsair's flash media card products: their
1GB 40X CompactFlash
and
1GB 60X SD
.

Flash media cards are used in a countless number of places ranging from digital cameras and camcorders to MP3 Players, PDA's and PPC's. Quality memory makes a huge difference when it comes to such tasks as taking a series of rapid photos on a Digital SLR camera or running applications for your PPC.

Armed with a variety of readers, we're going to put these two Corsair flash media cards under the gun.

Page 2 : Packages

The packaging for all flash media cards is pretty standard. With the Corsair package, you're forced to cut the plastic to get the card out. Personally, I don't really like this type of packaging. I prefer the snap-together enclosures as they require far less work. Regardless, the most important factor is that the packaging secures the media from moving around. In this case, the vacuum formed pocket holds the protective media case nicely.

It's a perfect fit for the protective flash media case.

Flipping the case over, we see there's a fair bit of printed information.

It's a pretty standard printing, the only thing different between this card and any other CF card would be the sticker they slap on at the bottom.

Before we go any further, we'll take a quick look at the 60X SD package.

It's almost the same with only a few differences: printing color, model number (obviously) and pocket size. The smaller pocket ensures the protective case and media do not move around during transportation.

The SD package's backside is the same as the CF. The only difference is the sticker at the bottom.

As I mentioned earlier, the printed material on the backside of the cards is the same. A very useful chart is presented at the top of the card.

Using this chart, you can gauge what capacity you need. Let me tell you now, not every digital camera supports the 4 GB capacity media.

Below the chart is some information about Corsair, where you can get help and the societies Corsair is a member of. If you do run into issues with the flash media, Ask The Ram Guy has an FAQ you may be interested in.

Now that our 360° view of the package is done, let's bring out the knife and slice the package open. Two long slits later, both media cards were on my table.

Anyone who owns a media card knows that the protective case is a standard thing to have.

We'll start by looking at the CF card.

Taking the card out of the protective case, we can clearly see the Corsair logo, capacity and rated speed.

On the back side is a place to write a few words down; could be a name or what you use the card for.

The SD media card and protective case are about the same as the CF one, just scaled down in size.

There are a few things different on the SD media card.

For one thing, there's a little switch to the side that lets you write protect the card. Second, there's no space to write anything on the back. It's just blank.

That about wraps up the package. I know it was pretty dull, and once we get past the specifications we'll get to the benchmarks!

Page 3 : Specifications

There's really not a lot to say about the specification of either product. I'm sure you all know what a CompactFlash card and Secure Digital card looks like. It doesn't matter, because you can look at the pictures from the previous page.

Here are the features and specifications for the 40CF:

Of all the details here, the most important is the fact that it is of Type I and rated at 40X.

Let's look at the Secure Digital card offered by Corsair:

Nothing special here, but just to note, we're looking at the 60X SD model. There are plenty of different speeds offered by Corsair for both CF and SD. We're looking at the lower/middle end of the pack with the 40X CF and 60X SD. Corsair also offers a 40X SD and, for those who need everything to be top of the line, they have an 80X CF and 133X SD!

Let's move on to our test bed and begin our benchmarks.

Page 4 : Test Setup

We'll be running a variety of software to analyze the performance of the flash media cards. We'll start with the ever so popular Sisoft Sandra and also work our way through HD Tune, HD Tach, HD Speed, ATTO Disk Benchmark and conclude with IoZone. Apart from one of the Sisoft Sandra applications, all of the programs will report the read or write speeds.

We'll be using my desktop as the control system:

Let's get to the benchmarks!

Page 5 : CompactFlash Benchmarks

The benchmarks were completed using the Lexar RW022-266 12-in-1 MultiCard Reader. While there is a wide selection of readers available to the public, not everything works. This isn't the case with just Corsair products, it's a pretty common issue among manufacturers. Quality really makes the difference. I tested the ATP Mobile Flash USB 2.0 (AF-MF4-USB2) and the Vantec USB2.0 11-in-1 (UGT-CR912) before buying the Lexar 12-in-1 MultiCard Reader (RW022-266). With this reader, I was able to achieve the 40X CF speeds, but keep in mind that Corsair also offers the 80X CF for a small price premium and I've yet to test the compatibility for that model.

Starting the Sisoft Sandra File System Benchmark, the 40X CF easily reached it's specified speed:

The Removable Storage/Flash Benchmark gives us a better idea of the performance for different write sizes:

It also reported the endurance factor and operations per minute:

Taking a look at some of the other software we used, the results are about the same. With HD Tach, the performance is consistently at 6.8-6.9 MB/sec.

The CPU utilization is also very low; a good thing as high CPU utilization could be disaster on a PPC.

HD SPeed shows more or less the same numbers:

The little dip occurred when I froze everything to get a screen shot. The higher set of numbers is the read performance. We can see that the writing is a touch slower than the reading.

HD Tune also reinforces the values reported from the Lexar Reader:

Taking a look at the "Info" of the unit, it appears that everything but being bootable is supported. Also note that there's 1006 MB of actual disk space! Just short of 1 GB (1024 KB) by RAM industry standards.

Also available with HD Tune is a quick scan disk. It looks like what we have here is a perfect drive:

Using ATTO Disk Benchmark, different speeds were reported depending on the write and read size:

The maximum speed occurs when the write sizes were 64 kb in size.

ATTO is very similar to IoZone, but not nearly as thorough. IoZone is designed to do a number of things to test out the performance of a filesystem, and in our benchmarks we'll be getting the transfer read and write rates of the media. IoZone will first write 64 KB of data onto the flash media in 4 KB files. It'll then double the recording sizes from 4 KB up to a maximum of 16 MB. At the same time, it progressively increases the file sizes from 64 KB up to 512 MB! In short, a lot of file transfers to give you an idea of what to expect in terms of performance.

Below is the 3D representation. Only the write speeds were recorded as IoZone was reporting the cache speeds for reading and not the actual transfer rate. Ideally, IoZone should be used for local hard drives or networked drives that allow for far faster performances then 40 or 60X.

We can see that the write performance levels out at 5.5 MB/sec.

Without a doubt, Corsair performs as expected. Let's check out the performance of their SD media cards.

Page 6 : Secure Digital Benchmarks

The benchmarks were completed using the SanDisk SDDR-99-A15 USB 2.0 5-in-1 Card Reader/Writer. While there is a wide selection of readers available to the public, not everything works. As was said in the previous page, this isn't the case with just Corsair products, but rather a pretty common issue among manufacturers. Quality really makes the difference. I tested the ATP Mobile Flash USB 2.0 (AF-MF4-USB2) and the Vantec USB2.0 11-in-1 (UGT-CR912) and the Lexar 12-in-1 MultiCard Reader (RW022-266) before buying the SanDisk SDDR-99-A15 USB 2.0 5-in-1 Card Reader/Writer. With this reader I was able to achieve the 60X SD speeds, but keep in mind that Corsair also offers the 133X SD for a small price premium and I've yet to test the compatibility for that model.

Starting the Sisoft Sandra File System Benchmark, the 60X SD easily reached it's specified speed:

The Removable Storage/Flash Benchmark give us a better idea of the performances for different write sizes.

It also reported the endurance factor and operations per minute.

Clearly the 60X SD has no problems reaching the 60X speeds (9 MB/sec), infact we even reached 62X, though a very small gain.

HD Tach reports a very solid 11.1 MB/sec with a 2% CPU utilization:

HD Speed shows a slightly lower performance of 10.8 MB/sec read and 9.8 MB/sec write, but hardly something to complain about:

HD Tune gives us a steady 9.6 MB/sec transfer rate with a higher CPU utilization of 2.9%:

A quick shot of the "Info" tab and we see two things. The first being that everything but being bootable is supported and that we have 976 MB of usable space. This corresponds exactly to HDD industry standards for measuring capacity, but it's not nearly as much as the CF which boasted 1006 MB usable.

A quick scan of the media card and we see that it's in good working order.

ATTO Disk Benchmark shows that the best performance is achieved when 64 kb transfer sizes are used:

Last but not least, we look at the detailed write performance using IoZone below. We were limited to just the write performance as the read results were reporting the cache speeds and not the actual performance.

The transfer rate tops out at just under 9000 KB/sec when transferring a 512 MB file in 16 MB chunks.

Page 7 : Conclusion

Corsair has certainly done an excellent job in entering the Flash Memory market by offering an abundance of choice. Both products live up to their expectations and even exceed them. The 40X CF certainly impressed me with the full 1006 MB capacity, a rare find in most storage products, but it does come at a cost slightly more than your typical 40X card. What you do end up buying is a brand many enthusiasts trust. The 60X SD is priced slightly higher than some other brands, but still well below the brand names like Lexar or SanDisk. You could even get a 1 GB 133X SD and a free 128 MB Flash Voyager for less than the cost of comparable Lexar and SanDisk products!

While the cost of going up to the top of the line isn't too much more, the hardest thing for consumers will be finding a reader that supports the speeds; I'm personally leaning towards the SanDisk MultiCard readers. For those who don't necessarily need a CF or SD media card and leaning towards just a USB Flash Drive, we looked at the very rugged Corsair Flash Voyager recently which is worth a look.

Advantages

CF model came with 1006 MB usable storage space
Performed faster than specified
Average price

Disadvantages

Performance limited by card reader

Overclockers Online would like to thank Corsair for providing the samples for review.