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March 2, 2005
SanDisk Extreme III Secure Digital SD Card
In my recent entry Treo 650 SD Slot is teh Fastar, I compared the Treo 650's SD read/write operations with the Treo 600 and Palm Tungsten C across four different SD cards. I noticed that they all seemed kind of pokey and wanted to try it out on one of the new, ultra-fast cards.
Well, I broke down and got the fastest on the market (at least based on the marketing literature): the SanDisk Extreme III (shown). It claims a speed of 20MB/sec (133X), which is considerably faster than the alleged 2MB/sec (or slower) speed of the other cards I tested.
So, how did it stack up? Check out the updated table below to find out (the new card's stats are in the first three columns)...
Card Key: SDX31G = SanDisk Extreme III 1GB, SD512 = SanDisk 512MB, SD256 = SanDisk 256MB, SM256 = Smart Modular 256MB, P64 = Palm 64MBDevice Key: 650 = Treo 650 (OS 5.4.5), 600 = Treo 600 (OS 5.2.1), TC = Tungsten C (OS 5.2.1)
The VFSMark score is the average of all the scores above it.
| Card | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Device | 650 | 600 | TC | 650 | 600 | TC | 650 | 600 | TC | 650 | 600 | TC | 650 | 600 | TC |
| File Create | 332 | 273 | 276 | 138 | 117 | 78 | 32 | 37 | 31 | 35 | 33 | 43 | 220 | 72 | 71 |
| File Delete | 139 | 163 | 144 | 74 | 70 | 67 | 18 | 18 | 17 | 18 | 18 | 21 | 118 | 103 | 96 |
| File Write | 239 | 160 | 157 | 61 | 54 | 57 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 9 | 8 | 8 | 53 | 28 | 28 |
| File Read | 692 | 179 | 212 | 653 | 167 | 210 | 371 | 104 | 196 | 703 | 193 | 213 | 627 | 129 | 125 |
| File Seek | 786 | 406 | 437 | 737 | 406 | 421 | 472 | 295 | 295 | 983 | 437 | 453 | 590 | 357 | 380 |
| DB Export | 185 | 124 | 160 | 62 | 45 | 63 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 21 | 19 | 28 | 157 | 15 | 15 |
| DB Import | 465 | 448 | 365 | 433 | 410 | 350 | 295 | 278 | 251 | 441 | 459 | 379 | 363 | 331 | 306 |
| Record Access | 770 | 348 | 381 | 658 | 332 | 381 | 425 | 222 | 299 | 770 | 381 | 389 | 593 | 278 | 272 |
| Resource Access | 724 | 349 | 362 | 640 | 333 | 345 | 400 | 218 | 270 | 724 | 369 | 355 | 533 | 264 | 256 |
| VFSMark | 481 | 272 | 277 | 384 | 214 | 219 | 226 | 133 | 153 | 411 | 213 | 209 | 361 | 175 | 172 |
So, yes, it's faster than the other cards. Quite a bit faster, in fact, but either the Palm OS devices just aren't taking advantage of all that throughput (fairly likely), or the SD card's specs are a bit shy of what is advertised (could be as well).
Anybody have any other data points? Maybe one of those APC 60X SD cards to compare? Or, better yet, anybody know of more robust card-testing software for handhelds? VFSMark is getting a bit long in the tooth.
Posted by Craig in Mobile & PDAs
Comments
Ran vfsmark 1.1 on my treo650 with a Lexar 1GB SD (the regular one, not the 32x)
And got a VFSMark of 674
I ran it twice and got the same number.
While I think my card feels darn fast, that 674 number is _way_ off the charts. I must have done something wrong. Any ideas?
Posted by: Bob at March 9, 2005 2:14 PM
I like the test, but wonder what the numbers stand for? What kind of unit does the VFSMark have? What is measured?
Posted by: Lars at March 21, 2005 7:48 AM
Craig: The only other card benchmark tool I've run across for Palm devices is VFSBench, available here: http://sol.gfxile.net/files.html
Bob: I get better VFSMark numbers on my Lexar Media 512MB card than I do on my SanDisk 2GB Ultra II card. Lexar uses Panasonic media. SanDisk makes thier own.
I also got a PNY 512MB card which uses Toshiba media. VFSMark scores were in the ballpark, but the Write speeds were excreble. One test using VFSBench was taking to long I nearly reset my PDA, thinking it had hung... :-P
So based on a limited sample size, I favor cards with Panasonic media, and SanDisk as a second choice.
I don't think you did anything wrong. Lexar Media seems to sell fast cards.
Lars: From the VFSMark description:
VFSMark measures the following types of expansion card operations:
- creating files
- deleting files
- writing to a file
- reading from a file
- moving to specific locations in a file
- exporting databases to the expansion card
- importing databases from an expansion card
- accessing records in a database on the expansion card
- accessing resources in a database on the expansion card
VFSMark shows the results of those tests relative the performance of a baseline system. The baseline chosen for VFSMark is a Palm m500 with a Palm 16MB SD card running without any overclocking or system performance enhancements.
______
Dennis
Posted by: dmccunney at March 4, 2006 2:33 PM
I just tested Kingston Ultimate 2G SD card. The VFSMark 632 is close to my previous Kingston 512k, but the File write 304% is about 10 times higher than 46% of the 512k. Thus I really experienced 10 times faster while sync AvantGo files. So it very depened on the purpose. If you only read dates, you should go for a fast reading card.
Posted by: Li at July 28, 2006 2:20 PM