Customer Reviews

PNY PCF02GRF3 2GB CompactFlash Memory Card

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The product description of this item (PNY PCF02GRF3 2GB CompactFlash Memory Card) did not mention its data transfer rate. I took a chance and bought one from CompUSA, and this is what I found:

The good news is that it actually works fine in my Canon Rebel XT. The bad news is that its data transfer rate is very poor. I benchmarked it at around 2.2MB/s, or equivalent to 15x ("1x" = 150KB/s). This speed is pitiful by today's standard. In comparison, my two-year-old Sandisk Ultra II 1GB card is 4 times faster at 9MB/s, or 60x.

The slower speed of this PNY card does not affect taking photos in normal mode, but it will become very noticeable in continuous mode. When shooting with the 60x card, my camera can sustain top speed of three frames per second nearly forever. But with this 15x card, once my camera's internal buffer fills up, the frame rate drops to less than one per second.

Another obvious disadvantage with slower speed is during image download. At 15x, it will take around 15 minutes to transfer 2GB of data. This speed limitation is imposed by the card, so it doesn't matter if you got a $5000 camera. It is still going to take just as long. A 60x card can cut that time to under 4 minutes.

Finally, if you ever need to save images in 'raw' format (over 10MB), better spend a few extra dollars for a faster card. Otherwise, you have to wait five seconds bewteen shots for this card to finish writing files.

PNY is a good buy. SanDisk spends its money on advertising, not technology. Also, previous reviewer says it takes 15 minutes to download RAW images. Perhaps that reviewer needs to upgrade to a professional DSLR and not a soccer-mom Rebel.