Does Sd Card Speed Make A Difference?

[+D0T-C0M]

Do I buy the regular ones with a tansfer rate of 2MB/sec or the UltraII which has a transfer rate of 9MB/sec. There's about a 50% difference in price but I'd pay for the difference if the explorist600 I have on order will be able to utilise the extra bandwidth of the faster UltraII SD cards? I cannot check the specs of the Explorist600 as I will only be getting mine on Friday. Could someone confirm that loading maps in to GPS from the faster SD cards is faster and can you confirm that when connected to a PC is the transfer rate from the card to the PC faster than by using a normal card.

 

Normal card transfer ~2MB/sec

UltraII card transfer ~9 to 10 MB/sec

[+D0T-C0M]

actually theres a UltraIII too that transfers at 20MB/sec on the sandisk.com website.

[BobbyC]

Not really. those are all "up to..." speeds. Someone did a comparison of a plain SD and a 66x SD and you only gain a few seconds over ~30 sec. of transfer time. Kingstons always has rebates from ecost.com and they're pretty fast. I'm using one in my 600 as well as one in a digital camera I bought for my gf and a pocket pc I use for work (3 different SD cards from 256mb to 512mb).

[+D0T-C0M]

I just bought a UltraII 512MB card from Staples for $40 more than the normal blue SD card. I hadn't read NorthernPenguin's post on how little time was saved using the UltraII SD card or I would have bought the normal one but now that I have it I guess I'm happy.

[+tands]

I use a Lexar 1 Gig SD card bought at Sam's for $71. I'm pretty sure it's the cheapest thing out there. In a Lexar 3-in-1 reader bought at Wal-Mart for $20 I regularly transfer 200 meg files to and from the reader in 15 or 20 seconds. So... How much faster do you want to go? Speed in digital memory mainly pays off in latency between the read and write cycles. This is usually most important in Digital Photography where a photographer wants to shoot a series of high-res images back to back real fast.

 

- T of TandS

[+GOT GPS?]

If your using Large Map files in the Explorist from the SD Memory card, insead of internal memory, and your Map detail is set to HIGH, then it wouldn't hurt to get a memory card that is fairly new. I know that the newest of anything is usually expensive.

[Hoary]

In general, it depends not only on card, but card reader controller (chip inside your card reader or GPSr) and driver (software). You could find review mostly on digital photo websites how different card readers perform with same card. AFAIK, nobody did same tests for GPSrs. For me, more important is not the speed I'll write map from my computer to the card, but speed GPSr will be reading data from card at start up or when map is moving.

Edited May 5, 2005 by Hoary

[+D0T-C0M]

Northernpenguin did a review from the older and the newer sd cards in the explorist

heres the thread

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...ic=93344&st=600

 

only marginal increases in speed. I bought the faster UltraII 512MB card

[+Doc-Dean]

Although the speed differences are small, it was enough for me to go with the higher end card. I just ordered the Kingston Elite Pro Hi-Speed Secure Digital Card 512K.

[Hoary]

Northernpenguin did a review from the older and the newer sd cards in the explorist

heres the thread

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...ic=93344&st=600

 

only marginal increases in speed. I bought the faster UltraII 512MB card

 

Very interesting! Thanks DOT-COM and Northernpenguin!

 

And results, that I was thinking. They are not using controllers fast enough for newer, faster cards.

 

I'll try to do the same comparisson for iFinder H2O when I get card.

Edited May 5, 2005 by Hoary

[flir67]

get a sd card reader for your computer , I found that is much faster at transfer the data over.

[+D0T-C0M]

actually flir67 I was more interested un saving time booting up and loading maps speeds in the gps. I don;t plan on taking the sd card out very often anyways as it requires you take the battery out and for the explorist600 you have to recalibrate the electronic compass everytime you do that. besides once the maps are loaded to the sd card, how many times do you need to do large file tansfers?

[+Doc-Dean]

actually flir67 I was more interested un saving time booting up and loading maps speeds in the gps. I don;t plan on taking the sd card out very often anyways as it requires you take the battery out and for the explorist600 you have to recalibrate the electronic compass everytime you do that. besides once the maps are loaded to the sd card, how many times do you need to do large file tansfers?

I agree, I am much more interested in quicker map load times then how long it takes to upload new maps.