Any professional photographer who has bought a cheap flash memory card and spent hours offloading gigabytes of images, or had their memory card stall when trying to shoot in burst mode, would know that not all memory cards are created equal. SanDisk’s new line of Extreme Pro CompactFlash memory cards proves this point by offering 90MB/s peak read and write speeds – double the performance of previous SanDisk high-end camera memory cards.
The speed boost comes courtesy of a new SanDisk Power Core Controller with dual-lane architecture and software algorithms that works in much the same way as a RAID0 dual-SSD setup. SanDisk say the Controller’s firmware algorithms and 42-bit ECC engine also provide increased reliability by maintaining data integrity and extending the endurance of the card. Further increasing the card’s durability is the simplified integrated design of the Controller, requiring fewer individual components on the card’s printed circuit board.
The new cards come in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB capacities, and are compatible with any camera, card reader or other device that supports CompactFlash cards. But to take advantage of the full 90MB/s read speeds you’ll need SanDisk’s Extreme Pro ExpressCard Adapter.
The SanDisk Extreme Pro CompactFlash memory cards will range in price from around USD$300 (16GB) to around USD$800 (64GB), while the SanDisk Extreme Pro ExpressCard Adapter will retail for USD$49.99 when it's released in October.