16GB Transcend CF Cards - Slow?

I was in my local camera shop today picking up my camera after a service.

Anyway I asked them if they had the low cost 16GB cards such as the Transcend, the other guy behind the counter heard this and responded by saying he had bought one himself and it was so slow it was almost unusable.

Is this just sales spin to get me to buy there wares or is there some truth in his statement.

It might also be worth mentioning I believe he is a Nikon guy. (I say this not because I don't trust them but because there was an issue with some cards and certain firmwares a while back).

I have two 8GB 133x Transcend cards, they both work faster than my 4gb Ultra II's so I am guessing there should be no problem with the speed of the 16gb, considering its also 133x.

nickOH wrote in post #5339007
I have two 8GB 133x Transcend cards, they both work faster than my 4gb Ultra II's so I am guessing there should be no problem with the speed of the 16gb, considering its also 133x.

That is good to know as I am running two 4GB Ultra II's now.

I have a 16GB Transcend and it is significantly faster than my previous cards

It should be plenty fast. The bigger cards are not AS fast as the smaller ones usually (at least within the same class), but it is far from unusable.

Card speeds are overrated anyways, most of the time the camera is more of a bottleneck than the differences between cards (which do make a difference in the camera, but it is small as long as you use decent cards).

The big differences comes if you use a card reader, but still most card readers are not that fast and end up being the bottleneck!

I don't really notice a difference when shooting JPEG (probably because I never fill the buffer), but when shooting RAW, my 16GB and 8Gb Transcend 133X CF cards are a little slower than my 4GB Ultra II and Extreme III cards.

Check here for card speeds for the 40D

http://www.robgalbrait​h.com …ti_page.asp?cid​=6007-9257

The transcend 16GB CF card is fairly slow compared to the Sandisk extreme III 16GB CF card

On the 1DsMkIII the transcend is about half the speed of the extreme III.

The main memory card database page is here:
http://www.robgalbrait​h.com/bins/multi_page.​asp?cid=6007

After a couple of years it finally got updated.

I'm using a pair of 8G 133x Transcends in my XTi and have had zero speed issues. Sounds like an upsell to me. =)

Longwatcher wrote in post #5351969
Check here for card speeds for the 40D

http://www.robgalbrait​h.com …ti_page.asp?cid​=6007-9257

The transcend 16GB CF card is fairly slow compared to the Sandisk extreme III 16GB CF card

On the 1DsMkIII the transcend is about half the speed of the extreme III.

The main memory card database page is here:
http://www.robgalbrait​h.com/bins/multi_page.​asp?cid=6007

After a couple of years it finally got updated.

Excellent, thanks for the tip off, i checked the site a few weeks/months ago and everything was out of date so I assumed he had given up on rating cards!

Main competition here is my existing Ultra II's also since going for the 40D with its larger buffer I am yet to fill the buffer.

They work fine!!!! I have been using them for a long time now.. Never any issues!

Never have any issue... at least on an XTi on burst mode...

Note, if you never fill the buffer then that is the fastest speed of card you need
Alternatively if like in my old 10D you find that the camera imposes a limit (12-15x in the 10D's case) then that is the fastest card to bother with unless you plan to upgrade the camera.

My 1DsMkIII though, I hit the buffer every rare once in awhile with the Extreme IV 8GB card, so I could go just a bit faster I think if the camera isn't the limiting factor.