X-bit labs

27 Card Readers Roundup (page 11)

Category: Multimedia

by Aleksey Meyev

[ 03/23/2008 | 11:11 AM ]

Intel IOMeter Disk Response Time

The ND3260 acts up in the response time test, having much worse results than the other models. Take note that the average write access time of Secure Digital cards is one third lower than with Compact Flash cards, and the average read access time is, on the contrary, one third higher. The formal winner of this test is the GL819 with firmware 93.17.

Intel IOMeter Random Read and Write

The five slowest controllers from the sequential reading test are the slowest here, too. They are 2-4 times slower than the other chips that deliver so similar results that it’s impossible to pinpoint a winner.

It’s no different in the writing test: we’ve got the same five slowest readers and the same leaders with very similar results.

Intel IOMeter Windows Vista ReadyBoost

Now we’ll check out the readers with the SD card for their compliance with the ReadyBoost technology. The point of that technology is in using a flash drive or a flash card as an additional cache with a data access time lower than that of the hard disk. To qualify for this application, the external disk must meet certain performance requirements and have a capacity of 256MB and higher. The OS itself benchmarks the speed of the attached device and proposes that it be used for ReadyBoost. What are the requirements? The flash disk must ensure a data-transfer rate of 2.5MB/s and higher when reading random 4KB data blocks and a data-transfer rate of 1.75MB/s and higher when writing 512KB data blocks. So, we measure these two speeds in a 10-minute test. For better readability, the red vertical line marks the ReadyBoost-compliant speed in the diagrams:

The IC1210, ND3260, and the AU6362 chips with the two slow firmware versions are again the slowest. The SanDisk USB passes the test but barely. The other controllers deliver similar results.

Like with the Compact Flash format, the chips all pass the random-address writing test. The slowest controller delivers two times the required speed.