Crucial.com, launched November 1996 by Micron, was created for the end user/consumer to buy ram direct from the same place OEMs buy it. This assured compatibility as well as competitive pricing, not to mention that their ram performs and overclocks very well.

For those of you who don't know, CF is a removable flash memory standard. It's noiseless, due largely because there isn't any moving parts, compact, as well as conform to ATA specs.

It's uses range from being used in digital cameras, to PDAs, and MP3 players. Considering that many of these devices only include 8MB, or 16MB (if any at all) upon purchase, it's always wise to pick up little extra. I recently purchased a digital camera, and the default resolution takes up 1MB per shot. Considering I only had 8MB at first (I purchased 64MB of SanDisk ram later on), it doesn't take long to fill up.

Specifications

Part Number: CT64MBC1
• Module Size: 64MB
• Package: CompactFlash Type I
• Feature: CompactFlash

I will be using this card primarily for my digital camera. Two things that are important to me are the read/write performance, and transfer speeds (when downloading images to a PC). CF media is pretty much a standard for these devices, and I believe that's what most people will use the CF card for. I haven't tested it on a MP3 player, as I don't have one, but I'd guess that it'd scale performance wise when loading your tunes to the card.

Like hard drives, the capacity is the same 1 MB = 1,000,000 or 1,048,576 bytes, depending who you ask. For the record, I was still able to load up 64 images at maximum quality on my Kodak DX3900.

The card itself is standard fare. I meets all CF specifications, and it includes an installation instruction sheet in case you need it.

Performance

It wasn't easy for me to test this, as I don't have any benchmarking software for CF media. Windows XP does view my camera as another drive in Explorer, but it doesn't show up in SiSoft. Anyhow, I never place much weight in synthetic benchmarks anyhow, so I decided to run a battery of real world tests. I discarded the 8MB card, and will be focussing exclusively on the Sandisk and Crucial 64MB CF cards. The test bed is as follows:

Athlon XP, KG7-RAID, 512MB PC2100 DDR, Windows XP, all driver updates applied.
Kodak DX 3900, connected via USB to the PC

Both memory cards were loaded with 64 images. I basically set the camera in a fixed spot, snapped 64 pictures of my bookshelf, removed the card, inserted the other and repeated. Nothing to it.

Benchmarks

The first test was to see how long it took to write 1MB when taking a picture on the camera. For the first picture, it pretty much seemed the same speed. It did vary by a second, either card taking longer for the first dozen or so. I did notice that the SanDisk began to lag as the disk neared capacity. As it reached 50 images, we start to see a noticable drop in performance...

Putting the above graph in perspective, it takes at least 2 seconds longer from pictures #50 to #64 (it did take 7 seconds at picture #56, but that was the only time). The Crucial CF card stayed steady throughout testing though, and only twice after picture #50 did it take 4 seconds.

The next test was to see how long it took to preview the pictures. This was done by going into play mode, and holding the scroll button down on the camera.

The Crucial CF wins again, albeit 6 seconds is not as much a deal here. The SanDisk was actually faster at first, but it seemed to lag near the end. I guess what will be important is how fast these pictures can be yanked off the camera...

I think it's obvious here who the faster card is. It takes the Crucial CF a mere 72 seconds, which is actually quite fast. The SanDisk takes a half minute more, which isn't too long in the grand scheme of things, but it's way too long in my opinion.

Since I didn't need 128 pictures of my bookshelf, I proceeded to delete the images. I simply selected all in Windows Explorer, and pressed delete.

Score one for SanDisk as it was noticably faster in ridding itself of the images.

Final Words

The tests were as scientific as I could make it, but there is certainly plenty of room for human error. I did the tests a couple more times, and the scores did vary slightly (in some cases better for SanDisk, and a few times worse). Overall, the Crucial 64MB CF card was a decisive winner.

Both cards were reliable throughout the tests, and if benchmarks were equal (which they were not), what makes Crucial a better choice? Price. From the few places I checked out, Crucial's CF card was at least 3$ to 5$ cheaper on average (it's selling for 34$ now online), and it includes FREE 2nd day shipping.

I don't really have anything bad to say about it. It does what it's supposed to do. It's cheap, and includes free shipping. I do wish it were a little faster, as my smaller 8MB card kicked it's ass in the battle of 8MB tests, but it's natural that higher capacity cards perform a little slower. That being said, if you're looking for a CF card upgrade, or a spare one, you can't go wrong with this one. Crucial sells larger capacity cards if 64MB is too small for your liking, but I find the 64MB fall under the best price/capacity ratio.

Pros: Good performance, great pricing and quality.

Cons: None really, could be a little quicker maybe.