# Maximal possible speed Eos 7D CF-Card



## xps (Jun 6, 2013)

Bought an refurbished 7D again, the 60D has an sensor damage. 
What is the maximal -senseful- CF card speed I can use on the 7D?

My old CF card (233x) might be topped. 

Tell me your experience and your used product. I wan to buy 2 16GB cards.

Thanks


----------



## Mt Spokane Photography (Jun 6, 2013)

xps said:


> Bought an refurbished 7D again, the 60D has an sensor damage.
> What is the maximal -senseful- CF card speed I can use on the 7D?
> 
> My old CF card (233x) might be topped.
> ...


1000X is currently the CF fastest card. The 7D will work with UDMA 7.


----------



## neuroanatomist (Jun 6, 2013)

Here are the results of some testing I did with the 7D. Going from 60 MB/s to 90 MB/s gives only a modest increase in camera performance (4 more shots in a 20 s burst, 1-2 seconds faster to clear the buffer. Certainly not the 50% boost you might expect going from 60 MB/s to 90 Mb/s...real world in-camera performance isn't the rated value - look at the measured write speeds in the last colum (although you should get the rated values or close to them when transferring the files to a computer using an appropriate card reader).


----------



## xps (Jun 7, 2013)

Much thanks!


----------



## brianboru (Jun 7, 2013)

Rob Galbraith has a pretty exhaustive list at:

http://www.robgalbraith.com/camera_wb_multi_page5cab.html?cid=6007-10294&sort_col=burst&sort_dir=DESC

The burst figures there are for a 30s burst of RAW+JPEG instead of a 20s burst like Neuro. The older cards perform worse than in Neuro's test which may be a difference in RAW+JPEG or, my guess, that Rob's tests were with the old firmware and the improved burst capability of the Ver 2.0 firmware is much more significant on an older card.

The quote from the firmware announcement: "These improvements include a higher maximum burst rate (130* for JPEG Large/Fine and 25* RAW images) for continuous shooting".


----------



## neuroanatomist (Jun 7, 2013)

brianboru said:


> ...my guess, that Rob's tests were with the old firmware and the improved burst capability of the Ver 2.0 firmware is much more significant on an older card.
> 
> The quote from the firmware announcement: "These improvements include a higher maximum burst rate (130* for JPEG Large/Fine and 25* RAW images) for continuous shooting".



Your guess is correct, I suspect. I should add, I forgot about the burst rate increase with the v2 firmware - might be worth re-doing that test at some point. My testing was with v1.25, and I also tested v1.22 which was prior to the UDMA7 support update. Even though the SanDisk 90 MB/s card is UDMA6, not -7, you can see that the firmware made a huge difference - the faster card was basically crippled before the update.


----------



## leGreve (Jun 7, 2013)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> xps said:
> 
> 
> > Bought an refurbished 7D again, the 60D has an sensor damage.
> ...



1066x is the current fastest card (from Toshiba)... but alas since it's new it's way overpriced.

Another thing that ML and EOSHD has taught us is that even you though you buy into a "1000x" speed card, there's a HUGE difference in actual read / write speed.

Several tests including Sandisk and Lexar have by now shown that the fastest 1000x cards are the 64gb Komputerbay CF cards.

For some reason read and write speeds seem to drop on both the 32gb and the 128gb. Usually flash memory gets faster the more there is. Apparently that was a myth.

So there you have it.

Another bonus: Komputerbay cards are cheaper than both Lexar and Sandisk.

I just bought one card which does Canon 5D mk III raw without a hitch, and have another card coming this money. Best money spent.


----------



## Roger Jones (Jun 7, 2013)

Komputerbay cards have the same chip and controller as the 1000x lexars. They are binned as not passing QA for 1000x so they are hit or miss. I have three, all manifest different issues such as difficulty formatting in camera, stalling during ML raw recording, incorrect size reporting. That said, they are cheap compared to the other offerings and mine write 95MBps and read 150MBps. Supposedly Komputerbay will swap your card if you get a clinker but I haven't tried that yet. I wouldn't trust them for critical work.


----------



## brianboru (Jun 7, 2013)

I was curious about my own set of cards so ran a test using my 7D with Firmware 2.0.3. I formatted the cards in-camera first, and then shot a 20 second burst of raw files in manual-focus, 1/200 exposure against a still-life. I timed the result till the write-light turned off. It was fairly impressive what the old 4GB cards could do.

The last entry is an SD to CF adapter I have for emergencies when traveling - knowing any Walmart or Target will have SD cards.


----------



## brianboru (Jun 7, 2013)

One more test for fun comparing the SD card via CF adapter in the 7D with the same SD Card installed natively in my wife's t4i. It just proves the 7D has a much deeper buffer.


----------



## leGreve (Jun 8, 2013)

Roger Jones said:


> Komputerbay cards have the same chip and controller as the 1000x lexars. They are binned as not passing QA for 1000x so they are hit or miss. I have three, all manifest different issues such as difficulty formatting in camera, stalling during ML raw recording, incorrect size reporting. That said, they are cheap compared to the other offerings and mine write 95MBps and read 150MBps. Supposedly Komputerbay will swap your card if you get a clinker but I haven't tried that yet. I wouldn't trust them for critical work.



And they will.... So first thing to do when you get a Komputerbay card is do the benchmark test and if you dont get 80+ mb/s send it back and get a new one. No biggie.... The 64gb card I have doesnt go beyond one star in ML


----------

