What's the fastest SD card for Nikon D600?

Joe Tam · Oct 2, 2012

Hi,

I have the 8 GB SDHC Memory Card Extreme Pro Class 10 UHS-I on my D7000 and though it says 95mb/s I still find buffer stall happens pretty quickly as well as slow frame rates after it stalls(1-2 fps) when shooting raw.

I have used the D300 and D3 with Sandisk Extreme 90mb/s cards and the buffer clears so much faster.

I'd like to get the D600 but hate that it uses SD only. Is there any faster SD card than the sandisk listed above?

Will SD cards ever be as fast/faster than CF? Why? Why not?

gobiassumcoffee · Oct 2, 2012

Don't think you're gonna find anything noticeably faster than the card you already have. You're shooting in RAW I'm guessing; have you tried 12-bit compressed? You'll lose a tiny bit of IQ but unless you're doing some heavy pushing in post it won't be anything you'll notice.

Roland Wooster · Oct 2, 2012

You have the fastest SD card as measured by RobGalbraith in the D800. He measured 42MB/s on RAW shooting with that card, versus 69MB/s for the top CF card.

I would imagine the D600/D800 has probably only implemented the UHS-1 spec, which limits it to 104MB/s on the SDXC card interface. Given this however, it seems odd that your card which should be closer to 95MB/s is dragging along at 42MB/s.

Perhaps someone else can explain whether the issue is with the camera or the card.

It would be interesting to see how the card performs in a top of the line USB3 card reader.

Roland.

--
Gallery at http://www.rolandwooster.com

Canadianguy · Oct 2, 2012

The D7000 doesn't support UHS-I - so the 95 MB/s cannot be obtained in a D7000.

http://support.nikonusa.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/17061/~/approved-memory-cards---d7000

The D3 & D300 both support UDMA - so your CF UDMA cards will be faster than your UHS-I SD cards.

http://www.nikonusa.com/en/Nikon-Products/Product/Digital-SLR-Cameras/25464/D300S.html#tab-ProductDetail-ProductTabs-TechSpecs

Canadianguy · Oct 2, 2012

Sorry - seems I was incorrect.

The D7000 should have supported UHS-1, don't know why you are experiencing slow downs.

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.quesabesde.com%2Fnoticias%2Fsandisk-uhs-i-nuevas-camaras-sdxc-extreme-pro-memory-vault%2C1_8053

Joe Tam · Oct 3, 2012

I just upgraded from firmware 1.02 on d7000 to 1.02/1.03. Did anyone experience faster read/write speeds on UHS-1 cards after the upgrade. I THINK it's writing faster and clearing the buffer faster. I do notice that 12-bit compressed allows shooting faster when you hit buffer stall. i can almost get 1fps when hitting the buffer. on uncompressed it's almost 1 frame every 1.5 seconds.

Canadianguy wrote:

Canadianguy said:
Sorry - seems I was incorrect.

The D7000 should have supported UHS-1, don't know why you are experiencing slow downs.

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.quesabesde.com%2Fnoticias%2Fsandisk-uhs-i-nuevas-camaras-sdxc-extreme-pro-memory-vault%2C1_8053

RRRoger · Jul 30, 2013

"Toshiba has announced the Exceria and Exceria Pro
>ranges of SD cards - the first to conform to the UHS-II
>standard and the fastest SD cards yet announced. The Exceria
>Pro cards will be available in 16GB and 32GB sizes from
>October 2013 and will offer read/write speeds of 260MB/s and
>240MB/s"

ultimitsu · Jul 30, 2013

RRRoger said:
RRRoger wrote:

"Toshiba has announced the Exceria and Exceria Pro
>ranges of SD cards - the first to conform to the UHS-II
>standard and the fastest SD cards yet announced. The Exceria
>Pro cards will be available in 16GB and 32GB sizes from
>October 2013 and will offer read/write speeds of 260MB/s and
>240MB/s"

--
RRRoger

But does D600 support UHS-II?

Darrelll · Jul 30, 2013

There's faster and there's fast enough. The buffer clearing has to do with the camera's buffer not the memory card I believe. CF vs SD... I suppose the CF cards can always be faster since they are much larger in form/shape so they have more room to work with. But they are also much more expensive when compared to an SD card with same size and similar speed.

I bought a couple 32gb Samsung Pro SDHC cards for $25 each. (find them on ebay, they are blue. The silver ones are not the speedy ones). These are 80MB/s read and 40MB/s write speed. Plenty fast for my D800. Similar CF cards in speed/size cost about double the SD cards. The read speed is really great when coupled with a fast USB 3.0 card reader.

I never buy the biggest or fastest... I buy fast and great value. Also, I stick with the SDHC and avoid the newer SDXC cards because 1) I don't need cards that big 2) few people I know have a SDXC compatible card reader.

RRRoger · Jul 30, 2013

ultimitsu said:
ultimitsu wrote:

ultimitsu said:

RRRoger wrote:

"Toshiba has announced the Exceria and Exceria Pro
>ranges of SD cards - the first to conform to the UHS-II
>standard and the fastest SD cards yet announced. The Exceria
>Pro cards will be available in 16GB and 32GB sizes from
>October 2013 and will offer read/write speeds of 260MB/s and
>240MB/s"

Click to expand...

ultimitsu · Jul 30, 2013

RRRoger said:
RRRoger wrote:

RRRoger said:

ultimitsu wrote:

RRRoger said:

RRRoger wrote:

"Toshiba has announced the Exceria and Exceria Pro
>ranges of SD cards - the first to conform to the UHS-II
>standard and the fastest SD cards yet announced. The Exceria
>Pro cards will be available in 16GB and 32GB sizes from
>October 2013 and will offer read/write speeds of 260MB/s and
>240MB/s"

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Chuck Steenburgh · Aug 1, 2013

ultimitsu said:
Similarly non-UHS-II compatible devices will not be able to use UHS-II cards, or only be able to use them at UHS-I spec instead.

Exactly. The D7000 was the first camera to support UHS-I; UHS-I cards in older cameras were not any faster than the non-UHS cards available at that time.

In my experience, the D600 has such a massive buffer that even modestly-fast UHS-I cards (30 MB/sec or faster) clear fast enough to shoot the daylights out. And I've done some testing in my day.

RRRoger · Aug 1, 2013

The UHS-2 cards are backwards compatible to UHS-1 but will only write up to 104MBs.

Bus Speed (Default Speed/High Speed/UHS/SD Express) - SD Association

Bus Speed The initial SD bus speed of 12.5MB/s is the Default Mode and was defined by SD1.0. Then a 25MB/s High Speed Mode was defined by SD1.1 to support digital cameras. As higher performance levels were needed to support new and faster devices, the SD Association introduced faster speed bus...

www.sdcard.org

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What's the fastest SD card for Nikon D600?

Joe Tam

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Bus Speed (Default Speed/High Speed/UHS/SD Express) - SD Association

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