I've been getting kind of frustrated. ; My usual site for card speed reviews is Rob Galbraith, they do a very comprehensive review of memory card performance for specific camera models and also how they perform in a number of memory card readers for offloading into computer. ; But they haven't reviewed the newer models in any cameras, from what I can tell, and while they do list results from memory card reader testing for the new Sandisk line (they call them Extreme 2010 and Ultra 30mb/s) that only gives read speeds which really isn't the critical factor in memory card performance to me.
Especially since when I'm offloading I'm offloading to an external hard drive that's fundamentally limited in performance by the USB 2.0 interface, which the faster cards are now able to outrun.
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/reader_report_multi_page.asp?cid=6007-9392
Maybe it's worth a look anyway. ; Note that the Extreme 2010 series is fast but not jaw droppingly fast except in that weird SATA reader, where it goes twice as fast as it did in some of the other readers. ; And most curiously of all, the Extreme 2010 is faster than the Extreme Pro in that reader. ; I'm assuming that's the new Extreme Pro, the higher spec version (if there was ever an Extreme Pro before at all, I don't remember). ; Perhaps it still can be written to faster despite having no apparent increase in read speeds?
I don't know what to make of Sandisk's new speed ratings. ; I checked out the packaging for some Ultra 15MB/s SD cards (the SD cards get a lower spec Ultra model) and it said something to the effect of 15MB/s being the fastest transfer rate, but that write speeds would be lower. ; This is not altogether uncommon, at least the 15MB/s rating is achievable somehow, I've seen cards that promised speeds that they seem completely unable to attain. ; But I still think it's kind of deceptive since, again, it's the write speed that typically really matters.
But back to Rob Galbraith review land, the Ultra 30MB/s CF cards are getting better than 30MB/s read performance, again getting really darned fast in that SATA reader. ; Overall they seem to have similar read performance to the Extreme IV 45MB/s version. ; I have no idea what this means for their write performance.