Hey guys,
As some of you know I got a PB1400 recently; because of that I bought a 32GB CF card to make file transfers easier. I used my 15" 1.5GHz AlBook for this. Well it seemed to me that it was taking forever to copy any files to the card. I also wanted to be able to transfer files to the card on a desktop computer. So I found a FireWire 800 CF card reader on eBay.
Out of curiosity, I decided to run some speed tests on the adapters.
The first is from my kingston PCMCIA CF reader:
This one is my other PCMCIA reader for MicroDrives but also work with CF:
Lastly, the FW800 adapter:
As you can see, it is (nearly) saturating the FW800 bus! I honestly just thought CF cards were slow. I know PCMCIA isn't the bottleneck as they're essentially 32bit PCI slots. Guess I just have some slow adapters...That said, does anybody have a recomendation for a faster PCMCIA reader? That would be for use in the PowerBook 1400, as all other transfers will take place over FW now..But it would be nice to know that I have an adapter that could saturate the PB1400's slot.
The FW adapter doesn't seem to work on Mojave for whatever reason. But it does work on Snow Leopard. I didn't test any other Intel Mac OS's.
As some of you know I got a PB1400 recently; because of that I bought a 32GB CF card to make file transfers easier. I used my 15" 1.5GHz AlBook for this. Well it seemed to me that it was taking forever to copy any files to the card. I also wanted to be able to transfer files to the card on a desktop computer. So I found a FireWire 800 CF card reader on eBay.
Out of curiosity, I decided to run some speed tests on the adapters.
The first is from my kingston PCMCIA CF reader:
Code:
Results 5.29
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.8 (9L31a)
Physical RAM 2048 MB
Model PowerBook5,4
Processor PowerPC G4 @ 1.50 GHz
L1 Cache 32K (instruction), 32K (data)
L2 Cache 512K @ 1.50 GHz
Bus Frequency 167 MHz
Video Card ATY,RV360M11
Drive Type LEXAR ATA FLASH CARD LEXAR ATA FLASH CARD
Disk Test 5.29
Sequential 3.57
Uncached Write 3.22 1.98 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 3.33 1.89 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 5.19 1.52 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 3.17 1.59 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 10.18
Uncached Write 9.71 1.03 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 5.93 1.90 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 191.89 1.36 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 8.62 1.60 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Code:
Results 5.33
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.8 (9L31a)
Physical RAM 2048 MB
Model PowerBook5,4
Processor PowerPC G4 @ 1.50 GHz
L1 Cache 32K (instruction), 32K (data)
L2 Cache 512K @ 1.50 GHz
Bus Frequency 167 MHz
Video Card ATY,RV360M11
Drive Type LEXAR ATA FLASH CARD LEXAR ATA FLASH CARD
Disk Test 5.33
Sequential 3.60
Uncached Write 3.25 1.99 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 3.34 1.89 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 5.23 1.53 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 3.19 1.60 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 10.30
Uncached Write 10.36 1.10 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 5.87 1.88 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 182.34 1.29 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 8.62 1.60 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Code:
Results 69.89
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.8 (9L31a)
Physical RAM 2048 MB
Model PowerBook5,4
Processor PowerPC G4 @ 1.50 GHz
L1 Cache 32K (instruction), 32K (data)
L2 Cache 512K @ 1.50 GHz
Bus Frequency 167 MHz
Video Card ATY,RV360M11
Drive Type LEXAR AT A FLASH CARD
Disk Test 69.89
Sequential 88.87
Uncached Write 100.59 61.76 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 111.60 63.14 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 52.40 15.34 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 142.43 71.58 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 57.59
Uncached Write 17.67 1.87 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 103.28 33.06 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 1522.18 10.79 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 395.54 73.39 MB/sec [256K blocks]The FW adapter doesn't seem to work on Mojave for whatever reason. But it does work on Snow Leopard. I didn't test any other Intel Mac OS's.
