Memory Stick Pro Duo prices and performance

[darkblu]

Well 1.5 MB/s or 2.1 MB/s is greater than 8-10 Mb/s write speed isn't it?

oops, i misread the data unit in the original post. my bad.

The Sony DSCT1 can record 640x480 at 30 fps I believe and can go as long as it has space. So you would think it's writing directly to the Duo card?

well, these were sony's plans at the release of the pro cards. btw the technical difference with the older non-pro cards is the width of the host interface bus - the old ms had a serial bus, the PROs have an 8bit (or was it 4bit..) parallel bus, but they can still work in older non-pro hosts in serial mode. at least theoretically.

 

[crystalcube]

Maybe there's different performance depending on what device reads or writes from them?

Thats is quite right.
I did my own test transferring files to a Sandisk 512 Duo MS this was the result. I used a transcend USb 2.0 memory card reader.

Filesize : 340.1 MB ( 356,638,720 bytes )

Time taken for Writing : 67 sec ( avg of 3 times ) , about 40 Mbps
Time taken for Reading : 46 sec ( avg of 3 times ), about 59 mbps

So this gives a rating of about 40 Mbps for writing, which is much higher than minimum specified of 15 Mbps. Also this is sufficient to even store DV format of upto 25 Mbps which is normal for consumer Video Cameras.

 

[marconelly!]

So are the Sony cards faster than the Sandisk ones?

Sony 'High Speed' cards should be faster than Sandisk's 'Pro' cards, just as they are faster than Sony's own 'Pro' cards. They however should not be faster than Sandisk's 'Ultra' cards, as that's the monicker Sandisk gave to same technology Sony calls 'High Speed.

The trick is, I don't think Sandisk makes Duo cards in 'Ultra' technology yet. I have seen their bigger Memory Sticks marked as 'Ultra', but from what I've seen, right now, the only Duo card with that new high speed is available from Sony.

 

[rabidrabbit]

The magazine had tested the Memory Sticks using a usb2.0 card readers, one from Sony and other from SanDisk (both were faster when used with own brand readers).
Actually now that I read the test closer, it is a bit unclear how they tested the cards. It says they used 158 jpg files, sizes 293-457 KB which were transferred back and forth.
With other than Memory Sticks and xD cards they used both a test with card readers, and test where they transferred the jpg files directly from cameras. I don't know why they didn't use cameras with Memory Sticks :?
Also in one chart where they used the card readers, they got approx. 10 MB/s reading speed, but elsewhere in the test they say the read speed is approx 8 MB/s, altough it is hinted that they used "High Speed" card in the first chart.
Both 512MB cards could be emptied to the PC in "under one minute".

I think I'm just confusing this more... and now I know why I never bothered to read that test closer in the first place.

 

[wco81]

So are the Sony cards faster than the Sandisk ones?

Sony 'Hi-Speed' cards should be faster than Sandisk's 'Pro' cards, just as they are faster than Sony's own 'Pro' cards. They however should not be faster than Sandisk's 'Ultra' cards, as that's the monicker Sandisk gave to same technology Sony calls 'Hi-Speed.

The trick is, I don't think Sandisk makes Duo cards in 'Ultra' technology yet. I have seen their bigger Memory Sticks marked as 'Ultra', but from what I've seen, right now, the only Duo card with that new high speed is available from Sony.

How much faster and will that greater speed be noticed in typical applications like the PSP and digital cameras?

Is the price premium worth it?

 

[hey69]

sony/sandisk memorystick duo = SMALL
sony/sandisk memorystick PRO = FAST
sony/sandisk memorystick ultra = F*cking fast
sony/sandisk memorystick PRO duo= FAST SMALL

that should do it

sony memorystick

 

[rabidrabbit]

So ther is no F*cking Fast Small, yet?

You're right, Memory Stick F, S, FS, F*F and ultimately Memory Stick F*FS would be so much more descriptive and easier to remember than all those DUO's Ultra's DUOUltra's Pro's ProDUO's UltraPro's and UltraProDUO's

 

[marconelly!]

How much faster and will that greater speed be noticed in typical applications like the PSP and digital cameras?

Is the price premium worth it?

That's what I'd like to know too. Especially when using with PSP...

Remember, one of the typical applications for these things on PSP is copying multi megabyte files from PC to them. That's where the speed comes the most handy. Is there any real speed increase with High Speed cards on PSP, or is the speed actually bottlenecked somewhere in the PSP I/O hardware, I don't know.

So ther is no F*cking Fast Small, yet?

Yes there is. Sony's Pro Duo "High Speed"

I am not aware that Sandisk has an equivalent to this one as of yet.

 

[hey69]

but that's a reruglar PRO duo , not an ULTRA PRO duo

or a f*cking high speed small size stick

 

[rabidrabbit]

I just checked the SanDIsk site, and they seem to have a brand new "Gaming Line" MagicGate Memory Stick family (Protected fast small size stick), up to 1 GB.
http://www.sandisk.com/retail/gaming.asp

They advertise it as being especially suited for devices like PSP, and it seems to be "Magic Gate". They didn't have prices for them yet.

So maybe, if one wants to be absolutely safe and sure, it would be wise to wait for a Magic Gate PRO cards (if they are not available already), as that should ensure it is compatible with all the possible future DRM content.

Edit: Edited to go with the new "hey69" naming

 

[cthellis42]

but that's a reruglar PRO duo , not an ULTRA PRO duo

or a f*cking high speed small size stick

Sony labels their 80Mbps media as "High Speed" not Ultra. Regular Pro are their 15Mbps rated cards. (Peruse here)

SanDisk uses its own monikers. "Extreme III" MS PRO says 18MB/sec sequential write and read speed, while normal "Extreme" says A minimum of 9MB/sec sequential write speed and A minimum of 10MB/sec sequential read speed, which seems to be the same as their "Ultra II" MS PRO line - Have a minimum sustained write speed of 9MB per second and a read speed of 10MB per second. (You can flip through them all here) They do not yet have PRO DUOs with any Extreme or Ultra moniker.

As well, Sony does not seem to make any PRO cards (DUO or not) that match the rated speeds of SanDisk's "Extreme III" line. What it scores in real-world testing, however, is anybody's guess. (SanDisk also has 4GB MS PRO's while Sony's highest seems to be 2GB, so SD obviously does its own work.)

 

[wco81]

I just checked the SanDIsk site, and they seem to have a brand new "Gaming Line" MagicGate Memory Stick family (Protected fast small size stick), up to 1 GB.
http://www.sandisk.com/retail/gaming.asp

They advertise it as being especially suited for devices like PSP, and it seems to be "Magic Gate". They didn't have prices for them yet.

So maybe, if one wants to be absolutely safe and sure, it would be wise to wait for a Magic Gate PRO cards (if they are not available already), as that should ensure it is compatible with all the possible future DRM content.

Edit: Edited to go with the new "hey69" naming

See that is what a local retailer had in their computers, something about Sandisk Memory Stick Pro Duos for the PSP. But I have this suspicion that these "gaming" cards are actually slower than the ones marketed for cameras which have fast burst rates or video recording.

Sandisk may see an opportunity to sell a bunch of slower stock to undiscriminating gamers. For PSP use, it may be sufficient. But when you buy a memory card for upwards of $200, you might have a reasonable expectation to be able to use it on other things like cameras.

 

[cthellis42]

The "Gaming" line seems to just be fruitily-colored to bring "youth appeal" I suppose. Otherwise it's just the same as their regular PRO Duo lines. All the Memory Sticks they sell, be they PRO, Duo, PRO Duo, or whatever carry the Magic Gate label, so that's certainly not it.

 

[wco81]

Here's a brief primer on Memory Stick and other types of memory card media:

http://www.steves-digicams.com/flash_memory.html#ms

It's a bit dated and vague on Pro Duos:

And there's also the Memory Stick DUO Pro card with higher capacities and faster transfer rates.

 

[Phil]

A bit off-topic, but for those interested in some test performance results regarding CF-cards aimed at Digitalcameras, I recommend the following site:
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007

A brief history shows that SanDisk are usually the fastest in their field (also cost the most), but that regardless, performance is often limited by the gadget itself. In various results, even the cards labeled as double as fast (i.e. Lexar Media 40x speed CF-cards compared to the newer 80x ones) are rarely double the performance. In fact, with my camera, the 80x would only lead to a 0.6 MB/sec increase over the 4.0MB/sec it does with my 40x Lexar CFs.

Having that said, I doubt it really matters if Sony or SanDisk Memorysticks will be used on PSP as both will be probably limited by the PSP's interface eitherway. Both will be more than sufficient in the end, that I am sure.


Also, often, cards show different performances depending on model number indicating various different versions within the same type of card.

I.E: test-results for a D70:
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007-6816

 

[archie4oz]

The ATRAC files are not compatible with PRO cards because they are not Magic Gated, so DRM material seems to be only possible on <256MB cards, which sucks if Sony really wants to make the PSP a "iPod killer".

Magic Gate has nothing to do with ATRAC, nor does ATRAC (both the codec and the file container) have anything to do with DRM. The files you get off of Connect (and files you encode with SonicStage), are OpenMG Audio files. Yes they use ATRAC3 and ATRAC3plus codecs for the audio stream, but they're stored in an .oma (or .omg if you've encode with a copy of SonicStage 2.0 or earlier) container that supports the OpenMG DRM.

but i guess a selfmade atrac+ file is fully playable on a duo PRO , no ?. i mean it's only DRM material when you download it from a official payformusic site?

Both are DRM'd... It's just that the self-encoded files aren't laden with the record labels' specific restrictions...

I really don't know what other software can do ATRAC.

Well there's old versions of Real Producer that can encode ATRAC3, but that's only to a .rm container. There's also an ancient windows based encoder tool that (like the actual current in-house command line encoder) spits out ATRAC3 files in .at3 containers. But the end-user is pretty much stuck with SonicStage as the only practical encoder.

It's in Sony's DNA to use DRM. They just barely started supporting MP3 and they were pretty much dragged kicking and screaming.

It is? And what does mp3 support have to do with DRM?

SanDisk also developed the MemoryStick format AFAIK

Not quite, however SanDisk sits on enough patents with regards to flash memory that you can't really create a flash technology without SanDisk getting involved.

Similar thing happened with the development of ATRAC (circa 88'-89'). Sony pays royalties to Dolby for ATRAC simply because they inadvertently stepped on some of Dolby's patents when developing ATRAC.