In a recent article written by Jaron Schneider for PetaPixel, they go over the new ProGrade Digital CFast cards. CFast’s popularity may have started to slow down, but ProGrade Digital has not slowed down at all. In fact, ProGrade Digital just announced their third-gen CFast cards, which are their fastest ever.
ProGrade Digital provides the highest quality, best performing digital memory cards for professionals who capture using DSLR, Mirrorless, and Digital Cinema Camcorders. ProGrade’s CFast ™ 2.0, 3rd generation Cobalt memory cards, are guaranteed to perform at a sustained read speed of up to 550MB/s and sustained write speed of up to 470MB/s. The card is Video Performance Grade 130 (VPG 130), which guarantees that write speed within the camera will not drop below 130MB/second—a level required by high-performance cameras, allowing precise capture without dropping frames when creating 8K, 6K, 4K, Full HD and high bit rate RAW and MPEG-4 files.
CFast has a maximum transfer speed of 600MB/s, but no company has yet to make a card that hits that limit. The reason CFast can’t hit those higher speeds is that it uses the SATA interface, while CFexpress uses PCIe. SATA’s true speed cap is not theoretical, so it’s not actually possible to go faster than 600 MB/s on the format. As 6K and 8K cameras have become more common, SATA isn’t able to grow with those needs, which is why the PCIe format CFexpress has become so popular.
Most cameras released in the last few years have switched over to either CFexpress or an SSD storage system, but there are still a few cameras that rely on the older CFast format. ProGrade Digital is still making CFast cards with amazing speeds.
ProGrade Digital’s third-generation CFast 2.0 Cobalt series memory cards are available in 320GB and 650GB capacities and provide read speeds of up to 550MB/s, burst write speeds of up to 520MB/s, and sustained write speeds of up to 470MB/s. That performance is just slightly better than what the company was able to squeeze out of its previous Cobalt series cards, which promised read speeds of up to 525 MB/s and write speeds of up to 445 MB/s.
The new third-generation CFast 2.0 Cobalt series memory cards will be available to purchase in late December
Read the full article from PetaPixel HERE
Learn more about ProGrade Digital HERE