Internal PCMCIA card reader bandwidth / USB or PCI or SCSI ?

[yellowvespa]

I have always had an internal reader that used a PCMCIA adapter for flash cards in a 3.5 slot on my desktop. I now need to decide on what interface I should get for the new build in progress.

My research tells me that a PCI slot has 133 mb/sec bandwidth. I have always had this interface with my pcmcia readers and it sucks the photos right out of the flash cards.

The new readers are mostly USB 2.0 which has a claimed (up to) 480mb/sec. Well, I have that type right now and it's not any faster than the PCI slot readers I have. (slower in fact)

Adaptec makes an Ultra2 SCSI card and pcmcia reader. They say 160 mb/sec but wait .. if the card goes into a PCI slot and the maxium bandwidth in a PCI slot is 133 mb/sec (shared over all the slots no less) I have to assume that the claimed 160 mb/sec is a pipedream.

Since I'm running out of internal USB pins and would need to get a usb pci card ... wait .. if the usb 2.0 card (up to 480 mb/sec) goes into a 133 mb/sec pci slot that means that the most bandwidth I could really see is 133 mb/sec ... am I right on this?

I'm leaning towards the SCSI. Thoughts ??

 

[Peter]

If you use CompactFlash cards and plug them into a PCMCIA slot, you essentially made yourself an IDE drive. You'll get the best performance out of the CF card, whatever it is capable of.

USB2 readers can do the same. The SCSI PCMCIA drive is to read PCMCIA IDE cards or CF cards w/ adapter ONLY. U2 is only 80 MB/s.

But you're missing the main point. While flash cards are now outperforming USB 1.x bandwidth, they're WAY slower than any of the interfaces you mention. The best of them just so reach above 10 MB/s, so the discussion about interface bandwidth is rather pointless.

 

[yellowvespa]

Hi,
I'm using Viking 40x 512mb cards. The reason I was asking is that I do notice the difference in download time on the USB reader vs. the PCI slot reader. Both readers are in the same machine and when downloading my photos it's a matter of which one I happen to plug it into. I'd be willing to say that the PCI slot card reader is easily 40-50% faster downloading than the USB 2.0 reader. That is why I tried to get technical on my next choice as it seems that (the CF cards bandwidth aside) there is a difference in download time on the interfaces.