R Series P2 Cards

T

TVTerry

Member
Hello All! I recently received my new HPX 300 and two 32 GB P2 cards. I'm super stoked to start "playing" with it but noticed when I unpacked the P2 cards that they were labeled R series. I ordered the E series, which I know have a faster transfer speed and shorter life span. I also know the R series were discontinued. I'm wanting to get some feedback from you experienced users about the differences between the two so I know whether to send them back and get the E series or not. And does anyone know why the R series were discontinued?
Can anyone help me out with your past experiences? Is there a huge difference in transfer speed? How long would it take to transfer a full 32 gigs from each card?

Thanks for any help! This forum has been a great help in my decision to buy the 300!

Terry
 
I don't know... but it seems like my 64GB E series card is actually slower to transfer than my old 8gb cards...

I know there's allot more footage on the 64gb cards but pound for pound I can get my 8gig cards to offload faster...

I'm using a G4 1.67 17" to offload cards... generally to a Lacie Rugged 160gb by firewire 800 bus..

cheers
 
"R" series have indeed been discontinued, they were superseded by the "A" series, which offers a 25% increase in transfer speed.

But "R" cards still were considerably more expensive than "E" cards, so ... someone made a mistake when they shipped you "R" cards.

As for your question about transfer speeds -- it all depends on what you're transferring to. If you're copying from the card to a USB or firewire400 hard disk, or a laptop's internal drive, you won't notice any speed difference at all between an "A", "R", or "E" card. But if you're copying to a three-drive SATA RAID from a PCD35 card reader, then yeah, there'll be a big difference in speed.

Another place the speed comes into play is if you're copying to two or three drives simultanously. Copy to the laptop's internal drive, and also to an external USB drive, and all the types of cards should be able to do that without slowing down. But add a third drive into the mix (external e-sata or FW drive, for example) and the faster speed of the "E" would definitely show up.
 
Thanks for your input guys. I'm amazed there is no difference in transfer speed between cards when transferring to a FW drive. The faster transfer speeds of the E series is it's major selling point (well, I guess price might actually be!) but you will only notice a difference during very specific transfer circumstances??? Sounds like I might as well keep the R series cards since I'll only be transferring to a FW800 drive!
 
The firewire drive is the bottleneck. The transfer can happen only as fast as the drive can receive it. Firewire is rated at a maximum transfer rate of 400 megabits per second. So *any* P2 card is faster than firewire. How could a 1200mbps card transfer across a 400mbps pipe any faster than a 640mbps card does?
 
You are lucky, everyone here has a cow about how E-Series cards only have a five year life when used once a day every day (I truly question how many DVXers even shoot every day?).

Your R-Series cards cost more and have no five year limit. I would keep the R-Series, you are good to go. You lucked out. BTW, I have three R-Series 16GB cards, they are great. The greater download speeds only come into play if you are dumping to a fast RAID. If you are dumping to a FW drive, non of it matters.

Dan
 
Barry_Green said:
The firewire drive is the bottleneck. The transfer can happen only as fast as the drive can receive it. Firewire is rated at a maximum transfer rate of 400 megabits per second. So *any* P2 card is faster than firewire. How could a 1200mbps card transfer across a 400mbps pipe any faster than a 640mbps card does?
Click to expand...

So dumping directly to a hard drive of your laptop will see speed improvements between the 2 card types??...

As I understand it the PCMCIA slot maximum bandwidth is only 132Mbytes/sec..???

Or is it more... ???

Cheers

Found this info at :

http://www.pcmcia.org/pccard.htm

Volume 2: Card Electrical

The Electrical Specification describes the connector pinout, interface protocol, signaling environment, interface timings, programming model, and specifics of card insertion, removal, power up, and configuration. It specifies both the 16-bit PC Card and 32-bit CardBus interfaces.
PC Card/CardBus Throughput

Theoretical maximums are as follows:
16-bit I/O Transfers (255 ns Minimum cycle)
* Byte mode: 3.92 Mbytes/sec
* Word mode: 7.84 Mbytes/sec

16-bit Memory Transfers (100 ns Minimum cycle)
* Byte mode: 10 Mbytes/sec
* Word mode: 20 Mbytes/sec

CardBus (32 bit burst mode)
* Byte mode: 33 Mbytes/sec
* Word mode: 66 Mbytes/sec
* DWord mode: 132 Mbytes/sec

Please note that actual throughput may be substantially less than the theoretical maximums of the interface.
 
Last edited:
Lez said:
So dumping directly to a hard drive of your laptop will see speed improvements between the 2 card types??...
Click to expand...
Probably not, because no single hard drive is faster than the slowest P2 card.

As I understand it the PCMCIA slot maximum bandwidth is only 132Mbytes/sec..???
Click to expand...
Correct. But hard drives are typically only 40 to 50 megabytes per second, maximum. So PCMCIA is still way, way faster than a hard disk.

Which is why I say, if you have a three-drive SATA RAID, that can actually take advantage of the faster speed of the cards. Or, if you're copying the one card to multiple drives.

The weak link in your chain isn't the P2 card, and it's not the PCMCIA bus, it's the hard disk itself.
 
Hmm... kinda makes you wonder then about putting an operating system on a P2 card... wonder if the mac would boot from PCMIA... might have a bit of fun with and old card and see...

Cheers
 
I'd just kinda be interested if it would run... I guess the new ram drives are the way to go..

I've just had a 1.67 powerbook stuff up during the last update so I'm mucking around with operating system anyhow...

Will try and format a 8 gig card HFS+ and see what happens...

If it does work the OS should rock...

Cheers
 
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