K5 write times - quicker card worthwhile?

I'll start this by saying I'm absolutaely delighted with my K5, particularly following a recent holiday where it excelled in all conditions.

The reason for my post is that I noticed that images take a little while to save to the card, seems longer than with my previous K20D. I use Class 10 Sandisk Extreme cards (30 mb/s) so I'm thinking that it's a limtation of the buffer/software rather than card speed so even the latest spec ultrafast cards probably won't make any difference - anyone else given this any thought?

thanks

Simon

no, the cards make a large difference. Are you writing RAW+ or just RAW?

Bret

I did a bit of testing yesterday: see https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/topic/card-speeds----29905
a PEF is close to 30MB now....

Bret

I lost my fast cards and had to use a couple of class 6 at the air show yesterday.

In the end I had to switch to jpeg as the card just couldn't keep up when shooting raw.

Also had the K-5 jam on me half way through the red arrows .. not best pleased but that's another topic.

I'm shooting just RAW Brett, looks like I'll be buying a couple of Extreme Pro cards - for my usual landscapes obviously speed isn't quite so important but when travelling it's suprising how much difference the odd few milliseconds can make

Slightly off topic but I was in the main square in Helsinki on Friday 12th August and a film crew was filming lots of young guys in Ice Hockey gear, any idea what that was all about? - I was going to PM you but whilst we're conversing

I did a fill the buffer test between my class 6 and class 10 cards on my K-5 and there was a difference. It was about 10% to 20% difference, which was a quite a few seconds, and might make all the difference if your machine gunning

I have both class 6 & 10 and as you say there definitely is a difference although I've mainly noticed it just with singles shot write times, which is the same situation as with my K5

I have no clue what was going on, Rihanna wasn't until last Monday, but it appears that the season has already started..... so winter's most definitely on its way

Bret

You're thinking right.
The write speed is probably between the 20 to 30MB/s for the K5 so you gain probably nothing with buying a faster card.

The bottleneck isn't the RAM, those are mighty fast it's most likely the processor that can't handle the larger files. The K5 has more pixels and it use 14bit for colour instead of 12bit and this makes a huge difference as well.

I would agree it's the speed of the processor, but the amount of RAM does make a difference to the amount of pics you can take until it fills up

reading this -http://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/pentax-dslr-discussion/120535-larger-buffer-m...#post1247155 - the implication is that there's a 750MB/s bus on the inside. However, if it's also running USB2, then that limits things to 60MB and I would not be surprised if diminishing returns hit in after Extreme IIIs. I'd be interested in the time it takes to clear the buffer, as:

500MB buffer @ 25MB/s --> 20s to clear (seems to fit). I'd have to check, but this would seem completely reasonable. Espeically then that the u II takes another 25s, ergo 10-12MB/s.

Bret

Yeah it would but i was talking about the RAM speed hence the words "mighty fast"
Don't know what type of RAM they use but it's probably near the GB/s the speed they can reach.

The 645D use the same processor and that one is painfully slow... i hope they come with a new processor soon...