The buffer and CF card connection

The Nikon D2 and D200 series transfer at a maximum 20MB/s where the new D3 and D300 are UDMA compliant so they can reach 40MB/s.

When I purchased the D300, I kept my old CF cards since I don’t do much action shooting with long bursts and didn’t require the little extra speed. But today I was shooting some action at 8fps and the action wasn’t slowing down so I continued with the bursts only to be stalled by the buffer which couldn’t unload the nef's fast enough in the 4GB SanDisk Extreme III card.

So obviously I have put my cards up for sale and have ordered two 8 GB SanDisk Extreme IV cards which are supposed to be more than twice as fast. This should solve my problem with the buffer and keep me going the next time I come across such action filled situations.

Speed difference
Testing has shown that the new UDMA capable cards are twice as fast at collecting the data from the UDMA compliant cameras so what took 13 seconds with the Extreme III now takes 5-6 seconds with the Extreme IV. For more info look here , here and here

SanDisk Extreme III 20MB/Sec (x133)
SanDisk Extreme IV 40MB/Sec (x266)
SanDisk Extreme DUCATI EDITION 45MB/Sec (x300)