Performance
Now couple of words about test setup. For tests I used three different computers with USB 3.0 ports to check maximum possible transfers. Presented results were made on ASUS Maximus VIII Hero motherboard and Intel USB 3.0 controller. This combination provided the best results in bandwidth tests. We wish to see higher results but USB 3.0 has its limits way below theoretical bandwidth and we simply can’t count on much more on even the best USB 3.0 controller.
As I mentioned on the previous page of this review, Workflow CR2 card reader has Thunderbold header but I wasn’t able to use it as motherboard manufacturers are not adding extension cables for this port and they’re not available in stores.
ATTO Disk Benchmark
As we see on above screenshot, Sequential transfers are clearly limited at 445MB/s read and 384MB/s write. It’s a great result and we see that card can make much more but USB 3.0 simply can’t. Performance is scalling about as good as on better SSD drives what is amazing considering size of the CFast card.
CrystalDiskMark
CrystalDiskMark is showing about the same maximum bandwidth in sequential transfers as in ATTO but we can also see how 3600x CFast card is performing in random transfers which are not limited by used interface. As you can see both 4k read and write is above 20MB/s. If you compare it to our hard drives then you see that Lexar CFast card is about ten times faster than a regular HDD and not much slower than higher series of SSD drives. Once again it’s a great result for a flash card.
What is also important, regardless if we were using larger or smaller test files, results were reaching maximum USB 3.0 bandwidth what only confirms high performance of Lexar CFast card. On larger files results were better in random transfers so I assume that sequential transfers will be also better what counts when you want to save large photo or video files.
Anvil’s Storage Utilities
Anvil’s Storage Utilities is also popular storage benchmark which offers various tests. The same as other benchmarks in this review, also Anvil’s application is available for free so anyone can test performance of storage devices and compare to our results.
The same as in other benchmarks, also in Anvil’s Storage Utilities results are really good but clearly limited by USB interface. In general results are similar to what we could see in CrystalDiskMark so maximum bandwidth up to 440MB/s ( depends from run ).
I hope we will be able to test Lexar CFast card on the Thunderbolt interface soon as it clearly has higher potential than we can see on the screenshots presented above.
