Olympus E-620 write speed test

The max. write time might be 14.5MB/s, although the 30MB/s of the 8GB Sandisk Extreme III might be overstated. It is possible that the Olympus E620 tops out at 20MB/s.
As you can see from the results, there are big differences in write speed among the cards - the fastest card is almost three times faster than the slowest card tested.

RAW file size of 10,725 KB for a dark frame and 12,001 KB for a white frame.
I held the shutter button down for 10 sec. shooting with the lens cap on to produce a constant files size of 10,725 KB.
18 RAW in 10 sec. and the buffer was empty at the end of 13 sec.
It took only 3 sec. to clear the buffer.
Effective write speed: 18*10725/13 = 14.5 MB/s
After the initial burst of RAW files, which was 6 with this card, it would continually shoot at a rate of 90 RAW files per minute until the card is full.
A single RAW shot is saved in 2 sec.
Shooting RAW + Super Fine JPEG it would take 11 RAW + JPEG in 10 sec. and have the buffer empty in 16 sec. With RAW + JPEG it took 6 sec. to clear the buffer.
It would take 7 RAW + SF JPEG/10 sec. continuously until the card is full.
Note that even shooting into the lens cap the JPEG file size changed from shot to shot.

16 RAW in 10 sec. and buffer is empty in another 4 sec.
After the initial burst of RAW files, which was 6 with this card, it would continually shoot at a rate of 72 RAW files per minute until the card is full.
Effective write speed: 16*10725/14 = 12 MB/s

10 RAW in 10 sec. with buffer empty in another 8 sec.
After the initial burst of RAW files, which was 5 with this card, it would continually shoot at a rate of 50 RAW files per minute until the card is full.
Effective write speed: 10*10725/18 = 5.8 MB/s

15 RAW in 10 sec. with buffer is cleared in another 4 sec.
After the initial burst of RAW files, which was 6 with this card, it would continually shoot at a rate of 74 RAW files per minute until the card is full.
Effective write speed: 15*10725/14 = 11.2 MB/s

10 RAW in 10 sec. with buffer empty another 6 sec.
After the initial burst of RAW files, which was 5 with this card, it would continually shoot at a rate of 36 RAW files per minute until the card is full.
Effective write speed: 10*10725/16 = 6.5 MB/s