[VikingPhotography]

The D3 buffer handles as follows - all figures are for full 12MP mode

9 frames per second at the following settings

14-bit NEF (RAW) - 17 shots (buffer fills in 1.9 seconds)
12-bit NEF (RAW) - 20 shots (buffer fills in 2.2 seconds)
8-bit JPG - 64 shots (buffer fills in 7.1 seconds)

Now, theoretically the buffer capacity for DX crop mode will be about 2.25x the capacity as standard (since the DX format is 1/2.25 the size)

That would mean 11FPS @ 5.1MP for the following (approx) number of shots:

38 shots in NEF at 14-bit (buffer fills in 3.45 seconds)
45 shots in NEF at 12-bit (buffer fills in 4.09 seconds)
144 shots in JPG (buffer fills in 13.09 seconds)

There's no hard data at present for DX mode shooting buffer, but the above figures make the assumption that the physical buffer and Expeed processor performance scales to the amount of data (MP count) that it has to process.

Once the buffer is full, it is dependent on the CF card speed as to what the framerate will be. The best performance will be with UDMA capable cards. The D3 is capable of shifting a massive 181MB/sec (approx), and a UDMA CF card shifts at 45MB/sec internally (maximum) - so the framerate after buffer filling would be up to 2.5 FPS (assuming 12-bit RAW)

Nikon's last sports camera, the 4.1MP D2Hs, handled up to 50 JPG's at 8FPS - (buffer filling in 6.25 seconds!) so from raw stats the D3 is a better bet for sports photographers.

The only downside for sports 'togs is that they lose the extra "reach" of the DX format, but they gain the extra DOF isolation that the FX format gives them. Also, combine the new ISO performance of with the new 400, 500 and 600 VR lenses and - as one proflific Canon sports shooter put it to me - "the war is over... we're gonna see many more black lenses on the field amongst the white"

As I said in another post: the only way Canon can salvage the situation is to fix the clearly defective AF on the 1D Mk III before Nikon starts shipping the D3.