Search

[kbizzle]

Note:  I'd like to point out that this is just an account of my experiences, but as a prospective buyer, I definitely would have found more detailed posts like this to be helpful factors in some of my purchasing decisions.  Hopefully, some of this helps create some sort of perspective.

Alright, so I finally got a chance to fuck around with my new SD card (A-Data 512MB MyFlash Turbo SD 150x) on a few of the games I deemed to be "issue games" via my old SD card, a Kingston 1GB Elite Pro SD 50x.  I'll start off by saying that performance is noticeably improved over my Kingston 50x card, but still not "perfect" (this is assuming that the games are running perfectly when loaded from the SuperCard position, since it would be rather difficult and expensive to test retail copies of everything).  As you could probably guess from my posting history, the first game I tried was Tony Hawk's American Sk8land -- it's actually a little silly that I've been using this game so relentlessly, given that I could just play American Wasteland perfectly on the Xbox, but it seems to do a pretty thorough job benchmarking the performance of a "homebrew" kit (512Mbit, easily detectable slowdowns, weighty music files).

Via the 150x A-Data card and run from the SD position, the game runs *almost* perfectly, but not quite as smoothly as from the SuperCard position (re-iterating that only 32MB of the game are actually playable from this position).  Performance is very playable, though, which is definitely a good thing -- easily pounds the hell out of the shitstorm mess I get from my Kingston 50x.  The only time major chunks of slowdown show up are when the song is changing (it speeds back up after the new song fades all the way in), which to me, definitely points to a limitation of the SuperCard SD setup.  I'll have to fuck around with it some more after completely disabling the music and see if things run flawlessly... compressed DS music isn't exactly an audiogasm anyway.  It just kinda worries me, because other games are going to come out that are technically similar to Tony Hawk, and slowdown issues on something I want to play would suck.

As for Animal Crossing, I had been playing it exclusively from the SuperCard position on my Kingston 50x because of the slowdowns, but I decided to try it from the SD position with the A-Data 150x.  While I can definitely pick out little spots of slowdown here and there (granted, these are pretty nitpicky and possibly confined to the title screen), the entire game runs very very smoothly, and almost perfect to the real game.  My girlfriend's got a legit Animal Crossing cart, and if you hold our DS's side-by-side, you wouldn't be able to tell which one's running the ROM (if not for the blue plastic sticking out the bottom of my GBA slot, obviously).  I'm going to keep playing AC in the SD card position for a week or two, and then switch back to the slow-loading SuperCard position for a couple days and see if I notice any significant differences.  At this point, though, I'm really pleased with the performance on this game.

As kind of a side bonus, Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! feels smoother to me as well, and I didn't even mentally flag it as an "issue" game originally.  But compared to the performance off my Kingston 50x card, I definitely notice an improvement in the smoothness of the circles closing around the numbered points.  I haven't tried Metroid Prime Pinball off the new card yet, but I'm expecting positive results.

The conclusion I'm getting from all of this is that when you buy a SuperCard, you should sure-as-fuck be shooting for the fastest SD card you can get (taking price into consideration, obviously) as it most assuredly affects performance if you're planning to run games from the SD card position -- and trust me, you are.  The part that kinda saddens me about even the tiniest of performance issues (read: THAS slowdowns upon trackchanges) on a blazing-fast SD card is that it points to an eventual solution of a motherfucking expensive G6 Flash 3rd Generation (or another U-Disk alternative, should one be produced at a more reasonable price) in order to achieve unquestionably perfect ROM playback and fast load-times.  At that price-tag, you're definitely losing out to the SuperCard in terms of price-to-performance, but knowing that shit's running exactly the same as it would on a retail cart might be worth it in the long-run.  I'll definitely be sticking with my SuperCard SD for a couple more months, at least -- the performance is so close to perfect that it's plenty good enough to tide me over until a more economically viable U-Disk solution comes along.

[creepyplaidman]

There's a limit of how fast of a SD card you need though, from what  recall the real DS cards only read at 60x, so no game is even optimized to use 150x.

[MAD2X]

I looked on my sd card manufacturer's website and it says my card is only 45X. While I was experiencing some slowdowns with Tony Hawk, after putting that rom first on my SD card, it now runs perfectly smooth, never seen a slowdown yet even when the songs changes. I never had an issue with any other game, for exemple, Animal crossing, Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!, Metroid pinball all works flawlessly regarless where they are on my card. I never tried a rom on the supercard position either. I just run them all from SD. And I can have my card almost full without slowdowns, about 60mb free.

I think this might be more of a SD card manufacturing/brand problem. I think some cards arent as fast as what they claim them to be. Maybe they say a card can do 22.5 mbp/s, but that would be the maximum speed and could only be achieved once in a while, while it might only average about 15 mbp/s. Think about it some ppl on here claim to have no problem with there normal sandisk card that are not even rated for any speed. I dont even know if there is an industry standard for speeds, companies might be able to put whatever number they want on their card regardless of the speed. Sometimes they will tell you the X factor, sometimes they only tell you the mbp/s.

I might be wrong but it's just my 0.02$.

[bitblt]

nice funkin report . . .

I'll say it again . . . SuperCard may not use more than 60X, but the 150X speed comes in handy for copying files from PC to SD.  I also use my 2GB SD for other things besides SuperCard (dig cam, Mp3, vid cam, etc.).  I expect devices in the future (SuperCard II ?) will benifit from the extra speed also.

I recommend spending the extra $10 for the extra speed.  :wink:

[creepyplaidman]

Actually people say that the supercard only uses 30x of the speed, but an offical dscart is a 60x media. I don't know about the 30x part, but the 60x part sounds right.

[maka]

hi folks, I saw a thread looking for sugestions on good SD cards.  Mine has been really good , cant see the slowdown in Tony Hawks that gets banded about.

Its an integral, I bought my kit from a console website here in uk , i expect they tested a bunch and found them to be best.

Mine is just like this (below) but 1gb . Am sure is not a fast speed one.  I bought for 50quid but since sorted nephews from a a diff website for 40quid.

http://www.mphone.co.uk/acatalog/sd_memory_512.html

I see slowdown in Veiwtiful Joe , but that was patching with 2.42. Havent repatched since cos it bored me after about 40 chapters.

I dont think my Tony Hawks slows down , but as with viewtiful i dont have retail to compare to.

www.consoleplus.co.uk are the website in UK who reccomend the integral in case anyone interested...they definately know their stuff , been selling this kinda gear for a good few years.

hope that helps somebody if in doubt about which memory to go for.