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[gamekill]

Hi!

I am a very proud owner of a Supercard SD, and I use a Sandisk Ultra II 1gb card in it.

I am very pleased with the performance of the Supercard, but recently I am beginning to get worried about some slowdown issues during NDS gameplay:

In Metroid Prime Pinball, I do have some occasional slowdown even though I read the game from SC position;

In Nanostray I notice slowdown when there are a lot of stuff on-screen, but I set the rom position to SD (haven't testes SC yet);

In Tony Hawk there is noticeably slowdown during music transition (I am using SD position as the game doesn't fit into SC).

Then I read someplace that the G6 flashcart, even though expensive, manages to play ALL games perfectly and no slowdown whatsoever. Is that true?

PLEASE NO FLAMING REPLIES, this is not a "pro-G6" or "I love my SC" post, I just need to know the honest truth! I DO love my SC, but if the G6 gets me PERFECT play and no slowdown, I might as well buy one too and use it for the "not-100%-SC-compatible" games...

Please reply if you have any experience with the G6!

Thanks!!!!!

   :lol:  :wink:  :lol:

[MAD2X]

First of all, make sure your SD card is not fragmented or too full. I play all the games you mentioned with my 45x SD card without any slowdowns. Only one that was slow at times was Tony Hawk and as I mentioned before putting it first on my SD card fixed the problem. I dont know about the G6 but before  spending more money make sure you tried everything with your supercard. Also, do you use the latest firmware/software for your SC?

[Tizio]

i've read that the g6 gives a perfect exprience, without slowdowns.

Good:
- it fit's perfectly in the gba slot (not 1mm hangs out the ds)
- 100% compatibility
- 100% games run perfectly

Bad:
- fu$%&ing expensive
- small size of the internal memory (they sell it by gigabit non gigabyte!)
- some save issues (the internal battery sometimes needs to be changed.. don't do on your own.. you'll void your warranty)

[gamekill]

Hey guys, thanks for the replies!

Mad2x: My SD card IS full. Completely full, I squeezed every game I could in it! You may have a point about putting Tony Hawk "first". But HOW can I determine the order of the games on the card?? Do I have to move all of them to the PC and then copy them back one by onbe? is that it? They should stay in linear order inside the card? Gonna try this right now...

Tizio: First of all thank you VERY much for the reply, don't get me wrong. I've also read about perfect and 100% compatible G6 performance. But reading is not experiencing, and I am afraid it might just be hype and not complete truth. The best thing would be for a real G6 card owner to tell us sincerely if the G6 is THAT good in real life playing. Let us both just hope someone gives us a real experience answer...

Thank you guys again!

If someone has any other helping replies PLEASE post them!

:lol:        :lol:

[Koji]

You have your SD card completely full? That could also be what's causing a lot of your slow down. I got tons of slowdowns and crashes unless I have 10-15% of the card empty.

Currently the Supercard has 100% compatibility too, you'd probably be better off getting a supercard CF and a fairly large CF card (it'd be cheaper, depending on where you get both) The CF version doesn't have the slow downs that the SD version has (unless a new game has appeared that does... but last I heard the CF version can even watch the video in Dawn of Sorrow at full speed)

[kbizzle]

I'm actually in something of the same boat that you are (more details available in my giant topic complaining about the SuperCard), and to be honest, the G6 looks more and more appealing every day.  I've tried my SuperCard SD with a total of four different SD cards (a slow-speed SanDisk Standard 128MB card, a slow-speed Lexar 128MB card, a Kingston 50x 1GB, and an A-Data 150x 512MB) and while the speed's gotten better each and everytime running from the SD position, the performance simpy isn't perfect on the games I'm interested in (Animal Crossing WW, Tony Hawk's American Sk8land, Metroid Prime Pinball).  My brother just ordered a 66x SD card and a SuperCard SD, so I'll probably pay him a visit in a week or so when it arrives to check out the performance.  Everything I've read here seems to suggest that any SD card speed in excess of 60x is pointless, so theoretically, his card should perform the same as my A-Data 150x (that is, close to perfect but with identifiable slowdown here and there).

As far as the people who have claimed that their SuperCards "run everything absolutely perfect no problems whatsoever I LOVE MY SUPERCARD!!", I'm starting to doubt either their perception or perhaps just overall thoroughness in testing more and more.  The closest means of truly knowing whether a game is functioning properly without actually buying a retail copy of that game is to try loading it from the SuperCard position (the slow-loading way that only works for games up to 256Mbit, but has them all run perfectly in my experience), playing a certain section of the game, then power-cycle the DS, load that same game from a ROM patched for the SD card position, play that exact same section, and carefully watch for performance differences.  I've actually had someone else start the ROMs up for me so I wouldn't know which was which when testing, simply because I don't want to have any unfair bias toward the SD card version.

The bottom line here is that on every SD card I've tried things on, there's been a difference (some more noticeably than others, obviously).  And while I really don't want to accuse people who have posted their results here of being wrong -- after all, I haven't tested the specific configurations that everyone's using -- I'm pretty convinced after trying four different SD cards that no SD card exists that will deliver perfect performance, or the SuperCard company would be selling a set with the SuperCard and an SD card that they've verified as perfect from testing in addition to the current strategy of "here, buy this crazy Chinese thing and roll the fucking dice  buying SD cards in hopes of positive results!".

When my brother's 66x card shows up, I'll be testing that one for perfect playback as well, but that will be the fifth card.  If by some ridiculous voodoo miracle, everything plays on his card with no performance issues whatsoever, I'll withdraw my criticisms of the SuperCard and simply advocate for a list of perfectly performing SD cards to be put together so that nobody else winds up making the same mistake that I did.  But if his card still has the same issues I've run into (including those on my A-Data 150x), then I'm ready to conclude that perfect playback simply won't be happening with the SuperCard, and it's (probably) time to get shopping for a G6 Flash.  Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find the G6 on eBay, which totally sucks.  My SuperCard was $51 after shipping through eBay, and my brother found his for a total of $48... the lowest I've seen a G6 4G setup for has been $200 on KickTrading, and that's a lot of cash to part with on a whim, even after selling all my SuperCard shit.  Has anyone seen it available anywhere else for less money?  Because that would be super.

The whole thing is a pretty giant headache.  It would sure be nice if there was a way to try out the SuperCard with about 30 different high-speed SD cards, but it looks like reading opinions and going with them is the best that can be done.

[MAD2X]

It's odd how a few ppl complain about slowdowns on certain DS games. First of all if you have to test between the SD and SC position to notice any tiny little fps drops your really waisting your time if you ask me. Most of the ppl on here claim they have perfect playback including me, without having to go test out everygame on SD and SC position. My wife plays AC a lot and she never experiences any slowdowns. I played Metroid pinball a lot and never got any slow downs either. Tony Hawk well like I said since its first on my SD it runs perfectly too.

If there is a little slow down here and there and you absolutly want it to be perfect just buy the real game! Even at that some retail games have slowdowns too! You really think that all the people on here that claim to have perfect playback are lying? Maybe there is something wrong with your supercard or ds, are you sure your using all the latest software/firmware? Do you use flashme? Is you card full and fragmented? Cause all of those things would not help...

[kbizzle]

While I certainly respect and understand your point of view, I think that you and I are on very different wavelengths.  I'm not jacking around with ROMs on a SuperCard to screw Nintendo out of money, I've been buying their games for years and as long as their products remain fresh and entertaining, will probably continue to do so for many more.  My interest in the thing is simply that I think it's really fucking cool to have a bunch of DS ROMs available to try out instead having to drop $35 on a friggin' videogame I'll probably put 2-3 hours into.  My girlfriend and I have legal copies of Mario Kart DS and Animal Crossing because they're really the only things we've been interested in playing to a point that we'd buy 'em.

But that's really neither here nor there -- the simple fact of the matter is that a lot of users, myself included, find it really frustrating not to achieve playback that's 100% perfect to the real edition of the game, and it's not even about the quality of gameplay taking a hit -- it's a just an OCD-esque desire for things to work "exactly as they should."  And if I can still boot a game from the SuperCard position and identify any sort of performance disparity from the SD card position, I'm going to search for answers either until that disparity is eliminated, or the conclusion that it cannot be done on this piece of hardware has been reached (hence the entire purpose of this thread; looking into a G6 Flash because the OP isn't satisfied with the current performance of his/her SuperCard SD).

And I most certainly apologize if I came off too crudely in my previous post -- it's not that I believe that people are lying about their performance, it's just that when I see "everything's perfect" with no further explanation, I tend to translate that to "the game performs adequately and is enjoyable enough" instead of "I tested it against a SuperCard position copy of the ROM and/or a retail copy of the game and found no performance discrepencies whatsoever, here's a link to my SD card on the manufacturer's website."  Again, while that's good enough for some people, it just really bothers me when a piece of hardware that I'm using introduces any sort of slowdown into a game that wouldn't otherwise be there.

All that aside, I do appreciate your troubleshooting suggestions about the SD card.  Unfortunately, they're all things that I've already tried and they haven't resolved the issues.  Tony Hawk's been the biggest troublemaker thus far (again, this is hilariously ironic as actually playing Tony Hawk on the DS doesn't really interest me that much, I just want my hardware setup to be able to handle it or a game running on a similar engine, should one come along), so it's still sitting in the first slot on my Kingston 50x card and my A-Data 150x, and that hasn't helped with anything (just to verify, I tried bumping it down to lower spots, but performance is exactly the same), so it sounds like a resolution that wound up being unique to your setup.  I'm using v6/v1.60/v2.51 as denoted in my sig,  I've formatted both SD cards and defragmented them both several times now, and the slowdowns have persisted on both cards (at varying degrees, as they're different speeds) even when the ROM in question is the only one loaded -- the issue is most certainly on the hardware end of things.  Do you have a manufacturer link to the specific SD card that you're using?

Again, I'm not trying to shit-talk the SuperCard; it's a very impressive product, and especially so at its price point.  I simply want to isolate what's keeping me from perfect playback, and given that I've tried four different SD cards now and am still experiencing it to some degree, I'm starting to think it's a limitation of the SuperCard itself.  I have heard that SuperCards were originally tested to work the best with SanDisk cards, but the SanDisk card that I tried (my girlfriend's camera card, SanDisk 128MB, cheapest available) was far and away the worst performing of the bunch -- even her cheapo Lexar 128MB card outperformed it.  Granted, the SanDisk 133x looks pretty damn solid, and I'd be really curious to here how that performs (read: if you own this card, please, please post and describe its performance!), but if you're going to drop $140 on the flash media alone, you'd might as well pony up and get yourself a G6 Flash.  And given that there's no official documentation on which SD cards perform the best with the SuperCard, it very much feels like a roulette game, and it's getting extraordinarily frustrating.  If there are cards that run every game absolutely flawlessly, then I would very much like know what they are so I can sell both of mine and get one to see for myself.  But as I said, once you hit 0/4 on SD cards, you start to get pretty wary.

[MAD2X]

Maybe if you could sell your supercard + SD and get a CF version it would help. PPL claim that CF doesnt have the slowdown issues that SD does. It would still be cheaper then a G6. But then again can you be sure CF will work flawlessly? Let us know how your brothers SD card works once you try it, but  like you said I doubt there would be something wrong with your card. My manufacturer's card website is: http://www.coremicro.ca/

[Cyprien Walker]

VVVVVV

[Cyprien Walker]

i have no problems running nds games slow they are all perfect inc. tony hawk. i had problems with slow down wile ago as well but i bought a new cf thinks is a better speed so i think that counts as well a fast card.

I own tony hawk my self so i know how its running in real time.
metroid pinball no slow down when iam loading it the fast way.

[pg65]

I don't think you will ever find any flash card that is a full 100%. For the money the Supercard is one of the best. I have both G6-Flash and SC SD.  I think that for now the G6 is better at alot of the games, but remember it was also 170.00 US not  54.95 US

[gamekill]

Hi everyone... I came back after some testing. The main factor in slowdowns seems to be fragmentation just like MAD2X suggested in the first reply. But I don't believe having some extra empty space on the SD helps at all. I copied all my files from my slowdown-packed SD to my PC, then copied them back so they would be saved on the card one by one, in order, and not fragmented. I REALLY noticed a vast improvement in Tony Hawk's. There is a wee bit of slowdown during music changes but it is SO MUCH better, barely noticeable! It may (I said MAY) even be something present in a retail cart. Overall Frames Per Second seems a bit better, gameplay a bit smoother. But THIS might be subject point of view. But I am pretty sure about the music transitions parts. Thanks MAD2X.

This should be stickyed at the front page: "Copy the files to the SD card one by one, make sure they are not fragmented and gameplay will be a lot smoother!"

:razz:  :wink:      :lol:

[sneef]

VVVVVV

what the heck is this? couldn't you have combined your posts or just left out the vvvvvv?

[creepyplaidman]

I don't understand why a rom would run faster if it's the first thing on the card, but defragmenting just makes sense. The other thing you have to realize is that some DS games have a little bit of slow down on the real thing. Spyro the Dragon for example.