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[Drazgoth]

I'm planning on ordering a supercard CF and a M3/G6 Passkey 2 (just looks cool to me ) but I'm wondering, on a lot of sites I hear talk about slowdown and it's making me wonder, is the slow down really that bad?  Does it happen on all games?  Or is it really that much of a problem?  thanks!

Draz

[Carnivean]

Quite a few on the GBA games and seems to vary based on media for NDS games. Look for a compatibility list for finding which games are unplayable etc.

[bitblt]

Supercard works great with DS games.  Not so good with some GBA games.

http://www.dualscene.net/lists/index.php?listname=Supercard

[Drazgoth]

great good to hear

why so with the GBA games though?  any recomendations for GBA game carts?

[m2pt5]

why so with the GBA games though?  any recomendations for GBA game carts?

DS games are designed to load the game binaries (the actual program) into the DS's memory, and then stream the assets (graphics, etc.) from the DS card as needed. This is why some games have load times, and why the Supercard works so well for DS games.

Conversely, GBA games are expected to be readable at full speed all the time. The Supercard tries to simulate this with its RAM, but some games don't agree with this method. Adding various patches (saver, state save, restart) only makes it worse.

[Haoie]

In general, GBA titles which have a lot of on screen sprites, transparencies[and other fancy looks], some kinds of music are prone to slowdown of varying degrees.

Sometimes it's annoying but not much else [Metroid Prime], other times it practically makes the game unplayable [Sigma Star Saga].

[Koji]

There are lots of ways to get around slowdown too and many games can be made playable with a little bit of work.

Supercard CF is especially good for DS games. Some games have skipping in their opening videos on supercard SD, but not on CF. Honestly though, the vast vast vast majority of games play perfectly on both.

[bitblt]

(good answer m2pt5)

[Koji]

(good answer m2pt5)

I'll expand on it a bit more. There is a big difference in NAND versus NOR memory which the DS and GBA use respectively for flashcarts.

NAND memory is a block based system. This means you can't just grab data from just anywhere. You have to read the entire block.

NOR is a type of memory where you can access anything at anytime by just reading it directly.

This is why supercard and M3 have built in RAM. Besides the fact that it's faster, it's impossible for the GBA to read straight from NAND. The GBA HAS to be able to read any byte it wants when it wants. In that sense, it uses the entire ROM as if it were RAM (which is why RAM works as a fairly good replacement)


Simpler explaination: DS carts are nearly identical to SD/CF cards in operation except that SD/CF cards are rewritable.

GBA carts (as I explained earlier) are closer to RAM in workings.

For anyone interested in learning a bit more in depth, I suggest checking http://wiki.pocketheaven.com/NAND_and_NOR

[filozof]

But then how come M3 is compatible with almost all GBA games ?

[bitblt]

Simpler explaination: DS carts are nearly identical to SD/CF cards in operation except that SD/CF cards are rewritable

Wow, that is news to me.  I thought SD worked with a serial interface in slow mode, and a 4 bit parallel interface in fast mode.  "Conversely", I thought a DS rom was mapped directly into DS address space.  Now taking the time to count the number of contacts on a DS game rom, I was obviously making assumptions. (it happens) Well then, I think you guys should interject regarding a discussion I had with Mavis in this thread . . .
http://www.scdev.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2971&highlight=

[Koji]

Okay okay... that's not exactly right :p I over simplified there.

[Drazgoth]

cool, you guys are kick ass for explaining things

Do the patches/updates for the supercard ever really improve GBA performance?

[Haoie]

The focus of those is really to get unworking games running, not really to speed up existing working titles.