does anyone know if the write and read speed on a SD card

mikesinclair · December 14, 2005, 08:27:46 PM

does anyone know if the read and write speed on a SD card affects the SC's performance when playing gba or ds games? Would it slow down if the card has a slow read and write speed?

johnny9562001 · December 14, 2005, 08:49:42 PM

Quote from: "mikesinclair"does anyone know if the read and write speed on a SD card affects the SC's performance when playing gba or ds games? Would it slow down if the card has a slow read and write speed?

yes and no. on gba roms it doesnt matter because they load into the supercard, but on nds roms it does.

i had a pny 512MB standard, some nds would hang on levels or freeze.

now, when i bought a patriot 512MB 60X, game dindt freeze or hang and it seem games play flawlessly, so it does matter.right now i own a patriot 1GB 40X which is doing beatiful, i recommend you to go for a sd/cf that has hi speed, it doesnt matter how fast(40x-150x) but just dont get a standard.

Koji · December 14, 2005, 09:07:41 PM

Fast speed really doesn't mean too much because of the limited read speed of the super card itself... It's access speed that matters. Not all cards with a fast read speed have a fast access speed. That's something to keep in mind.

mikesinclair · December 14, 2005, 09:34:35 PM

thank u

xamphear · December 14, 2005, 10:07:24 PM

Quote from: "Koji"Fast speed really doesn't mean too much because of the limited read speed of the super card itself... It's access speed that matters. Not all cards with a fast read speed have a fast access speed. That's something to keep in mind.

I'm not sure what you mean. There are no "access times" with ROM/RAM based memories (to speak of, I know full well that I just over simplified). There's no head to seek or laser to move. You just access a location.

And fast SD card speeds most certainly do matter. With a card below 10mbps read rate, you'll get massive slowdowns in lots of roms. At 10 and above, there are hardly any. Even Animal Crossing is totally playable from a 10mbps (60x) SD card without loading it to the SC first. On a 20mbps (133x) SD card, it'll probably be as fluid as loading it to the SC.

mikesinclair · December 14, 2005, 10:17:37 PM

Quote from: "xamphear"
Quote from: "Koji"Fast speed really doesn't mean too much because of the limited read speed of the super card itself... It's access speed that matters. Not all cards with a fast read speed have a fast access speed. That's something to keep in mind.
I'm not sure what you mean. There are no "access times" with ROM/RAM based memories (to speak of, I know full well that I just over simplified). There's no head to seek or laser to move. You just access a location.

And fast SD card speeds most certainly do matter. With a card below 10mbps read rate, you'll get massive slowdowns in lots of roms. At 10 and above, there are hardly any. Even Animal Crossing is totally playable from a 10mbps (60x) SD card without loading it to the SC first. On a 20mbps (133x) SD card, it'll probably be as fluid as loading it to the SC.

thank u

Koji · December 14, 2005, 10:52:37 PM

Quote from: "xamphear"
Quote from: "Koji"Fast speed really doesn't mean too much because of the limited read speed of the super card itself... It's access speed that matters. Not all cards with a fast read speed have a fast access speed. That's something to keep in mind.
I'm not sure what you mean. There are no "access times" with ROM/RAM based memories (to speak of, I know full well that I just over simplified). There's no head to seek or laser to move. You just access a location.

And fast SD card speeds most certainly do matter. With a card below 10mbps read rate, you'll get massive slowdowns in lots of roms. At 10 and above, there are hardly any. Even Animal Crossing is totally playable from a 10mbps (60x) SD card without loading it to the SC first. On a 20mbps (133x) SD card, it'll probably be as fluid as loading it to the SC.

Have you actually watched games load off of the super card? The supercard is limited... it can NOT read beyond a certain part. Just watching a GBA game loading it's about 600-800K. Going by your scales that 60x is 10mbps, that works out to be 20K per times. So the maximum speed of the supercard is limits to about 30-40x. No card beyond this speed will make any difference... the supercard can NOT handle speeds beyond that.

In DS mode this is even SLOWER. Let's take Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan as the example. It loads the entire song level into memory. The DS has 4 megs of ram so we'll assume the levels take up the entirety of the ram.. Timing the loading of a level, it averages about 10-15 seconds at the point that the person stops yelling "ouendan". 4048k / 15 = 268K per second. This works out to be around 13x (again, using your 60x = 10mbps).

So don't give me this "133x will make games play perfect" nonsense. The supercard is limited in it's performance. That is all there is to it. If you want to waste your time and money getting a 133x card that won't help performance at all compared to a 50-60x card... that's your business.

(edit) basically... what I'm saying is you shouldn't just "theorize" by playing the numbers game. If you are going to theorize with numbers, you should play with ALL the numbers in your hand... not just a few.

This whole this is equivalent to a 48 times CD-R in a 16x CD burner drive. Yes, the CD-r CAN be burned at 48 times... but if the CD burner only supports 16x, that's the fastest that drive will be able to burn that disk. period.

xamphear · December 14, 2005, 11:06:58 PM

Okay, Mr. Math. I have some serious problems with your examples and assumptions, but I've said my peace and so have you. Perhaps someone more in tune with the SC specs could weigh in, but at this point everything you and I are saying is conjecture and anecdotal.

However, the one thing I think we both agree on here is that a 60x card is more worthwhile than a standard cheapo SD card that's only going to give you 2mbps. That should stand out as our recommendation to the original poster.

cory1492 · December 15, 2005, 06:56:44 AM

SC SD is limited by the fact that its using SPI mode wrather than SD mode (from what I understand enhanced speed is related to SD mode), so the upper transfer limit is essentially that of the SPI interface. From what I gather, the upper limit of the SPI method used is around 2mbit/s - or essentially 1/10 to 1/12th of the actual read/write spead of a standard card (its limited a tad more by the hardware driver as well)

A better quality card is more important than a hi-speed one, and that said, a better brand in hi-speed has better/faster memory in it, which means access times will be cut down.

BTW, there are access times, not heads moving, but it takes some nanoseconds to poll the SPI interface and retrieve the data off the SD card and get the data retrieved response from the SPI interface- which is likely the bottleneck in the supercards method of SD access.

bz5 · December 15, 2005, 08:17:13 PM

I bought a Sandisk Extreme III SD card which is 133X (the speed is truly notable in my camera) but in the SC it's about the same as any other SD card, playing Animal Crossing WW from SD has slowdowns but is playable. So yeah, 133x cards are irrelevant. A 60X one would do just the same imo.