Hacking Acekard 2.1 and current ver. AKAIO.

[plasturion]

Hi there!
I wonder what much of impact has version of AKAIO and what version is fastest one.
I wanted to test performarce my Acekard 2.1, microSD (Kingstone 2GB, formated FAT16, 11-13MB/s read) and AKAIO version to check is there posiblity that earlier version of AKAIO are faster, more accurate, or perhaps my microSD is gonna slowing down since it was bought. Therefore I would like to compare with the two good games - Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar, Harvest Moon: The Tales of Two Towns.

I remember that earlier AKAIO v. 1.7 - 1.8 when HM: GB is working good - frameskip was occasionally, but from few lastest AKAIO releases (when softreset was fixed), I think something appeared wrong: slows down, more frameskip while scrolling, black horizontal line appear on top part of the screen. I formatet microSD card with SD formater and zeroed all, that wasn't much improvement, I put Acekard official firmware and it slows down much more while scrolling, more frameskip. HM TToTT runs little faster, but it lt slows down for example while horse riding. And there's some slow/frameskip on movie intro. How about your Acekard?

Could annyone confirm that this game should work fine with full speed, without any lag on mentioned above hardware? Is there AKAIO old versions archive to download? I would like to check the previous one.

 

[Rydian]

Why not rune some MicroSD testing homebrew instead? A much more scientific test, and as it's older homebrew (has a GBA version, even) it should work fine on older AKAIO versions.
http://filetrip.net/nds-downloads/utilities/download-speed-tester-for-libfat-w-dldi-support-f1238.html

That said, it sounds like your MicroSD is damaged/failing.

 

[plasturion]

Here's my microSD results of Speedtest for libfat.

Sequential:
(512 B) - max: 1369us, avg: 700us
(4 KiB) - max: 3439us, avg: 3366us
(16 KiB) -max: 11603us, avg: 11209us

Random:
(512 B) - max: 1424us, avg: 1400us
(4 KiB) - max: 3506us, avg: 3414us
(16 KiB) - max: 11562us, avg: 11239us

HDTune tells 11MB/s.
I went back to akaio 1.8.6, 1.7.1 - no change, still slows down, Speedtest results the same.
My microSD seem not good, although lot of games are full playable and didn't noticed any slow down.
What results i should expected? looks i need

 

[Rydian]

Sequential:
(512 B) - max: 429us, avg: 227us
(4 KiB) - max: 1790us, avg: 1782us
(16 KiB) -max: 7126us, avg: 7117us

Random:
(512 B) - max: 472us, avg: 445us
(4 KiB) - max: 1847us, avg: 1826us
(16 KiB) - max: 7180us, avg: 7161us

That's with my 8GB Class-6 Transcend card on the DSTwo, for a little reference.

Lots of games aren't very demanding, not all games stream data, etc. There's some problem games (like Portrait Of Ruin) and problem situations (like AAP) however, that need a decent MicroSD.

 

[Another World]

game ending issues with POR were bugs in the code. as far as i know norm was the first to fix them correctly and completely. it should run the same on every msd now, in regards to things like random freezing and intro speed (not including any AP issues). others claimed they fixed the issue (SCDS2, Cyclops, etc) yet i still encounter random freezing using there kernels.

-another world

 

[plasturion]

For now I'm still owner 2GB Kingstone class2, and believe or not this card really was pretty fast when it was bought. (about 2 years ago) And almost is.
I'm able to buy 4GB Transcend Class 6 in my store, but I just looked up for some test this card like here - http://www.chip.pl/t...hc-16gb-class-6 (hope you can understand something) and access time they claim are much slower - 346ms. (no they probably missed floated point)

 

[smf]

http://www.chip.pl/t...hc-16gb-class-6 (hope you can understand something) and access time they claim are much slower - 346ms. (no they probably missed floated point)

The class number is a little misleading and newer cards with a higher class can actually be slower in some circumstances.
It's a bit of a crap shoot.

 

[Rydian]

The numbers from the test are latency numbers, while the class number is for sustained write speed.

 

[Another World]

The class number is a little misleading and newer cards with a higher class can actually be slower in some circumstances.
It's a bit of a crap shoot.

you should buy based by manufacturer name and reviews. you can't simply buy based on the class speed number. as rydian said, it only has to do with the write speed.

-another world

 

[plasturion]

Ok, fine class number isn't mayor impact. It's all about what kind of factor is necessery to say that this card is the best for Acekard.
If it's read access time, I didn't found anything better than Transcend and A-data.
Results of Transcend microSD 16GB class10 : here
Results of A-Data microSD 16GB class10: here

Transcend has avg 0.53 - 0.56 (but max only 1.73)
A-Data has avg 0.34 - 0.43 (max 5.77)

Kingston has about 1.0-1.4, Sandisk even slower.

For both cards write access time is slower than in others brands, but using in Acekard are not common. So it's ok.
Few question:
If card has lower capacity, than is it better? 4GB should be faster for random read than 16GB?
Could be some problems with class10 cards in Acekard?
What are other important parameters of microSD (What value of read transfer speed should be enough 10MB/s or higher?)

 

[Rydian]

Class does matter somewhat, as higher-class cards are generally made better which means better latency and read speeds, but there's not an exact relation.

In general get a class-4 or class-6 card from a good brand like Transcend and A-data and you'll be fine.

Capacity's not directly linked anymore. People usually don;'t go for class-10 since class-4 and class-6 do just fine (from good manufacturers) and there's no benefit to class-10 over them.