Disappointed with R4i Gold Plus from R4ids.cn

Maybe try a different cluster size on an SD card, I don't have one of that flashcard so I don't know if this is relevant, but with nds-bootstrap some games (Gen 5 Pokémon being especially notable) are much slower with any cluster size smaller than 32 KB so maybe if they're formatted smaller it might help. dsi.cfw.guide has a page on how to format with 32 KB clusters: https://dsi.cfw.guide/sd-card-setup

(You can check the cluster size by making a 1 byte or so file and checking the "size on disk" in the file properties)

Dunno if this'll help but might be worth a try.

 

Interesting. I've tested both of them side by and not seen a difference in games including pokemon, Castlevanias (known to stutter and crash esp with a slow SD card). Perhaps you have a bad specimen? Though I can't imagine what sort of defect would cause the issues you describe. In any event, welcome to the world of flashcart collecting. It's way cheaper than collecting actual games.

 

What is the lag supposed to look like (stuttering, long pause, etc.)? I just checked this on pokemon white (don't have a black save). With two systems side by side one running on an r4i gold plus the other on an Ace3DS+ (well one of those 208 in 1 carts). I don't think I can tell a difference. TheAce3DS+ screen was black during the transition for a frame or two less than the r4i gold but my test setup wasn't very controlled and I was looking for a difference so I'm not certain I wasn't just imagining it.

 

I had the same problem with Pokemon Gen 4 (never played 5) until I got a faster microSD. This might not be the only bottleneck but it certainly helped in my case. It's certainly possible that some flash carts or OSes aren't as efficient reading the same SD cards as others, and in those cases using a faster SD might actually help even if the same card runs fine on other flash carts. In other words, use a faster SD to overcome a slow flash cart's deficiencies.

Also, be aware that class 10 refers more to write speeds than read speeds. You'll find vastly different read speeds among the different class 10 cards. You can test actual read/write speeds with h2testw. I like to keep a text file with a copy of the results on all of my microSDs for reference.

And here's another way to check cluster size. Open a command prompt and type:

diskpart
list disk
select disk x
list partition
select partition x
filesystems

Check "Allocation Unit Size"

EDIT: Misread something.

 

I've tried to replicate the lag across a variety of flashcarts (Supercard DS/DSTWO+, EZ-FLASH V/Vi, Acekard 2, R4&TT clones, some slot 2 devices, the whole schmear) and really can't see anything. It's possible you are just way more perceptive than I am but I cannot see any lag or audio distortion following the screen transition. I don't have a real copy of the game to compare with but relative to each other the only thing I might be seeing is that longer black screen in the transition on the R4i Gold (measured it with a camera, it's 2-3 frames). On the older carts I used some Kingston 2GB SD cards that I know work well and on the newer ones a variety of SanDisk ultras from 32-128 GB bought at different times. I didn't try switching SD cards between carts so that remains an uncontrolled variable.

I'm kind of annoyed that I can't reproduce this tbh. I'm going to try putting a garbage sd card in and see if that does the trick.

 

Try following this post

I’ve never had those issues before and this is the method I’ve used to format my microSD card.

 

You might want to re-upload your images, they aren't loading on my end

 

That's the same card as mine and I've played through all of Black on this cart without any issues
Have you tried formatting your microSD card with the tool listed above?
Side note, if you use the "upload a file" button at the bottom of your post, you can upload the picture and add it to your post that way.