Hacking EZF4lite microSD slowdown

[wohoo]

Yup I have one. What do you want me to test?



Whats weird is from published stats a lot of manuf. "regular" cards appear to be on-par with SanDisks Ultra microSD. I noticed Transcend, Kingston, and another brand are within 1MB SanDisk Ultra line. I couldn't find a speed rating for the regular SanDisk microSD card.


Just from quick testing, here's two things you could test if you feel like it:

-As the OP stated, Metroid Prime Hunters "hitches" a little when you open a door to a new area
-Madden NFL 06 seems to hiccup right after a play is selected and the camera switches to the teams lining up presnap.

on My M3 CF i get the those hicupps when entering a new area, and the game slows down a lot sometimes when there's many enemys in the same room... and the castlevania intro is lagging like hell, BUT when i played with firmware like 12-14 i didn't have a single framedrop... i think i'm going to test to downgrade to the old firmwares and try again ;P

edit: maybe i shuld add that according to the wiki tests i shuldn't have framerate drops or anything. I got a Sandisk Extreme III with speeds at over 20 mb/s in both directions

second edit: i'm trying to burn the castlevaina in other ways now, and the first of the other ways didn't lag way to much, just on some places ;P you can try to get the game in on different ways (if it's possible?) and see if you get better preformence

 

[Lily]

If your microSD (or miniSD or SD) card has no speed rating, it can be anywhere from 1x to 16x speed.

Buying an unrated microSD card means you have to live with the consequences. I have an 80x card that I expect won't give me any problems.

When dealing with NDS kits with removable media, always get the fastest speed rating that you can. Buying crappy Sandisk unrated media because it's cheap will give you poor results.

 

[darkandlong]

If your microSD (or miniSD or SD) card has no speed rating, it can be anywhere from 1x to 16x speed.

Buying an unrated microSD card means you have to live with the consequences. I have an 80x card that I expect won't give me any problems.

When dealing with NDS kits with removable media, always get the fastest speed rating that you can. Buying crappy Sandisk unrated media because it's cheap will give you poor results.

Qrayzie, what micro SD card are you using, and where did you get it?

 

[Lily]

All the memory cards I have (SD, miniSD, CompactFlash, microSD..) are all branded by a company called "ATP". Their cards are excellent, and I've had zero trouble with them in every NDS kit I own. All my cards are 150x except for the microSD, which is 80x because I couldn't find a faster one.

 

[Elrinth]

IxthusTiger tell me ur solution once u've found out how to nerf the slowdowns to null....

 

[darkandlong]

All the memory cards I have (SD, miniSD, CompactFlash, microSD..) are all branded by a company called "ATP". Their cards are excellent, and I've had zero trouble with them in every NDS kit I own. All my cards are 150x except for the microSD, which is 80x because I couldn't find a faster one.

Where did you pick up the ATP card? And if you don't mind me asking, how much? Most of the 1GBs I can find in Canada are the standard SanDisk, and TigerDirect has the Ultra II... If you could point me to a vendor either local or online I'd appreciate it, since we're pretty close to each other (geographically speaking, of course)

 

[Jefklak]

Can somebody also test ScummVM DS?
Since it uses a lot of sound, speech, movies, etc - monkey island 3 - it does matter, and not yust a little bit. Oravzie, how much did you pay for them? Is there a noticable difference between 150 and 80?

 

[Darkspark]

I dont care if I get minor slow downs, I dont have as much money to be chosey.

Plus, those ATP cards, cost double a normal sandisk MicroSD at the same size. And to put that into perspective, cost 5 times as much as a normal SD card here in the uk. And this is not taking into account shipping.

If I wanted a better speed I would buy the cheaper 1GB ULTRA II microSD, which is rated at about 10mb read/write, which is about 80x too.

Can anybody verify that the formatting type helps, or hinders, the speed of the card?

 

[darkandlong]

I dont care if I get minor slow downs, I dont have as much money to be chosey.

Plus, those ATP cards, cost double a normal sandisk MicroSD at the same size. And to put that into perspective, cost 5 times as much as a normal SD card here in the uk. And this is not taking into account shipping.

If I wanted a better speed I would buy the cheaper 1GB ULTRA II microSD, which is rated at about 10mb read/write, which is about 80x too.

Can anybody verify that the formatting type helps, or hinders, the speed of the card?

I'll try larger cluster sizes when I get home in a few hours and try another game of Madden.

 

[Lily]

I don't find that the cluster size changes anything in terms of speed myself. The only thing that helps really is fragmentation - if your card is really fragmented, defragment it or format and start over for better results.

For ATP cards, I buy all of mine from a store called Canada Computers. I can walk there from where I work, it's quite cheap and convenient. Note that my microSD card is only 256MB (2Gbit) because I commonly only load one game at a time.

 

[crezendo]

Yeah, I live right by Canada Computers and hard-pressed as to which
card brand or type , I should pick up.

is kingsmax anygood?

 

[ranmaru]

How fast is 80x in mb/s-terms?

I just ordered a SanDisk micro sd Ultra2 1gb ..according to the site it is 9mb/s write-speed and 10mb/s read-speed

 

[Lily]

Kingmax is a pretty budget brand; I'm sure it will work, but it isn't the highest quality.

80x = 12.0MB/s

To find out the speed rating of flash media in MB, simply multiply the speed (i.e. 80x) by .150 (i.e. 150KB/s, which = 1x).

 

[darkandlong]

Just to update: Tried 64k clusters and Madden still hiccups.

 

[ultim]

Just to update:Â Tried 64k clusters and Madden still hiccups.

Now to find out if a faster microSD makes any difference.

 

[darkandlong]

Just to update:Â Tried 64k clusters and Madden still hiccups.



Now to find out if a faster microSD makes any difference.

I've ordered an Ultra II. Hopefully get it by next week. I'll try to remember to update.

 

[master456]

I'll try my Ultra II tonight with DS Castlevania. I'm thinking of trying a read test with HDTach.

 

[ultim]

master456! speak to us!

 

[Vulpix]

How do I format a card my card in 16k clusters?

 

[ultim]

in ms-promt type...

Format x: /FS:FAT /A:16K

where x is your card.