Hacking Faster way to download games than freeshop?

[Gizametalman]

Since this thread has been already created... May I ask:
Is anyone else having troubles downloading stuff?

Today apparently, it Auto-Updated to version 2.1 and since then, when downloading something whenever it reaches certain ammoun of percentage it gives me a "Internet Error"
And it can take up to 8 "Retrying" and nothing happens.

 

[selbyftw]

Well I upgraded to a Sandisk extreme pro 95mbs. Still only get 700-800kbs in freeshop and installing the cia in fbi while slightly faster still isn't great. At least I can download it fast with funkey cia wrapper and it copies quickly to the card itself then it's a case of waiting 15 mins for it to install. The only other thing I can think of is the 3ds wifi must be slow.

 

[LongTimeLurker]

I can't tell if everyone here is just being ignorant because they haven't actually put both to the test, or if the n3ds somehow has MUCH better download speeds than o3ds.

It's usually the first option. There's a whole thread somewhere around here recommending UHS SD cards for the Wii U, citing various sources, etc. The issue? Wii U doesn't support UHS so you get class 10 speeds anyways.

Well I upgraded to a Sandisk extreme pro 95mbs. Still only get 700-800kbs in freeshop and installing the cia in fbi while slightly faster still isn't great. At least I can download it fast with funkey cia wrapper and it copies quickly to the card itself then it's a case of waiting 15 mins for it to install. The only other thing I can think of is the 3ds wifi must be slow.

The 3DS doesn't support UHS (source, which is what gives you the 95MB/s afaik, which would be 760mbps BTW), so you're still limited to class 10 speeds (I'd guess ~45MB/s read? The packages themselves just say "transfer speed"). Either way the o3ds Wi-Fi isn't good. I haven't tested it on a high-end connection but across the board people typically report 5.6mbps (700KB/s) as their average speed (which is what I also get), rarely going up to 6.4mbps (800KB/s). Class 4 has a minimum write speed of 4MB/s (32mbps), so I'd feel safe ruling out the sdcard as the bottleneck.

Thanks for trying though and posting your finding .

 

[Enryx25]

But isn't freeshop faster? It installs the game very fast.

 

[selbyftw]

But isn't freeshop faster? It installs the game very fast.

For some people maybe. For me the quickest method I could find was to download the cia, drag and drop it onto my sd card and install it via fba, In total that takes about 20-25 mins whereas downloading and installing through freeshop for me on a 1.7gb game takes about 45-50 mins

 

[Enryx25]

For some people maybe. For me the quickest method I could find was to download the cia, drag and drop it onto my sd card and install it via fba, In total that takes about 20-25 mins whereas downloading and installing through freeshop for me on a 1.7gb game takes about 45-50 mins

But FBI is slow as f***

 

[selbyftw]

But FBI is slow as f***

Yup but it still works out faster overall for me.

 

[Enryx25]

Yup but it still works out faster overall for me.

For me Freeshop is faster.

 

[LongTimeLurker]

For me Freeshop is faster.

If you read the entire thread, you'd know that FreeShop isn't faster in this scenario. The 3DS is hitting hardware limitations with what he's trying to do...

 

[Enryx25]

If you read the entire thread, you'd know that FreeShop isn't faster in this scenario. The 3DS is hitting hardware limitations with what he's trying to do...

In my scenario is faster.

 

[astronautlevel]

In my scenario is faster.

Not on an o3ds where there's a wifi speed limitation.

 

[TheCyberQuake]

In my scenario is faster.

I just got a n3ds, so I'll probably start doing my freeShop vs. CIA download on there as well. What I can say for certain is that on o3ds it is faster to download the CIA on PC if you can find one where it is hosted on a fast download site than it is to use freeShop. And the larger the game was, the larger the time gap between the two download types. So far I haven't tested on n3ds, but I'll do that Soontm

 

[TheCruel]

Quite often you won't save much time putting the effort to search for CIA, download (and perhaps extract it from compressed format), take out SD card to copy file, and then use CIA installer. But if it's a large game, and you're not using a n3ds, you could save some time that way. But you'll also need double the space on SD to install.

 

[Jayro]

My testing is also starting to show that the larger the game is, the bigger time gap there is between freeShop and CIA download. The one thing freeShop does have over CIA is the ability to queue a list of games and just let them install in the background without having to fuss with finding the games on That ISO Site and transferring them all to SD.

But at least on FBI, you can "install and delete all CIA" to save time and SD space. (I try to keep about 3GB free as scratch space to install games on my 32GB mSD.

 

[hibachib]

In my personal experience with a n3DS-XL, both Freeshop downloads and PC-based FTP transfers via wi-fi both top out at 1.5 MB/s.

Of course then the installation via FBI adds quite a bit more time to the FTP transfers method since it tops out at 1.5 - 2.0 MB/s by itself after the data's been sent to the SD card to begin with.

That said, I personally prefer to use that ISO site and FTP transfers, if only because I can be sure that if Freeshop goes by the wayside one day that I can always re-copy onto the 3DS' SD card all the .CIA files that I kept on my PC even after transferring them over.

 

[TheCyberQuake]

Quite often you won't save much time putting the effort to search for CIA, download (and perhaps extract it from compressed format), take out SD card to copy file, and then use CIA installer. But if it's a large game, and you're not using a n3ds, you could save some time that way. But you'll also need double the space on SD to install.

It takes only a minute or so to find a game on That ISO Site that has a decent host like gdrive or mega. I'd say freeShop probably only has a minute advantage in terms of actually finding and starting a download. After that for o3ds the download speed will be much faster on PC.
My testing was even for lower 500-800MB games, both were compressed files. Mario Kart 7 won by a few minutes when downloaded on PC (I don't have exact numbers as the computer my testing data was on is packed while I move). And as games got larger that gap increased. Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon (~800MB) iirc had at least a 5 minute advantage.
Though I would still use freeShop even if slower due to ease of use. I can just set a bunch to download, set the option to shutdown once done and idle, and then leave it to download overnight. Much easier than manually downloading them all. I'm more just doing this out of curiousity, and to definitively answer once and for all what is the fastest way.
I have yet to complete testing on the o3ds, but I will be continuing that once I finish moving, and then I will be running the same test on n3ds to see if the near-double download speeds the n3ds offers will change the outcome.

 

[ironmaster49]

Google "That Iso site"
Install CIAs using either FBI or Devmenu
Basically a fast method.

I feel like the best option ethically is just using adblock so the iso site does not profit and not using freeshop or playing 3ds online games as not to take any resources off Nintendo.

 

[WiiUBricker]

You can use FunKeyCIA.

 

[Enryx25]

Not on an o3ds where there's a wifi speed limitation.

I dont have a sd reader so i need to put the sd on a telephone and link it with the pc. So for me, freeshop is faster.