Hacking Question How fast are load times using a backup loader?

[Deleted User]

Currently I own physical copies of all my Switch games. Several YouTube videos I've seen claim that load times are fastest from internal memory, slowest from physical carts and SD cards are in the middle. How about backup loaders?

EDIT: The most relevant information right up the top for the busy and lazy people. For the time being it seems backup loaders have the slowest load times. This might change in the future, we shall see. This post was last edited on the 27th of June.

I used a TV Capture device to time loading of a stage on Fire Emblem Warriors both from the official cart and from a dump of my cart.

Run 1 (Official cart): 17.88 seconds (1072 frames)
Run 2 (Emulated cart): 26.51 seconds (1589 frames)
Run 3 (Official cart): 17.78 seconds (1066 frames)
Run 4 (Emulated cart): 25.64 seconds (1537 frames)

In my test, the official cart was quicker. The SD card used is a Sandisk Ultra 128gb (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073JYC4XM), which in my PC reads at 97MB/sec.

I just ran tests with another game (Mario Kart 8) and got the same result. SD card is formatted ExFat (128kb sectors) with Rufus (https://rufus.akeo.ie). I'll try another card formatted by the Switch itself and get back to you in a bit.

Emulated Cart - MK8D loading Mario Circuit (200cc GP)
Test 1 - 15.83 seconds (949 frames)
Test 2 - 16.55 seconds (992 frames)
Test 3 - 15.07 seconds (903 frames)

Official cart - MK8D loading Mario Circuit (200cc GP)
Test 1 - 10.14 seconds (608 frames)
Test 2 - 10.46 seconds (627 frames)
Test 3 - 11.68 seconds (700 frames)

Edit: Back after a bit, I formatted the SD card with the Switch OS (It also used ExFat with 128kb sectors) and re-tested Fire Emblem. It sped up the emulated cart load times when compared to my first tests emulated cart load times, but still far quicker to use the official cart.

Emulated - FEW loading Invisible Ties battle "Timed Onslaught (lvl 2)"
24.87 seconds (1491 frames)
24.96 seconds (1496 frames)
25.01 seconds (1499 frames)

Original - FEW loading Invisible Ties battle "Timed Onslaught (lvl 2)"
17.47 seconds (1047 frames)
17.80 seconds (1067 frames)
18.65 seconds (1118 frames)

 

[LightOffPro]

Depends on the game. Skyrim takes a bit of time to load on my SXOS. Other smaller games load a bit faster.

 

[hippy dave]

It would depend on the speed of your sd card, and I would assume it would be roughly equivalent to running an eshop install of the game from the same card.

 

[Quicksilver88]

It would depend on the speed of your sd card, and I would assume it would be roughly equivalent to running an eshop install of the game from the same card.

Yeah the difference between cart and a proper SD is pretty negligible from most times I have seen. In some cases the internal posts noticeably fatser times. My guess is those games showing big improvement have lots of small files/assets.

I would be interest for feedback from those who own a cart and then run the .xci mounted.

 

[guily6669]

Actually from the original card games to a good A1 SD digital games there is a considerable difference, depending on the game engine too... Now I also would like to know if the .XCI games on SX OS load the same as the actual original eshop games.

On atmosphere it will most likely either run at original card level or a bit worse since all data, caching, OS and games are being loaded from the same source, while officially the Horizon+caching is loaded on main system faster nand memory and the Eshop games loaded from the M-SD...

 

[MiCH431]

I used a TV Capture device to time loading of a stage on Fire Emblem Warriors both from the official cart and from a dump of my cart.

Run 1 (Official cart): 17.88 seconds (1072 frames)
Run 2 (Emulated cart): 26.51 seconds (1589 frames)
Run 3 (Official cart): 17.78 seconds (1066 frames)
Run 4 (Emulated cart): 25.64 seconds (1537 frames)

In my test, the official cart was quicker. The SD card used is a Sandisk Ultra 128gb (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073JYC4XM), which in my PC reads at 97MB/sec.

 

[Kioku]

Yeah the difference between cart and a proper SD is pretty negligible from most times I have seen. In some cases the internal posts noticeably fatser times. My guess is those games showing big improvement have lots of small files/assets.

I would be interest for feedback from those who own a cart and then run the .xci mounted.

I both hate and love this. Back when it was primarily disc, from memory (rom) was a huge benefit.

 

[guily6669]

I used a TV Capture device to time loading of a stage on Fire Emblem Warriors both from the official cart and from a dump of my cart.

Run 1 (Official cart): 17.88 seconds (1072 frames)
Run 2 (Emulated cart): 26.51 seconds (1589 frames)
Run 3 (Official cart): 17.78 seconds (1066 frames)
Run 4 (Emulated cart): 25.64 seconds (1537 frames)

In my test, the official cart was quicker. The SD card used is a Sandisk Ultra 128gb (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073JYC4XM), which in my PC reads at 97MB/sec.

THANK YOU 4 the info but DAMN, that sucks and its not even emunand...

Did you try letting the console format the M-SD to probably make sure its at nintendo Switch best performance? (Don't know if it would make a single difference anyway).

 

[MiCH431]

THANK YOU 4 the info but DAMN, that sucks and its not even emunand...

Did you try letting the console format the M-SD to probably make sure its at nintendo Switch best performance? (Don't know if it would make a single difference anyway).

I just ran tests with another game (Mario Kart 8) and got the same result. SD card is formatted ExFat (128kb sectors) with Rufus (https://rufus.akeo.ie). I'll try another card formatted by the Switch itself and get back to you in a bit.

Emulated Cart - MK8D loading Mario Circuit (200cc GP)
Test 1 - 15.83 seconds (949 frames)
Test 2 - 16.55 seconds (992 frames)
Test 3 - 15.07 seconds (903 frames)

Official cart - MK8D loading Mario Circuit (200cc GP)
Test 1 - 10.14 seconds (608 frames)
Test 2 - 10.46 seconds (627 frames)
Test 3 - 11.68 seconds (700 frames)

Edit: Back after a bit, I formatted the SD card with the Switch OS (It also used ExFat with 128kb sectors) and re-tested Fire Emblem. It sped up the emulated cart load times when compared to my first tests emulated cart load times, but still far quicker to use the official cart.

Emulated - FEW loading Invisible Ties battle "Timed Onslaught (lvl 2)"
24.87 seconds (1491 frames)
24.96 seconds (1496 frames)
25.01 seconds (1499 frames)

Original - FEW loading Invisible Ties battle "Timed Onslaught (lvl 2)"
17.47 seconds (1047 frames)
17.80 seconds (1067 frames)
18.65 seconds (1118 frames)

 

[subcon959]

Damn, that's a much bigger difference than I expected.

 

[guily6669]

I even wonder from that info if CPU performance is also less when using SX OS backup games trough their backup loader??

Does anyone know why would emulated games run slower on a fast SD than the original cart which is already slower than eshop games on a fast SD from factory.

ps: And like I said this is not even emunand, I hope atmosphere doesn't go slower than that .

 

[Chipidy]

It would depend on the speed of your sd card, and I would assume it would be roughly equivalent to running an eshop install of the game from the same card.

The switch bottlenecks faster cards

 

[PatrickD85]

Sure it takes a few seconds more sometimes. But does that negate the benefits?
For me surely not. If I can't spend 5-7 second longer in regard to loading compared to;
getting the actual cart, loading the actual cart, booting it ... well then what is life really

Also 'throwing a fit' because 5-7 longer load times ... well you could have done a hell of a lot in-game you know ...
Come on It's not like its even 30 seconds of difference. If you plan on gaming ... you should not worry about such a little delay.

 

[guily6669]

That's just a few games... imagine something that takes 2, 3 and maybe more minutes to load... The higher the time the bigger will probably be the difference...

Also lead to more textures not loading on some games and stuff like that, specially unreal engine games on other platforms has massive texture loading problems.

ps: Thing is again this is not even emunand, because if atmosphere doesnt get a speed up on the backup loader theoretically speaking, everything is read and written from the same M-SD card making the difference even bigger, data caching, data loading, data reading all at the same time from a single M-SD...

 

[annson24]

 

[guily6669]

That video is bad, I had previously seen it and posted on it... Its more a Zelda only loading time than a general Switch cartdriges vs M-SD, and also has nothing to do with what we wanted to know which is backups loading time...

We already know for a Long time that M-SD digital games are faster than the card game, we wanted is to know about backups which sadly seem to load slower than the retail cart

 

[Jayro]

Oh man... I was hoping to improve Zelda's load times, not make them longer... Maybe an eShop purchase would be worth it if it loads faster than the cart does. Has anyone tested that?

 

[guily6669]

If you never searched before it goes like this: Main storage>M-SD>carts. Its on youtube for a long time already...

Sadly with backups M-SD seem to come worse than carts at the moment at least (thanks to user MiCH431 for posting here)...

Can also someone plz test loading backups trough LayeredFS VS gamecards on Horizon

 

[korko]

Those load times in SX are incredibly disappointing. If you compare to eg a purchased eshop title that's a significant difference.

 

[naddel81]

Is it possible that SX OS runs in a VM Like Environment? Maybe that is the culprit?!

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