New Review - DS-Xtreme 4Gbit

[Costello]

It has already been said before, and it's also mentionned in the review: the DS-Xtreme has dynamic size for eeprom! It has 2 Mbits of physical memory and can have theoretically unlimited virtual eeprom memory (like in Windows, physical and virtual memory). The next firmware will fix the Pokémon problem and thus probably every problem of the sort.

 

[g.crow]

any retailer shipping FROM germany besides divineo.de? divineo germany sucks big times.

mars

 

[SectionX]

It has already been said before, and it's also mentionned in the review: the DS-Xtreme has dynamic size for eeprom! It has 2 Mbits of physical memory and can have theoretically unlimited virtual eeprom memory (like in Windows, physical and virtual memory). The next firmware will fix the Pokémon problem and thus probably every problem of the sort.

nice, then I dont see any problems at all. People should really stop complaining.

 

[Alexeh]

Anyways is it possible to insert that small SD card with the USB connector on top of it??

Was talking about this little thingy:

 

[tama_mog]

I like everything I'm seeing and reading from the review. Nice one guys. I am a bit skeptical about pulling virtual memory to accommodate for > 2mbit saves....especially the way it saves right now when it boots back to the main menu to write the save file....might not be as straight forward as people think. Everything else looks gorgeous though for NDS roms and homebrew....the passme is a plus as well. The limited space is perfect already for nds roms but the real concern is for homebrew....ex: mp3s take up quite a bit of space using moonshell as do videos. I look forward to the nextgen product incorporating these concepts along with the support for transflash myself....but kudos to the ds-x team and the gbatemp guys for the review.

 

[lennonguru]

i bought one after reading the review, thanks for the info guys!

 

[Arm73]

I did read the review and it's quite impressive. No flashcart to date has ever achieved this level of completeness and breack-trough features and got them right from day 1.
I don't want to sound like the most scheptical users, but obviously the high price and the limited amount of memory are the biggest cons. I personally would forgive the steep price in favor of an higher storage capacity, like the option to stick a micro in there for example.
I can say from experience, that even if you think that you have enough storage capacity now( and let's face it , 512MB ain't even that much right now for most of us) in pratically no time you'll feel outdated.
I remember when I got my Flash 2 Advance 256Mb pro a few years back and I thought that I had a lot of space.......now there are single GBA games bigger than that !
I mean without the option to upgrade the memory, I would not commit to buy anything these days.
But I'll be whatching this product for future updates.

 

[SectionX]

I did read the review and it's quite impressive. No flashcart to date has ever achieved this level of completeness and breack-trough features and got them right from day 1.
I don't want to sound like the most scheptical users, but obviously the high price and the limited amount of memory are the biggest cons. I personally would forgive the steep price in favor of an higher storage capacity, like the option to stick a micro in there for example.
I can say from experience, that even if you think that you have enough storage capacity now( and let's face it , 512MB ain't even that much right now for most of us) in pratically no time you'll feel outdated.
I remember when I got my Flash 2 Advance 256Mb pro a few years back and I thought that I had a lot of space.......now there are single GBA games bigger than that !
I mean without the option to upgrade the memory, I would not commit to buy anything these days.
But I'll be whatching this product for future updates.

slow down son...you got a 256mb card. This card is 4096mb. 16 times the space.

 

[zragnarok]

I did read the review and it's quite impressive. No flashcart to date has ever achieved this level of completeness and breack-trough features and got them right from day 1.
I don't want to sound like the most scheptical users, but obviously the high price and the limited amount of memory are the biggest cons. I personally would forgive the steep price in favor of an higher storage capacity, like the option to stick a micro in there for example.
I can say from experience, that even if you think that you have enough storage capacity now( and let's face it , 512MB ain't even that much right now for most of us) in pratically no time you'll feel outdated.
I remember when I got my Flash 2 Advance 256Mb pro a few years back and I thought that I had a lot of space.......now there are single GBA games bigger than that !
I mean without the option to upgrade the memory, I would not commit to buy anything these days.
But I'll be whatching this product for future updates.


slow down son...you got a 256mb card. This card is 4096mb. 16 times the space.

yeah but FF3, Pokemon P/D and a whole slew of newer games are starting to reach the 1024/2048mb mark. what if a year from now, pokemon rainbow or whatever is 4096mbit? that basically just renders this card obsolete... games will only get bigger

 

[SectionX]

I did read the review and it's quite impressive. No flashcart to date has ever achieved this level of completeness and breack-trough features and got them right from day 1.
I don't want to sound like the most scheptical users, but obviously the high price and the limited amount of memory are the biggest cons. I personally would forgive the steep price in favor of an higher storage capacity, like the option to stick a micro in there for example.
I can say from experience, that even if you think that you have enough storage capacity now( and let's face it , 512MB ain't even that much right now for most of us) in pratically no time you'll feel outdated.
I remember when I got my Flash 2 Advance 256Mb pro a few years back and I thought that I had a lot of space.......now there are single GBA games bigger than that !
I mean without the option to upgrade the memory, I would not commit to buy anything these days.
But I'll be whatching this product for future updates.


slow down son...you got a 256mb card. This card is 4096mb. 16 times the space.

yeah but FF3, Pokemon P/D and a whole slew of newer games are starting to reach the 1024/2048mb mark. what if a year from now, pokemon rainbow or whatever is 4096mbit? that basically just renders this card obsolete... games will only get bigger

seriously the biggest game today is 1gb, I don't think the DS is going to reach 4gb anytime soon. The larger cards today have a problem with loading times. And if there is a game that will be 4gb, you can play it since it's what this card offer. I NEVER think that there will be a DS game that exceeds 4gb.

 

[Paralel]

It has already been said before, and it's also mentionned in the review: the DS-Xtreme has dynamic size for eeprom! It has 2 Mbits of physical memory and can have theoretically unlimited virtual eeprom memory (like in Windows, physical and virtual memory). The next firmware will fix the Pokémon problem and thus probably every problem of the sort.

The problem is that we can't know if this virtual memory solution will always work and might require firmware updates in the future to make it function with certain games which would make it more or less just like the other solutions on the market that require patching.

Also, the virtual EEPROM memory will most likely be taken from the embedded flash, which might cause slowdown or other unknown issues.

I would imagine that future clones will "remedy" this issue by including more than 2 Mbits of physical EEPROM in the cart in order to prevent the need for any kind of workarounds (if they were smart they would include 8 or 16 just to be future proof since it's hard to say how large savegames might be in future NDS releases).

 

[MR_COW]

yeah but FF3, Pokemon P/D and a whole slew of newer games are starting to reach the 1024/2048mb mark. what if a year from now, pokemon rainbow or whatever is 4096mbit? that basically just renders this card obsolete... games will only get bigger

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DS_Game_Cards

Games will never go over 1Gb. That is the maximum.

 

[XmemphistoX]

I did read the review and it's quite impressive. No flashcart to date has ever achieved this level of completeness and breack-trough features and got them right from day 1.
I don't want to sound like the most scheptical users, but obviously the high price and the limited amount of memory are the biggest cons. I personally would forgive the steep price in favor of an higher storage capacity, like the option to stick a micro in there for example.
I can say from experience, that even if you think that you have enough storage capacity now( and let's face it , 512MB ain't even that much right now for most of us) in pratically no time you'll feel outdated.
I remember when I got my Flash 2 Advance 256Mb pro a few years back and I thought that I had a lot of space.......now there are single GBA games bigger than that !
I mean without the option to upgrade the memory, I would not commit to buy anything these days.
But I'll be whatching this product for future updates.

I think Kingdom Hearts is the only game that is 256 mbit. I could be wrong though. I believe that is the largest game and not exceeding your cart.

 

[Cyan]

Thank you for the review

I still had a few questions, and some of them got answered.


I was wondering about save compatibility from other flashcards as it is compressed, but you already answered that you don't know.
I'll just wait and see.



The next thing is with a flashme DS, you already answered too, but not completly.
Considering this : The DS is in autorun mode, and the DS-Xtrem is working like a passme if we press Select at boot time.
With Flashme installed, using Select button it the way to not use flashme. What would happen if there is a flashcart (G6 for exemple) on slot2 in the same time ?

Without Select button, which one is running ? G6 or Xtrem ?
And Without Select ?
Do we need to unplug the DS Flashcart to run the DS-Xtrem, or just use the DS in no autorun mode ?


Thank you for any answer you can give.

 

[Xenocide]

Anyways is it possible to insert that small SD card with the USB connector on top of it??

Was talking about this little thingy:

That won't work out well. Both that usb sandisk thing and the ds xtreme expect power from the host device. And I suspect that the usb interface to the flash and the mechanism the cart uses aren't designed to be active together. Not to mention I don't think that's a mini B connector device. Your best bet if you want lots of space for music, movies and homebrews is probably a slot 2 device, you'll have lots of options that way.

I did read the review and it's quite impressive. No flashcart to date has ever achieved this level of completeness and breack-trough features and got them right from day 1.
I don't want to sound like the most scheptical users, but obviously the high price and the limited amount of memory are the biggest cons. I personally would forgive the steep price in favor of an higher storage capacity, like the option to stick a micro in there for example.
I can say from experience, that even if you think that you have enough storage capacity now( and let's face it , 512MB ain't even that much right now for most of us) in pratically no time you'll feel outdated.
I remember when I got my Flash 2 Advance 256Mb pro a few years back and I thought that I had a lot of space.......now there are single GBA games bigger than that !
I mean without the option to upgrade the memory, I would not commit to buy anything these days.
But I'll be whatching this product for future updates.

I think Kingdom Hearts is the only game that is 256 mbit. I could be wrong though. I believe that is the largest game and not exceeding your cart.

GBA roms sorted by size

Not quite true. Certainly there are none any larger. But while there's only a few GBA games up against the limit worth playing, there were several GBC games that wound up pushing against the limits. Probably because it was pushing the same technology for too long -- space was getting cheaper and developers were coming up with more ways to use it. And there's already a few that hit the limit on the DS! But I doubt we'll see the revival of MBC tech. With a 4Gb cart, there's no problems to worry about whether the image fits after you subtract space for the bootloader, etc, because as has already been mentioned, DS carts top out at 1Gb.

The saver, on the other hand, may be problematic. Hopefully timing won't be important and they can do their idea of virtual EEPROM.

 

[DeMoN]

I have two questions that I don't think have been answered.

1. Does the DS-X work with the Action Replay DS or the AR Max Drive?
2. Is there anyway to get saves from real game cartridges to the DS-X? In other words, is there anyway to convert .dst/.duc saves to .sav so it'll work on the DS-X?

 

[ChaosTheorySD]

I think the idea that only Pokemon won't work is because it's the only game with a particular save type or something, so that's why it doesn't work. They're going by the assumption that the save type is the only thing keeping it from working, so all the other games should be fine.

I don't know if that is in fact a correct statistic, but I believe that's the reasoning behind it anyway.

 

[Moneo]

A minor question, are the contacts (on the DS side of the thing, not the mini-usb connector) gold-plated, like the original cartridges?

 

[Devante]

GBA roms sorted by size

Not quite true. Certainly there are none any larger. But while there's only a few GBA games up against the limit worth playing, there were several GBC games that wound up pushing against the limits. Probably because it was pushing the same technology for too long -- space was getting cheaper and developers were coming up with more ways to use it. And there's already a few that hit the limit on the DS! But I doubt we'll see the revival of MBC tech. With a 4Gb cart, there's no problems to worry about whether the image fits after you subtract space for the bootloader, etc, because as has already been mentioned, DS carts top out at 1Gb.Â

The saver, on the other hand, may be problematic. Hopefully timing won't be important and they can do their idea of virtual EEPROM.

If I am not mistaken, didn't they figure out a way to pass the official limit of GBC games near the end of its lifecycle?
I seem to remember them putting out an official size (much like Nintendo stated 256Mbit was the largest for GBA) but then figured out a way to redirect something to have even more space for games.

I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about.

 

[SectionX]

I think the idea that only Pokemon won't work is because it's the only game with a particular save type or something, so that's why it doesn't work. They're going by the assumption that the save type is the only thing keeping it from working, so all the other games should be fine.

I don't know if that is in fact a correct statistic, but I believe that's the reasoning behind it anyway.

it's been said 20 times in this thread already.