Hardware Nintendo Switch cart speeds

[notsu]

I was installing some carts today, and I noticed that many of them are slower compared to others. My TotK cart installed at 10MB/s, whereas my Tsukihime cart installed at 22MB/s, even though they're both 32GB. I have no idea why a VN would need faster loading than presumably the most demanding Switch game, but has anyone else noticed this?

Another interesting thing I saw was that all JPN carts were 18MB/s or higher, but I only have like 15 of them so maybe it's a small sample size. On the other hand, 8/12 EUR games installed at 8MB/s, the rest were 14MB/s. All of these were via DBI on the same SD card and same Switch, and I calculated most of the MB/s manually as the DBI calculator has been known to be wrong before.

I have a handful of games where the cart says 10 on the PCB [not sure if that's the right term], and they were all very fast - roughly 25MB/s. DBI did report speeds up to 34MB/s at times, which seems insane.

 

[thesjaakspoiler]

If I recall correctly, there were a bunch of types made by different manufacturers and different sizes might also affect the transfer speeds.
Also manufacturers improve their production techniques, usually leading to an increase in transfer speed.
It's about 7 years since the first Switch was released and technology has been improving over time.

 

[Lumpofcoal]

Another possibility could be due to to the format of the game data. If it is organized in such a way that it would result in a large number of sequential writes, the speeds could be faster. If it is mostly 4k random writes, then it would likely be slower.

This is typically represented by a few large files vs many small files.

 

[Hayato213]

Don't confuse actual cart with xci format

 

[kingjinxy2]

Don't confuse actual cart with xci format

Is there a difference?

 

[Hayato213]

Is there a difference?

Not like you have to install data when you insert a cart, cartridge are plug and play, op is confusing it with xci format. Like Lumpofcoal install speed vary.