Hacking R4 faster to save than other carts

[raptir]

Why is this? I have an R4, a DSTT and an Acekard 2i. I can unfortunately only use the Ackeard 2i at this point. But when I had the DS Lite, I noticed that the R4 saved much faster. My best example is with Pokemon Mystery Dungeon - Explorers of Sky. It would take ~4 seconds to save on my R4, and 6-8 on my DSTT and my Acekard (running AKAIO), causing significant slowdown (the music lagged noticeably) when it did so. This happened no matter what the settings were on my Acekard/DSTT as far as DMA goes. It also occured on my R4 when running YSMenu, but did not when running the official firmware. Lastly, my Acekard 2i and DSTT saved much faster when on a smaller but slower MicroSD card (1GB but low quality compared to 2GB but high quality, the 1GB saved faster. And yes, I tested the speed and the 2GB is nearly twice the speed of the 1GB).

What could this be an indication of? Is there a fix? Or is it just normal behavior?

Summary:

Acekard 2i with 1GB card: 4 seconds
Acekard 2i with 2GB card: 8 seconds
DSTT with 1GB card: 4 seconds
DSTT with 2GB card: 8 seconds
R4 with official firmware: 4 seconds all around.
R4 with YSMenu: Same behavior as Acekard and DSTT.

 

[fearofshorts]

Did you check the read-speed or the write-speed?
Sorry for asking such a stupid question.

Also: the fact that the speed seems to double consistently with the 1GB card tells me that there is probably something wrong/unusual with your 2GB card. It seems really likely to me that the R4's firmware was just better at dealing with whatever its abnormality is.

 

[raptir]

Write-speed, since that's what would be important there.

And I've used a different 2GB card (same brand/supposed quality as my 1GB) and it takes the same time as the other 2GB.

 

[imlgl]

My AK2i takes about 2 seconds to save on pokemon heart gold.

 

[SkH]

What brand?

 

[tk_saturn]

Try formatting the 2GB card to FAT32 with a 512B block size. This can sometimes prove performance, also try other cluster sizes.

 

[raptir]

My AK2i takes about 2 seconds to save on pokemon heart gold.

About the same here. Honestly, the only game where it's significantly (IE, noticeably) longer is Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Sky. It's not really a problem, I'm just curious as to why it happens.

And it's a 2GB Kingston (Japan) and Sandisk, and a 1GB Sandisk.

 

[YayMii]

My AK2i takes about 2 seconds to save on pokemon heart gold.

About the same here. Honestly, the only game where it's significantly (IE, noticeably) longer is Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Sky. It's not really a problem, I'm just curious as to why it happens.

And it's a 2GB Kingston (Japan) and Sandisk, and a 1GB Sandisk.

I find that my AK2i takes longer to save compared to my EDGE in quite a few games. In WarioWare DIY (not compatible with EDGE yet), the music stops for a second while it's saving. In all the Ace Attorney games, the graphics flicker while it's saving (and it takes longer). Haven't tried Pokémon though.
Something to note is that apparently the RC versions load slower than normal.

 

[Mantis41]

I have the following

R4 (old white model) - YSMENU - 2GB SD (17MBs tested)
AK2i - akAIO 1.6 RC2 - 4GB SDHC (18MBs tested)

I think the r4 is noticably faster than the ak2i in loading and saving. I have used spinalcode's dscovered and the coverflow seems to be smoother on the r4 as well.

 

[fearofshorts]

I think we should all reformat with the Panasonic SD Formatter. The first time I switched to it, it doubled my write-speed! (I think that the several windows re-formattings I performed slowed it down a lot).

 

[Normmatt]

I have the following

R4 (old white model) - YSMENU - 2GB SD (17MBs tested)
AK2i - akAIO 1.6 RC2 - 4GB SDHC (18MBs tested)

I think the r4 is noticably faster than the ak2i in loading and saving. I have used spinalcode's dscovered and the coverflow seems to be smoother on the r4 as well.

On my microsd carts the r4/official carts/akrpg all take between 20 to 40 ms to write 512bytes, the ak2/akrpg sd(woodrpg sd patched) both take 4-5 usually and every couple of writes theres a single 17ms write. So by the numbers the ak2 is faster than the r4 and official carts when saving

 

[Mantis41]

I have never formatted the SDHC in windows I just used it out of the box.
Thought I would try the panasonic formatter anyway. I turned on the slow format, full erase, size adjustment and a fuken cherry on top.
The speed improvement is quite noticeable. SS saves are down to around 5sec from 8-10
Can't realy notice a difference between the a2k and r4 now.

Advice: format those SDHC even from new.

 

[Delta517]

Looks like R4 is best at something

 

[Normmatt]

Looks like R4 is best at something

no higher ms is slower

 

[Delta517]

Looks like R4 is best at something

no higher ms is slower

What does ms have to do with saving? Apparently the R4 was faster

 

[YayMii]

Looks like R4 is best at something

no higher ms is slower

Just a question. Is it true that the AKAIO 1.6RC versions are slower at loading/saving compared to 1.5.1?

 

[thegame07]

Looks like R4 is best at something

no higher ms is slower

Just a question. Is it true that the AKAIO 1.6RC versions are slower at loading/saving compared to 1.5.1?

It is for me. I haven't noticed a diffrence with saving though.

 

[Normmatt]

Looks like R4 is best at something

no higher ms is slower

What does ms have to do with saving? Apparently the R4 was faster

Not according to my technical data its not.