Hacking Recommended SD card parameters for the SX Pro?

[Tigro]

I'm going to buy an SX Pro in the upcoming days and along with that I'm gonna need some microSD card as I currently don't have any in my Switch. What should I look out for? I heard that the performance of the backups is really dependent on the speed of the card so what kind of parameters should I be looking at to ensure that games run as closely to the regular cart games as possible, performance-wise? Are there any read/write speeds that are commonly known to be the sweet spot, or such that you don't really gain any performance above them so that there's no need to splurge on a faster card?

 

[FierceDeityLinkMask]

I'm going to buy an SX Pro in the upcoming days and along with that I'm gonna need some microSD card as I currently don't have any in my Switch. What should I look out for? I heard that the performance of the backups is really dependent on the speed of the card so what kind of parameters should I be looking at to ensure that games run as closely to the regular cart games as possible, performance-wise? Are there any read/write speeds that are commonly known to be the sweet spot, or such that you don't really gain any performance above them so that there's no need to splurge on a faster card?

I am interested too.

 

[sbm76]

I'm going to buy an SX Pro in the upcoming days and along with that I'm gonna need some microSD card as I currently don't have any in my Switch. What should I look out for? I heard that the performance of the backups is really dependent on the speed of the card so what kind of parameters should I be looking at to ensure that games run as closely to the regular cart games as possible, performance-wise? Are there any read/write speeds that are commonly known to be the sweet spot, or such that you don't really gain any performance above them so that there's no need to splurge on a faster card?

Any UHS-1 rated microSD will do, as much capacity that you can afford.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2018-the-best-micro-sd-cards-for-nintendo-switch-5

 

[lukhart]

Besides speed, brand is also important. SanDisk and Samsung are good standards.

 

[Chizko]

I use a Sandisk Ultra 200GB A1 U1 100Mbps read speed (92 in real usage), but it had 15Mbps of write so copy games is slow. But the load time are regular, the loader of SX add some seconds of loading time but is 1-2 second compare to a cartbridge.
A1 is needed for random read speed (perfect for games)
U1-U3 is the minimun of sequencial read speed (10-30Mbps)

Nintendo recomend a minimun of 60Mps of read speed and Switch can work whit a maximun of 100Mps of read speed from SD.

 

[DocAmes1980]

Bear in mind that USB loading will probably be coming soon.

 

[sbm76]

Read through the Eurogamer-article that I referred to, it contains actual cartridge vs microSD vs internal memory comparisions, then make an informed decision.

 

[Tigro]

Thanks a lot for all the great replies!

Bear in mind that USB loading will probably be coming soon.

What does USB loading mean? Tried googling it but couldn't find anything Loading backups to inernal storage instead of the card?

 

[PatrickD85]

Bear in mind that USB loading will probably be coming soon.

Soon ... yeah ... soon really does not say anything. It can be weeks till months till we have proper USB loading.
And then even consider USB docked or USB-C direct connected USB.
Both are different things in essence.
And while USB loading might be awesome size wise. It defeats a lot of the portable aspect of the Nintendo Switch.

In regard to Micro SXDC; Sandisk is good, im rocking multiple 400GB cards (or well one is my main go to one and the other is there to test some things out.
Work wonderfully really.

 

[Tigro]

Soon ... yeah ... soon really does not say anything. It can be weeks till months till we have proper USB loading.

Could someone please fill me in on what's the "USB loading" that's being talked about here?

 

[DocAmes1980]

Soon ... yeah ... soon really does not say anything. It can be weeks till months till we have proper USB loading.
And then even consider USB docked or USB-C direct connected USB.
Both are different things in essence.
And while USB loading might be awesome size wise. It defeats a lot of the portable aspect of the Nintendo Switch.

In regard to Micro SXDC; Sandisk is good, im rocking multiple 400GB cards (or well one is my main go to one and the other is there to test some things out.
Work wonderfully really.

"Bear in mind" and "probably" being the operative phrases. If you use portable mode a lot then of course USB loading will be less appealing. I'm just saying it is something to bear in mind because MicroSD cards are much more expensive per GB than HDDs. Personally, I'd struggle to fill a 128 GB card with Switch games that I'd want to play. For now at least.

 

[anothertemper]

Could someone please fill me in on what's the "USB loading" that's being talked about here?

Instead of loading games from an SD card, you load from a USB device (flash drive, hard drive, etc).

 

[guily6669]

In theory even though Sandisk is not the fastest, it should most likely load games faster than a "faster" M-SD (continuous read and or write) because its A1 it has more iops and better 4K random write, it also probably have more life cycles as its made to be used as internal storage with caching on it and constant reading\writing.

However I already had 2 defective Sandisk Ultra 128GB and tested a 3rd one in the store and was also bad so I ended up paying more for a even slower crap Toshiba class 10, but at least is not problematic as the 3 Sandisks I tested after writing just a few files in it it get locked to 20MB\s read continuously only.

My iops now are miserable compared to the Sandisk, but I don't have my Switch hacked to test, I'm still waiting for atmosphere.

ps: I will probably just stick with this crap slow toshiba 128GB card, maybe in a year more brands will have A1 with cheaper prices per GB so I can buy somethin with like 256GB and good speeds as I'm done with Sandisks Ultras 4 now... Though my Sandisk Extreme 32 GB A1 in my tablet is working perfectly.

 

[RDTG]

I have a couple of PNY 128GB UHS-1 microSD cards that seem to work really well. Backups play perfectly fine, haven't noticed any extra load times compared to my 64GB Sandisk microSD

 

[PatrickD85]

"Bear in mind" and "probably" being the operative phrases. If you use portable mode a lot then of course USB loading will be less appealing. I'm just saying it is something to bear in mind because MicroSD cards are much more expensive per GB than HDDs. Personally, I'd struggle to fill a 128 GB card with Switch games that I'd want to play. For now at least.

Fair enough
SD is more expensive then HDD for sure but when do you sacrifice portability for storage. That was what I was getting at.
But let's see, all in all it would still be a interesting development.

 

[DocAmes1980]

Fair enough
SD is more expensive then HDD for sure but when do you sacrifice portability for storage. That was what I was getting at.
But let's see, all in all it would still be a interesting development.

I'm waiting for Zip drive loading myself.

 

[Raikkonen94]

I had a 128GB Samsung microSD but recently changed to a 200 GB SanDisk one. Just wanted a bit more space without paying an excessive price. Both seem to work fine so far.