Hardware SD and Micro SD cards for Nintendo 3DS

[Perilomo]

Hello guys,

I believe that I am posting at the right forum, and I have a little question.

I was thinking to buy the New Nintendo 3DS for a while now and it came to my attention that it will be using a Micro SD card rather than a regular SD card.

Now I've been in a shop today and there were a selection of a few some are coming with adapters from SD to Micro SD with the package from SanDisk.... Now the thing that caught my eye was the class of the SD cards, which leads to my question:

Does that class even matter? I understand it has something to do with speeds and minimal speed and everything - But how significant is it? I've heard that it has something to do with loading speeds but seeing as the standard SD that came with the system was not very fast to begin with (Not the new 3DS but the original one)

Thanks in advance for replies

 

[Death78793]

Hello guys,

I believe that I am posting at the right forum, and I have a little question.

I was thinking to buy the New Nintendo 3DS for a while now and it came to my attention that it will be using a Micro SD card rather than a regular SD card.

Now I've been in a shop today and there were a selection of a few some are coming with adapters from SD to Micro SD with the package from SanDisk.... Now the thing that caught my eye was the class of the SD cards, which leads to my question:

Does that class even matter? I understand it has something to do with speeds and minimal speed and everything - But how significant is it? I've heard that it has something to do with loading speeds but seeing as the standard SD that came with the system was not very fast to begin with (Not the new 3DS but the original one)

Thanks in advance for replies

I've used class 4 SD cards on my old 2DS and the speeds are between acceptable and a bit rubbish depending on how impatient you are. I mainly use class 10 microSD cards for my N3DS XL and they make things very smooth, but you don't need anything with a ridiculous R/W speed since the 3DS caps the speed at some point (I believe 20 MB/s, Don't quote me on that though). Just go with class 10 if you want a faster access rate and class 6/4 if you want something that you can find economically. I've seen many (and bought some) cheaper class 10 cards so if you look hard enough, you might find a good one for a great price!

 

[xile6]

Class 4 and higher.
Class is very important
I have a canon camera and if the sd card is any lower then 10. It wont save video or take back to back pictures.

 

[Perilomo]

Hey xile6,

Where I can see why write speed will be important for high quality video recording, I never thought that it will be important for something like the 3DS. The OS (I assume from reading the FAQ's) is on a chipset on the handset itself and the only thing that is being saved to the SD card is either things you download and your save files so I don't really know why there is much of a different

I've used class 4 SD cards on my old 2DS and the speeds are between acceptable and a bit rubbish depending on how impatient you are. I mainly use class 10 microSD cards for my N3DS XL and they make things very smooth...

Hey Death,

Can you explain a bit more on this? Was it games you downloaded? Games from Cartridges? What was the difference in "Load speed"? I am just very interested how impatient is impatient in your standards

 

[Death78793]

Hey xile6,

Where I can see why write speed will be important for high quality video recording, I never thought that it will be important for something like the 3DS. The OS (I assume from reading the FAQ's) is on a chipset on the handset itself and the only thing that is being saved to the SD card is either things you download and your save files so I don't really know why there is much of a different



Hey Death,

Can you explain a bit more on this? Was it games you downloaded? Games from Cartridges? What was the difference in "Load speed"? I am just very interested how impatient is impatient in your standards

Games from carts aren't really affected from this (except from extra data loading, which is hardly big at all), and downloads are always capped at a slower speed than the access speed from the SD card. I'd have to say the biggest suspects in this are the digital games and the system menu. My downloaded copy of pokemon X stuttered when saving (i.e. the music stopped, not lagging or anything, just flat out silence) for about 1-2 seconds but saving would only take about 5 seconds (10-20 when doing game sync), and my system menu would take like 5-10 seconds to fully boot up and show all the downloaded and installed apps (taking into account that most of my games are digital copies). I should note that I'm very impatient by my standards and waiting more than 6 seconds for the home screen to boot up ticked me off. I bought a 32 GB class 10 SD card a while later and the home menu started booting up in around 4-5 seconds which was fairly fine with me.

 

[Perilomo]

Right, well thanks a lot for the info.

I have today learnt about a new standard rating called UHS. The cards I've seen in shop have had either a 10 in a circle and others have had 1,2 and 3 in a U shape. It looks though however that UHS 1 is at about the same standard and speed as class 10 cards so I believe that in the shop I've been at there are no cards at a lower standard than 10



Thanks a lot for re-assuring me and providing insight as for the loading speeds