Does Sd Card Speed Matter?

[racketboy]

I'm wondering if I should get a regular SD card or pay an extra $30ish more for the high speed version
I guess my main concern for speed would be video playback and the larger Neo-Geo ROMs that need to stream.
Does the extra speed make a difference in smoothness of playback and emulation?

 

[TelcoLou]

I'm wondering if I should get a regular SD card or pay an extra $30ish more for the high speed version
I guess my main concern for speed would be video playback and the larger Neo-Geo ROMs that need to stream.
Does the extra speed make a difference in smoothness of playback and emulation?

I've read that they do, but ...

I'm a cheap bastard, and have a slower-speed 2GB card .. all my movies, games, etc play fine.

 

[racketboy]

I'm wondering if I should get a regular SD card or pay an extra $30ish more for the high speed version
I guess my main concern for speed would be video playback and the larger Neo-Geo ROMs that need to stream.
Does the extra speed make a difference in smoothness of playback and emulation?

I've read that they do, but ...

I'm a cheap bastard, and have a slower-speed 2GB card .. all my movies, games, etc play fine.

Even the big Neo-Geo ROMs?
If you don't have any issues, I'll probably do with a "middle" range one with like 60X or something instead of the 133X or whatever that some people suggest.

 

[purple_goat]

ive got a regular transend 4gb and it transfers files slooooow <_<

 

[Blah]

I bought fast (150X) 2 gig card, but only because I found a good deal on one. It would seem the prices have gone up. What I've read is that the GP2X doesn't use direct memory access on the sd card interface, so it would seem that the speed wouldn't matter all that much.

 

[darkman]

I purchased a "SimpleTech" 1 gig SD at Office Max for $13.99 USD as a Promo before Christmas. (Love those Promo sells ) It seems a lot faster than my "SanDisk" or "PNY" 1 gig SD cards and has become my Neo Geo game SD card of choice. But the Neo Geo games were "OK" on the other cards and were fast and very playable. The slight speed increase just gave me a little smoother game on the larger roms. I'm not sure if it is worth $30.00. Let me put it another way, "I'm not willing to pay the extra $30.00." I'm more of a "bargain bin hunter." :huh:


edit: Copying files to my "SimpleTech" is very fast!! It is drag drop and it is there! I haven't found out what the speed is. There is nothing on the package with that info. Where as with my "SanDisk" and "PNY" it takes a fews minutes, up to 10, for a 80 meg file.

 

[Robster]

Wikipedia has an interesting article about SD card speeds. Note "As of December 2005, most devices comply to the SD card specification 1.01, with maximum speed of 66x. Higher speeds of up to 133x are defined by specification 1.1."

The data sheet for the GP2X's MMSP2 CPU says that its maximum clock speed for the SD peripheral is 25MHz. This would be 12.5MB/s, or 83X speed. I'm not sure, but I think the GP2X's Linux kernel limits the speed to lower than this - 20MHz would be 66X speed, which Wikipedia says most card should handle.

So while it might be worth getting a 80X card, it certainly isn't going to be worth spending extra for a 133X one.

 

[reiboul]

When I ran ScummVM (most every game) on my 150x MMC card, I did not notice any slowdown, but when I put ScummVM on my newer card (unknown speed), I often have slowdowns, or rather, game literraly hangs for a second
May it be due to the SD speed?
It took 20mn to copy a 700mo file, but I think it's due to the high access time rather than speed

 

[WhiteFalcon]

I'm wondering if I should get a regular SD card or pay an extra $30ish more for the high speed version
I guess my main concern for speed would be video playback and the larger Neo-Geo ROMs that need to stream.
Does the extra speed make a difference in smoothness of playback and emulation?

If I were you, I would go for the faster one. I have had a cheap, slow one for almost a year and copying the files over was a pain. Now I got a 2GB 150x A-Data for Christmas and its much better, recommended

 

[paxl13]

Use the lastest FW and any SD card will works great !

I'm using a standard SD sean dick and I was having lag on 2.0 on 2.1 its perfect at all !