Memory Read And Write Speed

[Spadoof]

Dear Readers,

I was just wondering how drastically does the write/read speed affect the performance of the software used on the Pandora. Im sure once you reach a certain speed (Higher speeds) it doesnt matter, but what about lower speed memory cards? I was looking at different memory cards (32gb) and found a couple with 4mb and found that sandisk has one with 15mb r/w speed. Does it just allow for faster loading times? If it gets to low (like 1 mb r/w speed) will it affect the performance?

Thanks for listening,
-Spadoof :gp2x

 

[WizardStan]

Dear Readers,

I was just wondering how drastically does the write/read speed affect the performance of the software used on the Pandora. Im sure once you reach a certain speed (Higher speeds) it doesnt matter, but what about lower speed memory cards? I was looking at different memory cards (32gb) and found a couple with 4mb and found that sandisk has one with 15mb r/w speed. Does it just allow for faster loading times? If it gets to low (like 1 mb r/w speed) will it affect the performance?

It might take between 5 and 30 seconds to copy and load an SNES game on such a slow card, but other than that, it shouldn't be a problem. Scale that timing for larger game systems. Copying files back and forth will probably take a while, as well.
1mb is, however, the equivalent of an 8x CD rom. When playing games as ISOs, it should have no problem keeping up since it only loads what it needs when it needs it.
MP3s won't have a problem.
Any movies or TV shows encoded at a reasonable bit rate should play alright, but your pushing the limit. Even if it does have no problem playing, it would still take almost as long to copy the file onto the card as it would to watch it. ie, a 90 minute movie could probably take up to 90 minutes to copy to the card. Some people just don't have that kind of patience.

 

[AireTamStorm]

Yeah, you're not going to have very many issues even with a lower class card.I'm going to go with two 32GB Class 4 cards, which will be plenty fast when you think about it. 4MB/s? That is an SNES ROM into memory in under a second.

 

[crasherball]

what about booting e.g. linux from a sd-card
wouldnt it be wiser to get a damn fast sd-card as main card (even it will be smaller) and take a "slow"-32gig-card as secondary-card?

it could really be a pain in the ass if u gotta wait 4 minutes everytime for linux to boot :-S

 

[nubie]

what about booting e.g. linux from a sd-card
wouldnt it be wiser to get a damn fast sd-card as main card (even it will be smaller) and take a "slow"-32gig-card as secondary-card?

it could really be a pain in the ass if u gotta wait 4 minutes everytime for linux to boot :-S

The system only has 128mb of ram, how could that load slowly?

I don't know much about why linux loads slowly, but I do know that it takes time initializing all the hardware, of which I think we have less than a desktop or laptop PC, and it will be the same for all Pandoras, so standard hardware.

 

[Orkie]

I don't know much about why linux loads slowly, but I do know that it takes time initializing all the hardware, of which I think we have less than a desktop or laptop PC, and it will be the same for all Pandoras, so standard hardware.

It is mostly starting daemons. Windows does a lot of this after the desktop has loaded, hence why you often can't use it straight away but it does give the illusion of a faster startup time (and most Linux distros seem to load many daemons you will never need).

 

[palmertech]

Simple answer: Memory card speed ratings are the bare MINIMUM that they could theretically hit. Most of them go at least 5 times as fast, and I have card that are 10 times as fast.

And HOW would snes games take 30 seconds? Heck, how could they take 5? The largest SNES game is like 8mb.... And most are a lot smaller.

 

[cb88]

that is probably because you are reading only the *write* speed of the card read speed could be a good deal faster... i have noticed this on a 4gb micro vault flash disk i have...very slow write and reasonable read... which is fine by me since it was fairly cheap at the time

 

[WizardStan]

Simple answer: Memory card speed ratings are the bare MINIMUM that they could theretically hit. Most of them go at least 5 times as fast, and I have card that are 10 times as fast.

And HOW would snes games take 30 seconds? Heck, how could they take 5? The largest SNES game is like 8mb.... And most are a lot smaller.

Aye, most are 2 or 3 megs, but a few are 8 meg. I think it's theoretically possible for a ROM to be 32 megs, though I couldn't find an example.
The situation given was a low speed card at 1 MB/s (assuming he meant MegaByte, not Megabit) read speed. That means ROMs from commercial games could take between 2 and 8 seconds to start, with a theoretical max around 30 seconds.