Sd Cards Run Games Slower

[Superman1]

I saw no mention of this in the forums. MAME in NAND runs Alien Storm, Burning Fight, and any other biggish games smooth as silk.
MAME on SD card slows Alien Storm down to a crawl, with the sound screeching in unrecognisable distortion in a tin can. Many other games are so affected to lesser degrees, even ones from 1987. I tried a new SD card: same.

My GP2X F-100 does not do this. Does anyone know if this because that has no decent sized NAND, and they changed the Wiz preferring the NAND, downgrading SD? :blink:
But doesn't the game load all in the memory, so wouldn't need to access the card anymore? I can't figure it out. Can anyone? Or does anyone else have this problem?
Thankyou for your co-operation.

 

[NEIL L]

Have you tried turning the Wiz off then on, then loading up MAME again?
I've noticed that some games/apps run slower (or not at all) after exiting from a previous game/app.
(It's as if it doesn't clear the memory properly when exiting, this doesn't happen on all games though!)
Cheers, Neil

 

[Superman1]

Thanks Neil. I'm sure I have dozens of times. Tried just now, on Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. It's a bit distressing to hear a metallic dinosaur roar in a tin can.
So it's not that. I take it this is not normal? I may have a defective Wiz. :unsure:

 

[NeoGML]

What kind of SD Card are you using?

I noticed also that NAND memory tends to be very fast, but a Class 6 SD card (mine is 8GB SDHC) seems to run very quickly for me also.. Ninja Master's on FBA2X is almost perfect on my SD card... I may or may not have tried it on the NAND... If i do get around to trying it i'll post what i find.

Furthermore, I believe that there are even faster SD cards without an official SD Class marking (Class 6 implies 6 MB/s read/write speed, anything faster than 6 doesn't have an official "class") , saying stuff like 150x etc...

 

[Superman1]

Elite Pro 2GB SD. It says high speed on it.
The other I tested was a SanDisk 2GB SD.
But the one on the GP2X F-100, which worked fine, was just a SD too.

But I can't find any info on class, just says: High transfer rate.

But I did realise now I have a couple of SDHC ones, so I'll test those. So you think the cards are accessed during gameplay, thus causing constant slowdown?

 

[godashram]

i noticed a nice speed bump in my games going from a 2gb class 2 sh card to a 16gb class 6 sdhc....

 

[Superman1]

Well, I tried a 4GB SDHD, with just MAME and those 2 games. Exactly the same. And, I took out the card during the game; it doesn't need it.
By speed bump do you mean permanant speed or just the loading? Even if I am using inferior cards, the Wiz seems to load the whole game, or at least a decent enough chunk so as not to cause such extreme lag.

Oh, I also tried every possible combo in the options: highest clock rate, vertical sync: double buffer etc, quick sound, not that I understand most of it. Shouldn't need to though.

Surely someone can confirm if this happens or not to them with these games.