Its not about storage speed (GTA:O).... GTA V has server issues, you can have the fastest SSD and even install the game on RAM, it still would load slow.
@@samfkt Someone said it's because gta online uses peer to peer (p2p) connection instead of conventional servers which is both more primitive and cheaper and also slower
I expected that the NAND storage would be fastest. Faster bus speed due to being hard wired in and all. Also, the close transfer speeds in the two SD's were also expected. What I didn't expect was for game cards to be as far behind as they are though. Interesting. Thanks for running these tests!
It's great to finally have a definitive answer as to how fast of a micro sd card we need. Much appreciated. Also, it's great to hear that when I want to upgrade my 32GB card to a bigger one, all I need to do is transfer the files over at my PC. That's a major plus for me.
Is there an up-to-date video you guys can make of these performance tests using the new Switch revision? Perhaps there is a higher cap now that supports UHS-3 speeds?
The n64 in the past had virtually no loading times because the bus speed and ram speed were able to easily handle the 8, 32 or 64 megabyte data they were made to handle but as the generation of gaming increases the data load increases significantly but bus and ram speed hasn’t been significantly increased resulting in obvious loading times.
VERY insightful video! You tried all the possibilities... the loading test to rule out the fact that savedata coming from internal storage could help was something I didn't even consider, even though it's something to account for... you guys were very thorough! And at the second part of the video you reminded us everything about Switch's current state of game installs and savedata management... besides giving sound advice on the microSD purchase Thanks a lot for the great effort!
I strongly prefer carts since they can be sold again. I had my PSN network account blocked once and all my digital purchases were locked, even offline games. Discs & carts can be played any time on any machine and have sell value. After I had my PSN account blocked, even if it was for just a few hours, I never bought any downloadable game that includes DRM. That also means no DLC that isn't included on-disc.
You sir just answered my question, the perhaps only significant reason to buy carts these days is to protect yourself from the weird "you bought the game but you don't actually own it" kinda vibe from buying digital... somebody else decides on how long your game will be supported and that sucks.
There is, at present time, no such thing as UHS-III. UHS-I and UHS-II are different bus formats, while U1 and U3 are minimum (not maximum) speed classes. UHS-II is very uncommon and easily recognized by its use of additional pins (UHS-II cards have a second row of contacts). So the Switch uses UHS-I, good to know, but I don't think we've heard anything on the Switch's max MicroSD read speed. Again, the U1/U3 ratings go by minimum and not maximum, so it is very possible for a lower rated card to be faster if the manufacturer was not willing to test and guarantee that speed would not dip. I would love to see someone test a wider variety of MicroSD cards, but it is good to know (although a little surprising) that a UHS-I card can keep up with a Switch cartridge.
It's overall slower but not by that much because the game requires a 2GB install on the internal memory to accelerate loading times. Else it would be a few minutes.
textures and draw distance are indentical on both console, resolution doesn't affect loading time, so what's left is sound fidelity. Not that different
Would be interesting to see the Wii U version's load times compared between physical and download, even if not alongside those of the Switch, since the install would likely play a factor in it. Maybe even compare it to how slow it is running off a USB hard drive lol
Judging by teardowns the internal storage looks to be on a separate board that has a similar form factor (but not connector) to M.2/NVMe cards and is likely more closely coupled -- both the cartridge port and SD slot pass through an additional controller (the cart even seems to be buffered), so a speed bump on the internal storage isn't surprising.
Probably not becasuse Switch games arent programmed for utilizing the fastest storage avaliable..... hell, even most PCs dont use the full potential of SATA SSDs (not to mention nVMEs).
@@leinardesteves3987 not true. They specifically chose fast SSDs to offset their relatively small RAM increase. Look at Star Citizen and how the fps plummets on HDDs compared to SSDs
I dunno if there's connective tissue but this channel has a couple videos where they have super detailed info on performance and stuff using different clocks. Maybe you'll find it valuable but thought I'd share!
Very useful info. Going for high storage UH1 cards instead of faster ones will save us some money while giving us less (or equal) load times. Great video!
SD card and internal storage have the advantage of speed, but having to deal with space and downloads while game card has the advantage of being plug and play with the disadvantage of a little longer load times, however, the difference is completely bearable, plus second hand market eliminates the need to wait for sales at which you may not have the money at the moment while with second hand market you decide when, and depending on your luck you may even found physical games brand new at a lower price than physical, I got Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for $50 instead of the $65 it costs in the eShop in my country, game cards is the way to go, as always, physical is the best way
same, I asked in a comment just now if there's any reason beyond intrinsic value these days. I wish I could choose to save games to their cartridges because it just.feels.right
I wonder then if the 64GB Internal Storage in the Switch OLED is any faster? Usually with Solid State storage, the bigger the storage size the faster it is. Would love to see some new tests using the OLED model!
@DigitalFoundry I want to thank you VERY much for this video. Last weekend, I received a Nintendo Switch as a gift, and was not aware of micro sd capability until I opened it. I had been racking my brain all week on what to do until now. Fortunately, I didnt receive a game with it, so now I can breathe easy knowing I can purchase a large capacity micro sd and go with downloads instead of carrying around game cartridges. Even though this video is old, it answered all of my questions and THEN some. THANK YOU again!!
Not being able to transfer data and game save data to and from, and between internal storage and memory card is a hindsight on Nintendo's part. Hopefully they can fix that soon.
Its a odd thing not to include, but it is something they could easily add in the update, unless they are going to push cloud storage as one of their online services and limited save transfer to that..
+Legionari3, Nintendo did say they're considering cloud saves in a thing I read. I also read somewhere that the save transfers weren't there at launch cause of time constraints. Same with friends codes since they couldn't put in the username system. Nintendo spends so much time making games that they really do forget about their hardware issues at times.
I'm going to have to disagree with that, Nintendo is a large company they would have the resources to focus on the consoles OS and launch games simultaneously, the OS is quite bare even when compared to what was offered by the PS4 & XB1 with both allowed local and cloud transfers of saves and Even WiiU when it launched. To go along with the launch line up is also very minuscule when again when compared to the PS4 & XB1 and even the Wii and WiiU. I do like Nintendo some of the 1st party WiiU games are fantastic but you can't ignore these these issues and along with issues like the dock scratching the system to suggest the Switch was rushed..
This is fundamental question, thank Tom. We don't need deep analysis multiplatform game between devices. Give as just videos about resolution differences between PS4 model and content about recent exclusive games, good job DF. He cares about "face off" i'm sure not.
We need an updated video to show if A1, A2 rated cards improve the speed as its most likely the lower IOPS of the cards chosen that is holding it back from loading as fast as the internal storage.
Cartridges load close to sd and internal NAND storage. That's not disappointing at all! All of the options are fast, faster than spinning disks or platters
Router#bad actually no, load times are terrible compared to discs, Depends on game size as well, loading from an SD card is the worst possible way to load a game.
Mordecai R SD cards, or any stateless storage medium for that matter, have dramatically reduced seek times compared to discs and platters. Also, faster read times, better data streaming, etc etc. cost is the only area where optical media or magnetic media can compete.
Why not test a slower micro SD card? 80MBps is fast for UHC1, something closer to 40-50MBps is closer to the norm for the cards that most people might be buying for their system. Walmart recently did a fire sale on Samsung Evo cards with 48MBps and I know hundreds of Switch owners bought them. They are far slower than the cards you tested.
Yeah, it would be very useful to know the difference in loading speed on a really cheap SD vs an expensive one... I'd happily pay way less for more storage, if it only gives me a second or two extra load times.
Best video on the topic I have found so far and I have watched quite a few. Results seem to show that there is no advantage of a U3 uhs-i over a U1 uhs-i yet strangely the official nintendo card is a U3
If they are fixing it in just a week, that's great. Although, wouldn't they want to test it now in order to use that footage to test if the patch actually made a difference after applied? It would be a missed opportunity not to.
Charlton Blake There are articles out there that explain that the Wifi constantly searching for other networks actually causes a decent amount of framerate issues. Going into airplane mode while in portable mode cleared up like 90% of my BOTW lag issues. It's crazy how much of a difference I noticed.
ThoughT I'm going to try this out. I haven't noticed many Frame Rate issues while portable, but I've had many FR issues while docked. Thanks for the tip.
You guys should make an updated version of this video including Nintendo Switch OLED, specially now that the Nintendo Switch is at the end of its lifecycle, and could also comment on possible Nintendo Switch 2 performance being so close to a future announcement. Discuss the the performance of current SDXC models on the newer hardware and more modern games, maybe even the upcoming SD Express products, such as Samsung's 256GB model coming summer 2024.
You should have done CrystalDisk trials on each of the SD cards to see what their purported Read/Write ratings are compared to their actual Read/Write ratings before doing these tests. Just because the box for the 16GB card said "Speed up to 80 MB/s" (which I'm assuming is an average Read speed, not Write speed), doesn't mean the card will actually deliver that performance. You also should have used more cards in this test. A sample size of 2 is wayyy too small to make any definitive conclusions.
Thankyou for this doing this test! Your results seem to line up with other people's tests. On the Switch, Micro SD cards have a max speed of U1, and any SD cards with U3 speed will be lowered down to U1 speed.
I've noticed load times get worse with longer play times. I play right off the cartridge for BotW and don't download much games yet but would love it if Nintendo would give us the option to install the game to our systems even if we bought the cartridge version. Not sure if that is practical or not though just to save a few seconds per hour of gaming.
Have you seen how the NAND chip module looks on the switch? It has way more pins and datelines than the ones you can typically find on a micro sd card. This does not have to mean all of those additional datalines are for data transfer only, but I was assuming the internal memory would be the fastest because of that, which was proven to be true in this case
Here's a suggestion. Do a similar test, but instead test one or two of the above options docked vs undocked. Since the CPU/GPU is supposedly underclocked when on battery power, I wonder how that affects loading times. I'm under the impression that game data is heavily compressed these days. Compression would put more of the burden on the CPU instead of the storage I/O in this case.
I prefer being able to install and large collection of games on the console it self so I dont have to carry and bunch or cartridges around with me that could get lost, also 99% require patches these days so you will never be completely download/install free digital is games is where things are heading.
Inyene Udom Iphone launch price : 700$ or more, and the games on it are not that great, so yeah, fast loading times for games like Monument Valley. 😂 And cpu / gpu / ram wise, iPhone is less powerful than Switch. And less optimization too 😂
T'Challa I have a PS4 and PC they fit my main console/gaming needs the Switch is a portable and thats what Im using it as it and it performs that job better than using it as a home console which it is not.... Its a high end portable that can be hooked up to a TV....
Stupid question, how exactly is storage a problem for the Switch? If the games do not require an install like the PS4/Xbox then surely it's only an issue for people that want to download the games? Otherwise all you'll use the storage for is save data, which 32GB is more than enough. You even have the option to upgrade with the SD cards. I am genuinely interested to see what the issues are or are people just complaining to complain?
It's a good price considering you only spend one price and can play games directly. If you buy a PS4 you still need a HD TV or if you want to experience the best setting 4K on a PS4 pro. So that's 250+200-thousands in order to play. With the switch I pay one price and I can play. I'm not confined to the living room/play room. If I move to a different country I don't have to worry about buying a new TV. Not everyone has the time to sit for hours in one sitting to play a game. Also if a disaster happens, I can grab my switch and run. I can maybe grab my PS4 and run but my TV is going to be gone and I will need to buy a new HD TV before I can play PS4. And this is first gen there will definitely be improvements and changes later. I think this is the way to go for console games.
TheMadPolarBear you already said the issue yourself ... YES people do download games and there may be DLC for games such as monster hunter, fire emblems, there will be tons of DLC, so 32gb is an issue, don't ask stupid question again lol
Except game sizes on the Switch are not as outrageous as they are on the PS4/XBO, where the stock 500GB drive is also useless? The fact remains that the 'lack of storage' if it is an issue as you say it is, then the issue applies to all platforms does it not? Flash memory is also much more expensive to include over a mechanical hard drive. Lets be honest, do you want a mechanical hard drive with moving parts in a portable console, which will be constantly shook whilst on the move along with more noise or would you rather the cheaper, much more reliable flash storage for a portable console with next to no noise? It is a design decision. It makes no sense to include a mechanical drive, and flash memory is expensive. Increase the flash memory, price goes up and people will kick up a fuss. Switch physical games do not install to the memory like PS4/XBO therefore the memory for gaming in general is not an issue. If you go completely digital, it can be an issue potentially, which you can just expand the memory the way you would on an PS4/XBO. Regardless, DLC does not take up anywhere near as much space as a full game would. Now, a completely physical Switch vs a completely physical PS4/XBO collection? The PS4/XBO will run out of memory extremely quickly. The point is, memory is an issue on all platforms so the fact people are complaining about it on the Switch makes no sense since chances are, they're fine with the lack of memory on other platforms. People like to complain i guess.
TheMadPolarBear you are missing the point here, dude. I do own and love switch but it doesn't change the fact that 32 GB for a gaming console is not enough. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 13.4 GB Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - 8.00 GB Dragon Quest Heroes I & II - 32.00 GB Nobunaga's Ambition - 5.00 GB when Monster hunter comes out, another 15 GB I guess? LOL Lets say these are the games I only play, and WILL NOT BUY ANOTHER GAMES IN FUTURE, it is already 74 GB . And you tell me that 32 GB would be enough? if you still insist, there is no point debating with you, no one is complaining, they are just stating the truth, looks like you are the one like to complain about the "complains"
That is hands down the fastest home console ever. You can put it to sleep, and then to start up the console and resume your game it takes what, 5 seconds in total? Bliss.
@@JOSHUAHEROO can you take your playstation or xbox with you on the go? Can you play the switch handheld and on the big screen? Offcause the other consoles is better but it is also way bigger. Switch is more like a laptop while the others are like a desktop pc.
Catridges are far more superior than discs. Hope they implemented this in next gen of consoles as well and also they should create a catridge drive for PC. Faster loading times, take less hardware space, more durable, more storage space, and the lack of installation. With this can cut unnecessary costs like they can reduce the hard disk storages since you are no longer installing games. Catridges are the past and the future everyone.
Panop the problem is they're so much more expensive to produce than optical disks, meaning ports from other consoles will most likely cost more on the Nintendo Switch and never less
Not if they continue to use this same speed they won't, I realize it is Nintendo we are talking about but oh my god are those loading times horrible. Maybe the fault is mine for expecting something a good deal faster from Nintendo, or gaming on a ssd has me spoiled. Back to gen 6 or 7 loading times i'll pass.
Thats easy to answer: Switch has around 80MB/s from MicroSD and Cartridges. Wii U only 20MB/s from Disc and a theoretical maximum of 60MB/s from USB 2 stick... . Some Wii U games like Xenoblade 2 and Zelda BotW do some workarounds by providing game data as downloads - otherwise they would be "uplayable" from disc...
its hard to compare them when WiiU requires a partial install on an hdd or internal memory and the game has graphical downgrades so it dosnt have to load as much.
I'd actually like a big massive analysis of the whole thing. How they handled draw distance, what kind of advanced effects they used, the lighting, AO used, etc. Physics too of course.
Exactly, HL2 was awesome back in 2004 so revolutionary. I bet that's why they haven't made HL3 yet.. nothing new that would be a huge upgrade to improve the game over havok.
I don't understand why it's disappointing. You wanted a cheap console you got one. People were complaining the Switch was too expensive for $300. Imagine if it was $350 to cover the cost of extra storage. It wouldn't sell. Nintendo doesn't like taking unnecessary losses. You're gonna have to get external memory anyway. Why not at launch? At least you get what you can afford.
32 GB internal storage with 25.9 GB of usuable space is a problem. If you've seen the tear down of the Switch, the memory module for storage is a modular piece; strongly suggesting Nintendo probably plans on releasing Switch consoles with bigger storage.
It won't be 50. It'll be 64, or if you count the OS, 57.9 Similarly, the next step from there will be 121.9 GB The space used up by the OS is constant unless they patch it to use more for some reason. I think we MAY at a stretch see 256 GB models by the end of the system's life, but that's it, given cost limits of flash memory...
I doubt 64GB storage would give you 57.9 available. 64GB will only be recognized as 59.6GB before including the OS. 32GB is actually 29.8GB. This is due to the way storage manufacturers define 1GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes, whereas a real GB (what the device counts as 1GB irrespective of manufacturer marketing definition) is 1,073,741,824 bytes. If only 25.9GB out of 29.8GB is available for use, then the OS takes up 3.9GB. So your 64GB model of the Switch would have 55.7GB available. 128GB model would have 115.3GB available. I don't see this model coming out for years if at all.
can you pls rerun the fps test with wifi disabled? would be cool......like some sources said fps drops are probably caused by the old "wifi" bug. it should be fixed next firmware update
heultdochalle I think the wifi bug referring to the very occasional 0fps spikes than the actual frame rate. I tested this myself and running through Kakariko wasn't any smoother, but the occasional skips stopped. Then again, I didn't have a frame rate counter so who knows.
Daxter You'd better go to channels that actually give a fuck about PCs, like Gamers Neuxs, instead of these "we pretend to care about every system!" channels which at the end only talk about PS4 game updates.
Matteo Squeri Well, they never were very technical on the PC side to begin with, mostly framerates and some graphical diferences when comparing systems, but after they started this "Pro saga" they probably saw where their core audience is (mostly PS fanboys) and now they're targetting them almost all the time. These Switch videos are just because the thing is the new dankest meme and they have to ride on the wave.
Secret Salad Society no, on ps4 pro and people that have analysed the game think that it runs at native 4K. Or a really really good checkerboard rendering because it literally isn't distinguishable
BuffaloBill how do you know for sure? Have you done an analysis yourself? And checkerboard rendering is far from "dogshit". It's a really useful technique that makes a game look almost indistinguishable from native 4K. If you sit at a normal distance from your TV it will literally look like native 4K. So I suggest you inform yourself better before you comment bullshit
Arseni Plotnikov Arseni Plotnikov If games were a film... Checkerboarding up to 4K would be as close to indistinguishable to the actual native resolution as it can get. However, with video games, that's not the case, because of the ghosting and artifacting that occurs due to the pixel reconstruction in every other frame.
The Switch's onboard storage chip exists on a physically separate board, proving that future SKUs with larger capacities are all but certain. Check out Ben Heck's teardown to see what I mean.
no, you got that wrong! cartridges were supposed to kill all loading times BEFORE the console was released. the same way the switch is more powerfull than the xb1, and on par with the ps4 pro! but here in the real world, its not that simple, of course, trying to explain that to fanboys who dont understand logic is a problem, so most of us just waited until it was released to show that in fact, the cartridges will only add cost to the games.
Marcos Danilo Nintendo are ass backwards when it comes to consoles these days. They're trying to rinse the mobile market. They saw potential with Pokemon Go and they're the types they're catering for.
I also expected cartridges to be much faster than that. It loads 30sec last gen content. I suspect it wouldnt beat other consoles if it was loading Witcher 3 assets
Cartridges have been loading since cartridges have been cartridges. You didn't notice the loading back in the day because there wasn't a lot being loaded. A Nintendo game would be less than a megabyte, where as now we have games 10 gigabytes plus. Like he said, if you are loading a small area like a shrine, the loading time is super quick. To load these big worlds it is a load on the system. An indie game like Blaster Master Zero is more like no visual loading besides when going to new worlds, and the only reason you know it's loading is they put the text there to tell you, they could of easily masked the loading with a small description of the world and we would of been none the wiser.
The SanDisk 64 GB Extreme Plus MicroSD-card is not a UHS-3 card. It is a UHS-I Speed Class 3 card. It uses the same UHS-I bus interface as the SanDisk 16 GB Ultra MicroSD.
Remember when everyone was bitching about df posting a bunch of ps4 pro videos? Don't see them bitching about nintendo switch videos. To clarify, I really enjoy both the switch content and the ps4 pro content. I like to be informed of any and all new content.
Everyone bithing about PS4 because it was continued a whole year and continues now. Switch on the other hand just came out. Therefore, your comparison is extremely erroneous and stupid.
Unlike all the marketers posing as reviewers who just rush their content out to grab first day clicks, I'd imagine that DF are doing their due dilligence and properly investigating why Ryzen results seem to be all over the place. Even the motherboard you test on seems to make a large difference, with some firmwares being a lot more mature than others (Asus' in particular seems to be a disaster right now).
Switch game cartridge is the slowest. And they taste horrible. FFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU- Oh well, it's 5 seconds. Not that bad, still going to buy games physically where possible and try not to think about how that 5 seconds every time adds up.
With even Digital Foundry calling it "cartridges", it will be harder and harder to explain people why these game cards are not quite the same thing as the oldschool carts. :(
Balazs Vasvari I remerber when we find out the Switch will use cards. I was talking to a guy who say how it will be fast load times like in the N64 days, I remerber telling him how the Switch cards will be more less modded SD card. He was like"no you are wrong they are not...". Yea in theory they can make ROM cards like in the N64 days but lets be real, they be really expesive to make
Golden rule of electronics: Bigger = Slower. That's really almost the only difference. Also, older consoles didn't usually do decompression like modern games, that has a huge impact on loading speed
They're not, game cards (or memory cards) are just storage, like disks (albeit fast), while cartridges are directly readable by the cpu / components. They're connected directly to the bus, and usually accessed by some paging mechanism that selects the visible range in case the capacity is larger than what the cpu can address.
DeadRedAssassin raising the internal storage would raise the price. This isn't the same dirt cheap memory on your computer or HDD on gaming consoles. It's the same flash memory on smart phones. As you can see with phones rasing from 32 - 64 add 100$.. from 64 to 128 another 100$ Nintendo could release a 64 GB 400$ switch later and a 500$ 128 GB as well.
Nintendo is not using magical internal storage it is simply a flash nand storage of 32Gb. They could easily have put a 64Gb version in the machine for only a few dollars more.
nintendo knows their fanbase isnt the brightest bunch, so they use the cheapest most outdated crap in their products. the 64 gb would have cost them less than a dollar per unit
Bit late here, but the newer version of the switch does allow direct data transfer from internal storage to SD card. I need to see if these results hold true with the newer processor swith
Was actually expecting a wider gulf between microSD and cartridge speeds. I knew beforehand that the internal storage was faster (in theory, it could possibly run at up to _400MB/s_, but I doubt it actually reaches that speed in practice), but the cartridges don't seem too bad in comparison to external storage.
64 or 128GB internal storage would have been a bit more reasonable but Nintendo probably just wanted to keep more profits on hardware as they usually do
The internal Flash is of best quality money can buy and as such expensive. Nintendo was very wise to let the consumer device how much storage is needed. And that storage will get cheaper as always. If Nintendo would have put in 64 GB people would have complained about not having 128 GB etc. etc. .
having 128gb would have brought the price up to around 400$. Why not make it cheaper for the consumer and let them upgrade the storage for less if they want to.
Thank you so much for this! I was about to buy a fancy A1 card thinking it would improve performance. I ended up getting a different cars for half the price
The small time difference isn’t worth the extra storage needed to me. I prefer a physical cartridge always. Botw is like 300MBs so a 16GB card will go a long ways...
worth testing with known tested high read/write speed SD cards. for example a 'cheaper' lexar 633x has very high read and write speeds that are required for dash cam devices, where higher class memory cards still fail to keep up in the same dash cam.
James Brown There has to be. Even very few SNES/N64 games had to load. The smaller the cartridge, the faster the loading times. Every console (cartridge or not) has loading times. Cartridge systems are so fast that it seems like they aren't there.
Only times there hasn't been load times on cartridge is when the system has the cartridge in the addressable memory space of the CPU, like the Commodore 64.
*spreading bad information?* the other consoles storage is worse.. you can only have 3-6 games.. in theory you can have near infinite on switch because they...... DON'T NEED TO INSTALL lol WTF people
+Bryan Fregoso, Cause many Sony fanboys forget that the Switch's games load as soon as the cartridge is popped in. Well they do have an update that keeps the game in its current version, you can just skip it and play the game if you want to try it out before deciding if it's worth it to keep and update it to its current version. It's actually really cool. I was surprised when I booted it back up from sleep mode and noticed that my games were still running, too. A PS4 can do the same, but it takes way longer to get to the game after booting it up from Sleep Mode.
Medachod thats actually pretty interesting; a good way for speedrunners to pick up the best patch with the most exploits to gain better times; good to have options. the problem is the OP is only going to make things worse and also most consoles can have an abnormal amount of games due to external harddrive support. Its just better off not to go on a tempertantrum and just state the misinformation. All consoles have their pros and cons. No need to bash others
Read some comments..
"These load times are horrible"...
Never played GTA5?
Only loading times on GTA Online is terrible.
Loading GTA 5 into online mode... Takes forever.
Or Sims 3 with expansion packs...and that game has two load times!
Its not about storage speed (GTA:O).... GTA V has server issues, you can have the fastest SSD and even install the game on RAM, it still would load slow.
@@samfkt Someone said it's because gta online uses peer to peer (p2p) connection instead of conventional servers which is both more primitive and cheaper and also slower
I expected that the NAND storage would be fastest. Faster bus speed due to being hard wired in and all. Also, the close transfer speeds in the two SD's were also expected. What I didn't expect was for game cards to be as far behind as they are though. Interesting. Thanks for running these tests!
It's great to finally have a definitive answer as to how fast of a micro sd card we need. Much appreciated.
Also, it's great to hear that when I want to upgrade my 32GB card to a bigger one, all I need to do is transfer the files over at my PC. That's a major plus for me.
Is there an up-to-date video you guys can make of these performance tests using the new Switch revision? Perhaps there is a higher cap now that supports UHS-3 speeds?
Yeah I love getting a look at the switch's tech thanks to this channel I'd love for updated vid too
The n64 in the past had virtually no loading times because the bus speed and ram speed were able to easily handle the 8, 32 or 64 megabyte data they were made to handle but as the generation of gaming increases the data load increases significantly but bus and ram speed hasn’t been significantly increased resulting in obvious loading times.
VERY insightful video!
You tried all the possibilities... the loading test to rule out the fact that savedata coming from internal storage could help was something I didn't even consider, even though it's something to account for... you guys were very thorough!
And at the second part of the video you reminded us everything about Switch's current state of game installs and savedata management... besides giving sound advice on the microSD purchase
Thanks a lot for the great effort!
I strongly prefer carts since they can be sold again. I had my PSN network account blocked once and all my digital purchases were locked, even offline games. Discs & carts can be played any time on any machine and have sell value. After I had my PSN account blocked, even if it was for just a few hours, I never bought any downloadable game that includes DRM. That also means no DLC that isn't included on-disc.
You sir just answered my question, the perhaps only significant reason to buy carts these days is to protect yourself from the weird "you bought the game but you don't actually own it" kinda vibe from buying digital... somebody else decides on how long your game will be supported and that sucks.
There is, at present time, no such thing as UHS-III. UHS-I and UHS-II are different bus formats, while U1 and U3 are minimum (not maximum) speed classes.
UHS-II is very uncommon and easily recognized by its use of additional pins (UHS-II cards have a second row of contacts).
So the Switch uses UHS-I, good to know, but I don't think we've heard anything on the Switch's max MicroSD read speed. Again, the U1/U3 ratings go by minimum and not maximum, so it is very possible for a lower rated card to be faster if the manufacturer was not willing to test and guarantee that speed would not dip. I would love to see someone test a wider variety of MicroSD cards, but it is good to know (although a little surprising) that a UHS-I card can keep up with a Switch cartridge.
Would have been interesting to throw in the Wii U version as well for comparison.
It's overall slower but not by that much because the game requires a 2GB install on the internal memory to accelerate loading times. Else it would be a few minutes.
Still would be interesting to have the numbers of Discs and this Cards.
Also they arnt the same when it comes to loading. Lower res, lower textures/sound fidelity, and i believe a lower draw distance.
textures and draw distance are indentical on both console, resolution doesn't affect loading time, so what's left is sound fidelity. Not that different
Would be interesting to see the Wii U version's load times compared between physical and download, even if not alongside those of the Switch, since the install would likely play a factor in it. Maybe even compare it to how slow it is running off a USB hard drive lol
Judging by teardowns the internal storage looks to be on a separate board that has a similar form factor (but not connector) to M.2/NVMe cards and is likely more closely coupled -- both the cartridge port and SD slot pass through an additional controller (the cart even seems to be buffered), so a speed bump on the internal storage isn't surprising.
But is there any difference in performance / streaming pop-ins between the configurations?
Probably not becasuse Switch games arent programmed for utilizing the fastest storage avaliable..... hell, even most PCs dont use the full potential of SATA SSDs (not to mention nVMEs).
@@samfkt Hopefully that changes starting from next year since the next gen consoles only allows SSDs for their next gen games.
@@themercifulguard3971 ssds only affect load times and very rarely affect FPS or performance.
@@leinardesteves3987 not true. They specifically chose fast SSDs to offset their relatively small RAM increase.
Look at Star Citizen and how the fps plummets on HDDs compared to SSDs
I dunno if there's connective tissue but this channel has a couple videos where they have super detailed info on performance and stuff using different clocks. Maybe you'll find it valuable but thought I'd share!
Very useful info. Going for high storage UH1 cards instead of faster ones will save us some money while giving us less (or equal) load times.
Great video!
NOW TIME TO DO SKYRIM!
sunsbookishgamesx FUS RO DAA
More like foo no duh its time to play skyrim
SD card and internal storage have the advantage of speed, but having to deal with space and downloads
while game card has the advantage of being plug and play with the disadvantage of a little longer load times, however, the difference is completely bearable, plus second hand market eliminates the need to wait for sales at which you may not have the money at the moment while with second hand market you decide when, and depending on your luck you may even found physical games brand new at a lower price than physical, I got Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for $50 instead of the $65 it costs in the eShop in my country, game cards is the way to go, as always, physical is the best way
I'm old school, I love hard copies. I just love collecting
same, I asked in a comment just now if there's any reason beyond intrinsic value these days. I wish I could choose to save games to their cartridges because it just.feels.right
Thank you DF! Detailed calm and clever explaining of situatuion as always !
I wonder then if the 64GB Internal Storage in the Switch OLED is any faster? Usually with Solid State storage, the bigger the storage size the faster it is. Would love to see some new tests using the OLED model!
@DigitalFoundry I want to thank you VERY much for this video. Last weekend, I received a Nintendo Switch as a gift, and was not aware of micro sd capability until I opened it. I had been racking my brain all week on what to do until now. Fortunately, I didnt receive a game with it, so now I can breathe easy knowing I can purchase a large capacity micro sd and go with downloads instead of carrying around game cartridges. Even though this video is old, it answered all of my questions and THEN some. THANK YOU again!!
Not being able to transfer data and game save data to and from, and between internal storage and memory card is a hindsight on Nintendo's part.
Hopefully they can fix that soon.
Its a odd thing not to include, but it is something they could easily add in the update, unless they are going to push cloud storage as one of their online services and limited save transfer to that..
+Legionari3, Nintendo did say they're considering cloud saves in a thing I read. I also read somewhere that the save transfers weren't there at launch cause of time constraints. Same with friends codes since they couldn't put in the username system. Nintendo spends so much time making games that they really do forget about their hardware issues at times.
I'm going to have to disagree with that, Nintendo is a large company they would have the resources to focus on the consoles OS and launch games simultaneously, the OS is quite bare even when compared to what was offered by the PS4 & XB1 with both allowed local and cloud transfers of saves and Even WiiU when it launched.
To go along with the launch line up is also very minuscule when again when compared to the PS4 & XB1 and even the Wii and WiiU.
I do like Nintendo some of the 1st party WiiU games are fantastic but you can't ignore these these issues and along with issues like the dock scratching the system to suggest the Switch was rushed..
xxnike629xx that's a very simple software fix.
Yeah, we finally have it.
This is fundamental question, thank Tom. We don't need deep analysis multiplatform game between devices. Give as just videos about resolution differences between PS4 model and content about recent exclusive games, good job DF. He cares about "face off" i'm sure not.
We need an updated video to show if A1, A2 rated cards improve the speed as its most likely the lower IOPS of the cards chosen that is holding it back from loading as fast as the internal storage.
Finally! I found a video that answered all of my technical storage and speed issues. Thank you very much sir! Greatly appreciated
Cartridges load close to sd and internal NAND storage. That's not disappointing at all! All of the options are fast, faster than spinning disks or platters
Router#bad actually no, load times are terrible compared to discs, Depends on game size as well, loading from an SD card is the worst possible way to load a game.
Disc are far slower than the newer SD cards that are available today. You are just flat out wrong.
Load times on Wii U (disk) are worst than the ones on the switch (using breath of the wild)
Mordecai R SD cards, or any stateless storage medium for that matter, have dramatically reduced seek times compared to discs and platters. Also, faster read times, better data streaming, etc etc. cost is the only area where optical media or magnetic media can compete.
No current console reads from disk anymore so that's not really an apt comparison
Why not test a slower micro SD card? 80MBps is fast for UHC1, something closer to 40-50MBps is closer to the norm for the cards that most people might be buying for their system. Walmart recently did a fire sale on Samsung Evo cards with 48MBps and I know hundreds of Switch owners bought them. They are far slower than the cards you tested.
Yeah, it would be very useful to know the difference in loading speed on a really cheap SD vs an expensive one... I'd happily pay way less for more storage, if it only gives me a second or two extra load times.
Because that would be too helpful for people like us that came here specifically for this data. hahaha
Best video on the topic I have found so far and I have watched quite a few. Results seem to show that there is no advantage of a U3 uhs-i over a U1 uhs-i yet strangely the official nintendo card is a U3
DF is always super helpful.
Please test switch frame rate using wifi vs wifi disabled.
ThoughT No point. Nintendo's fixing it in a week or so. The video would be outdated.
If they are fixing it in just a week, that's great. Although, wouldn't they want to test it now in order to use that footage to test if the patch actually made a difference after applied? It would be a missed opportunity not to.
ThoughT wifi effects the frame rate? I really want them to fix the fps drops in BOTW TV mode
Charlton Blake There are articles out there that explain that the Wifi constantly searching for other networks actually causes a decent amount of framerate issues. Going into airplane mode while in portable mode cleared up like 90% of my BOTW lag issues. It's crazy how much of a difference I noticed.
ThoughT I'm going to try this out. I haven't noticed many Frame Rate issues while portable, but I've had many FR issues while docked. Thanks for the tip.
You guys should make an updated version of this video including Nintendo Switch OLED, specially now that the Nintendo Switch is at the end of its lifecycle, and could also comment on possible Nintendo Switch 2 performance being so close to a future announcement. Discuss the the performance of current SDXC models on the newer hardware and more modern games, maybe even the upcoming SD Express products, such as Samsung's 256GB model coming summer 2024.
You should have done CrystalDisk trials on each of the SD cards to see what their purported Read/Write ratings are compared to their actual Read/Write ratings before doing these tests. Just because the box for the 16GB card said "Speed up to 80 MB/s" (which I'm assuming is an average Read speed, not Write speed), doesn't mean the card will actually deliver that performance.
You also should have used more cards in this test. A sample size of 2 is wayyy too small to make any definitive conclusions.
Yes, definitely. Would be interesting to see if one if a faster sd cards could get closer to the built in memory.
I was waiting for a comparison like this, great vid!
Thank you for answering the question I actually cared about
Thankyou for this doing this test! Your results seem to line up with other people's tests. On the Switch, Micro SD cards have a max speed of U1, and any SD cards with U3 speed will be lowered down to U1 speed.
I've noticed load times get worse with longer play times. I play right off the cartridge for BotW and don't download much games yet but would love it if Nintendo would give us the option to install the game to our systems even if we bought the cartridge version. Not sure if that is practical or not though just to save a few seconds per hour of gaming.
Thanks for comparing all four options and also doing it so detailed👍
Why is it surprising that the internal storage that was soldered directly onto the motherboard beat the sd cards?
Good point but its still fun to see that. Im actually intrested in cartridge vs sd so that was dope.
Have you seen how the NAND chip module looks on the switch? It has way more pins and datelines than the ones you can typically find on a micro sd card. This does not have to mean all of those additional datalines are for data transfer only, but I was assuming the internal memory would be the fastest because of that, which was proven to be true in this case
Here's a suggestion. Do a similar test, but instead test one or two of the above options docked vs undocked. Since the CPU/GPU is supposedly underclocked when on battery power, I wonder how that affects loading times. I'm under the impression that game data is heavily compressed these days. Compression would put more of the burden on the CPU instead of the storage I/O in this case.
Good point, asset decompression could be a bottleneck.
Your videos are so fascinating. Great work!
I prefer having a cartridge with no installation on my storage instead of 5 seconds faster loading times... 😂
***** I'll only buy small / indies games digitally like I Am Setsuna, Sonic Mania or Fast RMX, but I'll buy big games on cartridges ^^
I prefer being able to install and large collection of games on the console it self so I dont have to carry and bunch or cartridges around with me that could get lost, also 99% require patches these days so you will never be completely download/install free digital is games is where things are heading.
Thibaut Mahringer My iPhone has faster read/write speeds than the Nintendo switch. Like wtf I thought it was supposed to be a gaming console.
Inyene Udom Iphone launch price : 700$ or more, and the games on it are not that great, so yeah, fast loading times for games like Monument Valley. 😂 And cpu / gpu / ram wise, iPhone is less powerful than Switch. And less optimization too 😂
T'Challa I have a PS4 and PC they fit my main console/gaming needs the Switch is a portable and thats what Im using it as it and it performs that job better than using it as a home console which it is not.... Its a high end portable that can be hooked up to a TV....
Has this been updated for 2023? Plz
Stupid question, how exactly is storage a problem for the Switch? If the games do not require an install like the PS4/Xbox then surely it's only an issue for people that want to download the games? Otherwise all you'll use the storage for is save data, which 32GB is more than enough. You even have the option to upgrade with the SD cards.
I am genuinely interested to see what the issues are or are people just complaining to complain?
exactly, plus if they put more storage on the console the price would go up and then no one would buy it and Nintendo aren't prepared to do that
It's a good price considering you only spend one price and can play games directly. If you buy a PS4 you still need a HD TV or if you want to experience the best setting 4K on a PS4 pro. So that's 250+200-thousands in order to play.
With the switch I pay one price and I can play. I'm not confined to the living room/play room. If I move to a different country I don't have to worry about buying a new TV. Not everyone has the time to sit for hours in one sitting to play a game.
Also if a disaster happens, I can grab my switch and run. I can maybe grab my PS4 and run but my TV is going to be gone and I will need to buy a new HD TV before I can play PS4.
And this is first gen there will definitely be improvements and changes later. I think this is the way to go for console games.
TheMadPolarBear you already said the issue yourself ... YES people do download games and there may be DLC for games such as monster hunter, fire emblems, there will be tons of DLC, so 32gb is an issue, don't ask stupid question again lol
Except game sizes on the Switch are not as outrageous as they are on the PS4/XBO, where the stock 500GB drive is also useless? The fact remains that the 'lack of storage' if it is an issue as you say it is, then the issue applies to all platforms does it not?
Flash memory is also much more expensive to include over a mechanical hard drive. Lets be honest, do you want a mechanical hard drive with moving parts in a portable console, which will be constantly shook whilst on the move along with more noise or would you rather the cheaper, much more reliable flash storage for a portable console with next to no noise?
It is a design decision. It makes no sense to include a mechanical drive, and flash memory is expensive. Increase the flash memory, price goes up and people will kick up a fuss. Switch physical games do not install to the memory like PS4/XBO therefore the memory for gaming in general is not an issue. If you go completely digital, it can be an issue potentially, which you can just expand the memory the way you would on an PS4/XBO. Regardless, DLC does not take up anywhere near as much space as a full game would.
Now, a completely physical Switch vs a completely physical PS4/XBO collection? The PS4/XBO will run out of memory extremely quickly.
The point is, memory is an issue on all platforms so the fact people are complaining about it on the Switch makes no sense since chances are, they're fine with the lack of memory on other platforms. People like to complain i guess.
TheMadPolarBear you are missing the point here, dude. I do own and love switch but it doesn't change the fact that 32 GB for a gaming console is not enough.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 13.4 GB
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - 8.00 GB
Dragon Quest Heroes I & II - 32.00 GB
Nobunaga's Ambition - 5.00 GB
when Monster hunter comes out, another 15 GB I guess? LOL
Lets say these are the games I only play, and WILL NOT BUY ANOTHER GAMES IN FUTURE, it is already 74 GB . And you tell me that 32 GB would be enough? if you still insist, there is no point debating with you, no one is complaining, they are just stating the truth, looks like you are the one like to complain about the "complains"
Thanks for testing this. The results are not as interesting as I thought it would be, but still great to see
That is hands down the fastest home console ever. You can put it to sleep, and then to start up the console and resume your game it takes what, 5 seconds in total? Bliss.
And the weakest.
@@JOSHUAHEROO can you take your playstation or xbox with you on the go?
Can you play the switch handheld and on the big screen?
Offcause the other consoles is better but it is also way bigger.
Switch is more like a laptop while the others are like a desktop pc.
Excellent and very informative report DF. Keep up the good work.
Catridges are far more superior than discs. Hope they implemented this in next gen of consoles as well and also they should create a catridge drive for PC. Faster loading times, take less hardware space, more durable, more storage space, and the lack of installation. With this can cut unnecessary costs like they can reduce the hard disk storages since you are no longer installing games. Catridges are the past and the future everyone.
Panop the problem is they're so much more expensive to produce than optical disks, meaning ports from other consoles will most likely cost more on the Nintendo Switch and never less
Not if they continue to use this same speed they won't, I realize it is Nintendo we are talking about but oh my god are those loading times horrible. Maybe the fault is mine for expecting something a good deal faster from Nintendo, or gaming on a ssd has me spoiled. Back to gen 6 or 7 loading times i'll pass.
Very useful information at the end about how the Switch handles data management. Thank you for that.
if the cartridge is slowest, they should give the option to install it to internal memory, just requiring the cart is in the slot
10-15% slower than internal NAND is just fine for the game cards IMO.
You're gonna save about 5 seconds tops. It's not worth the trouble.
Its a very small difference and in most games on the switch you probably wont notice a difference.
If you wanna to instal a game why buy a card in the first place, you download it if you wanna to instal a game
+CodeNameZ But digital downloads are more expensive than physical copies. :(
Me playing Breath of the Wild for the first time in 2023 from cartridge.
They should check if it affects framerate since they said that, maybe, one of the framerate problems of BOTW could be the data stream.
Great presentation of the tests! Just what I needed to decide :) Thanks so much.
So how does Switch game card compare with Wii U disc load times?
4468 just timed it. Took around 40 seconds to load in from a save and 40 seconds to teleport to the great plateau.
4468 just timed it on my Wii U. Took around 40 seconds to load in from a save and 40 seconds to teleport to the great plateau.
Switch Cartridges are faster, slightly
Thats easy to answer: Switch has around 80MB/s from MicroSD and Cartridges. Wii U only 20MB/s from Disc and a theoretical maximum of 60MB/s from USB 2 stick... . Some Wii U games like Xenoblade 2 and Zelda BotW do some workarounds by providing game data as downloads - otherwise they would be "uplayable" from disc...
its hard to compare them when WiiU requires a partial install on an hdd or internal memory and the game has graphical downgrades so it dosnt have to load as much.
Best tech videos on youtube. Keep up the good work.
I was expecting cartridges to be faster than this like in the nes/snes/n64 days.
Has any of this changed recently? Especially with the release of the OLED Switch
it seems a little faster with the new 64gb internal, imo
@@Jean-jk4zv I noticed but wasn’t sure it was just me
DF, you could do a video about the physics in Zelda BOTW, that should be intresting
Great idea
I'd actually like a big massive analysis of the whole thing. How they handled draw distance, what kind of advanced effects they used, the lighting, AO used, etc. Physics too of course.
Nintendos youtube has answered some of those questions in their recent video, they based the scale of Kyoto
Ah right I have yet to watch those "Making Of" videos.
Exactly, HL2 was awesome back in 2004 so revolutionary. I bet that's why they haven't made HL3 yet.. nothing new that would be a huge upgrade to improve the game over havok.
Thank you. I've been waiting on this video
take it easy with the exclamation marks.
Lmao
excellent video, you guys are the best on youtube.
going by the load time nintendo must have bought the cheapest, slowest nand memory they can find at the shenzhen market
So can you move the game on the cartridge to a microsd?
I don't understand why it's disappointing. You wanted a cheap console you got one. People were complaining the Switch was too expensive for $300. Imagine if it was $350 to cover the cost of extra storage. It wouldn't sell. Nintendo doesn't like taking unnecessary losses. You're gonna have to get external memory anyway. Why not at launch? At least you get what you can afford.
With the release of Switch firmware Version 10.0.0, you can now transfer software data between the system memory and the SD card (and vice versa).
Better late than never huh? A much needed update for convenience.
Where is Wichard?
Great video as always. Would be interesting to see a difference in loading times for Zelda on Wii U from disc vs Switch from cart.
32 GB internal storage with 25.9 GB of usuable space is a problem.
If you've seen the tear down of the Switch, the memory module for storage is a modular piece; strongly suggesting Nintendo probably plans on releasing Switch consoles with bigger storage.
xxnike629xx I can't wait for a 50gb model ftw
It won't be 50. It'll be 64, or if you count the OS, 57.9
Similarly, the next step from there will be 121.9 GB
The space used up by the OS is constant unless they patch it to use more for some reason.
I think we MAY at a stretch see 256 GB models by the end of the system's life, but that's it, given cost limits of flash memory...
I doubt 64GB storage would give you 57.9 available.
64GB will only be recognized as 59.6GB before including the OS. 32GB is actually 29.8GB. This is due to the way storage manufacturers define 1GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes, whereas a real GB (what the device counts as 1GB irrespective of manufacturer marketing definition) is 1,073,741,824 bytes.
If only 25.9GB out of 29.8GB is available for use, then the OS takes up 3.9GB. So your 64GB model of the Switch would have 55.7GB available. 128GB model would have 115.3GB available. I don't see this model coming out for years if at all.
Great comparison and very informative video...
But these all still seem like relatively short load times regardless.
I'd love to see this test updated with the new revision switch and some pro extreme card included also some Samsung evo SD cards included.
Excellent video! You covered all the bases.
can you pls rerun the fps test with wifi disabled? would be cool......like some sources said fps drops are probably caused by the old "wifi" bug. it should be fixed next firmware update
is that english?
heultdochalle I think the wifi bug referring to the very occasional 0fps spikes than the actual frame rate. I tested this myself and running through Kakariko wasn't any smoother, but the occasional skips stopped. Then again, I didn't have a frame rate counter so who knows.
Excellent video packed with useful information. Thank you!
Why not show the Samsung SDXC PRO+ Memory Card 128GB?
95MB/s Read and 90MB/s Write
Because how you see at the test it wouldn't matter.
The Switch can't get any advantages out of the higher speed of the most expensive SD Cards.
This is a great video comparison. Thanks.
I thought the cartridge loading was slower than my micro sd card. Thanks for confirming it.
still no ryzen benchmarks? :(
They are probably waiting for AMD to fix all the issues.
bruh be bloody patient
Daxter You'd better go to channels that actually give a fuck about PCs, like Gamers Neuxs, instead of these "we pretend to care about every system!" channels which at the end only talk about PS4 game updates.
RaulDJ747 wasn't like this some months ago sadly :(
Matteo Squeri Well, they never were very technical on the PC side to begin with, mostly framerates and some graphical diferences when comparing systems, but after they started this "Pro saga" they probably saw where their core audience is (mostly PS fanboys) and now they're targetting them almost all the time. These Switch videos are just because the thing is the new dankest meme and they have to ride on the wave.
Great video straight to the point 👌
Still no Division 4K update analysis for the ps4 pro?
Arseni Plotnikov 4K on PS4? I would assume they just upscaled a smaller resolution to output on a 4K display, lmao
Secret Salad Society no, on ps4 pro and people that have analysed the game think that it runs at native 4K. Or a really really good checkerboard rendering because it literally isn't distinguishable
Arseni Plotnikov It's checkerboarded dogshit.
The end.
BuffaloBill how do you know for sure? Have you done an analysis yourself? And checkerboard rendering is far from "dogshit". It's a really useful technique that makes a game look almost indistinguishable from native 4K. If you sit at a normal distance from your TV it will literally look like native 4K. So I suggest you inform yourself better before you comment bullshit
Arseni Plotnikov Arseni Plotnikov If games were a film... Checkerboarding up to 4K would be as close to indistinguishable to the actual native resolution as it can get. However, with video games, that's not the case, because of the ghosting and artifacting that occurs due to the pixel reconstruction in every other frame.
The Switch's onboard storage chip exists on a physically separate board, proving that future SKUs with larger capacities are all but certain. Check out Ben Heck's teardown to see what I mean.
I thought cartridges were supposed to kill all loading times😥
no, you got that wrong! cartridges were supposed to kill all loading times BEFORE the console was released. the same way the switch is more powerfull than the xb1, and on par with the ps4 pro!
but here in the real world, its not that simple, of course, trying to explain that to fanboys who dont understand logic is a problem, so most of us just waited until it was released to show that in fact, the cartridges will only add cost to the games.
Marcos Danilo Nintendo are ass backwards when it comes to consoles these days. They're trying to rinse the mobile market. They saw potential with Pokemon Go and they're the types they're catering for.
Marcos Danilo switch is not as powerful as xbox lol
I also expected cartridges to be much faster than that. It loads 30sec last gen content. I suspect it wouldnt beat other consoles if it was loading Witcher 3 assets
Cartridges have been loading since cartridges have been cartridges. You didn't notice the loading back in the day because there wasn't a lot being loaded. A Nintendo game would be less than a megabyte, where as now we have games 10 gigabytes plus. Like he said, if you are loading a small area like a shrine, the loading time is super quick. To load these big worlds it is a load on the system. An indie game like Blaster Master Zero is more like no visual loading besides when going to new worlds, and the only reason you know it's loading is they put the text there to tell you, they could of easily masked the loading with a small description of the world and we would of been none the wiser.
The SanDisk 64 GB Extreme Plus MicroSD-card is not a UHS-3 card. It is a UHS-I Speed Class 3 card. It uses the same UHS-I bus interface as the SanDisk 16 GB Ultra MicroSD.
Remember when everyone was bitching about df posting a bunch of ps4 pro videos? Don't see them bitching about nintendo switch videos. To clarify, I really enjoy both the switch content and the ps4 pro content. I like to be informed of any and all new content.
sickcarnagerequiem yeah really. PS4 and Switch are just more relevant right now.
sickcarnagerequiem Well not all video are Switch video they do post PS4 video in between
Yeah, just a bunch of salty Nintendo fanboys.
I don't like salty fanboys. I prefer my Nintendo fanboys with fava beans and a nice chianti
Everyone bithing about PS4 because it was continued a whole year and continues now. Switch on the other hand just came out. Therefore, your comparison is extremely erroneous and stupid.
Nice test! thanks for that
Ryzen test in this year or you are waiting for Zen2?
I have to say that I gave up on this.
Atak Snajpera there are plenty of other people benchmarking them
Unlike all the marketers posing as reviewers who just rush their content out to grab first day clicks, I'd imagine that DF are doing their due dilligence and properly investigating why Ryzen results seem to be all over the place. Even the motherboard you test on seems to make a large difference, with some firmwares being a lot more mature than others (Asus' in particular seems to be a disaster right now).
Stupid charts of average frame rate by idiot youtubers and tech sites isn't the same as in-depth analysis by DigitalFoundry my dear friend phil.
why not just copy games from Micro SD card to internal storage if you want to run g ames off the internal Switch? Can you do that?
Switch game cartridge is the slowest. And they taste horrible. FFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-
Oh well, it's 5 seconds. Not that bad, still going to buy games physically where possible and try not to think about how that 5 seconds every time adds up.
What's the bandwidth for the cartridge slot? Perhaps in a couple of years faster cartridge will be available. Hopefully.
With even Digital Foundry calling it "cartridges", it will be harder and harder to explain people why these game cards are not quite the same thing as the oldschool carts. :(
Balazs Vasvari I remerber when we find out the Switch will use cards.
I was talking to a guy who say how it will be fast load times like in the N64 days, I remerber telling him how the Switch cards will be more less modded SD card.
He was like"no you are wrong they are not...".
Yea in theory they can make ROM cards like in the N64 days but lets be real, they be really expesive to make
Golden rule of electronics: Bigger = Slower.
That's really almost the only difference. Also, older consoles didn't usually do decompression like modern games, that has a huge impact on loading speed
I know in the 16-bit era compression was very important. These days it is encryption to stop piracy that slows down load times.
They are the same as old school carts. Juts more storage space. Both are solid state storage.
They're not, game cards (or memory cards) are just storage, like disks (albeit fast), while cartridges are directly readable by the cpu / components. They're connected directly to the bus, and usually accessed by some paging mechanism that selects the visible range in case the capacity is larger than what the cpu can address.
UHS-I Speed class 3 (cards marked U3) are not UHS-III.
great I have the cartridge lol
TheNastyBAGL does Fast RMX come in cartridge?....nope
Mordecai R I'd rather fucking die than play a straight line racing game for $20
Mordecai R Fast RMX size is around 900 MB. No problems with keep on internal memory
Funny since its not straight.... actually go in more directions then conventional racers... Dill pickle..
I wish it did though.
Great test thanks for doing this. It really helps us out!
Well that makes the very limited internal storage even more disappointing
DeadRedAssassin raising the internal storage would raise the price. This isn't the same dirt cheap memory on your computer or HDD on gaming consoles.
It's the same flash memory on smart phones. As you can see with phones rasing from 32 - 64 add 100$.. from 64 to 128 another 100$
Nintendo could release a 64 GB 400$ switch later and a 500$ 128 GB as well.
Nintendo is not using magical internal storage it is simply a flash nand storage of 32Gb. They could easily have put a 64Gb version in the machine for only a few dollars more.
logirex no, according the spec sheet the speed is at 400MB/s that's about as fast as an SSD and SSD isn't a "few dollars" more.
lana delrey yeah like the iPhone. I couldn't imagine how the hater gonna react if Nintendo decide to price their switch like this.
nintendo knows their fanbase isnt the brightest bunch, so they use the cheapest most outdated crap in their products. the 64 gb would have cost them less than a dollar per unit
Bit late here, but the newer version of the switch does allow direct data transfer from internal storage to SD card. I need to see if these results hold true with the newer processor swith
As expected, a Digital Foundry episode about the Switch has a cancerous comment section.
it's so awful.
Was actually expecting a wider gulf between microSD and cartridge speeds. I knew beforehand that the internal storage was faster (in theory, it could possibly run at up to _400MB/s_, but I doubt it actually reaches that speed in practice), but the cartridges don't seem too bad in comparison to external storage.
64 or 128GB internal storage would have been a bit more reasonable but Nintendo probably just wanted to keep more profits on hardware as they usually do
The internal Flash is of best quality money can buy and as such expensive. Nintendo was very wise to let the consumer device how much storage is needed. And that storage will get cheaper as always. If Nintendo would have put in 64 GB people would have complained about not having 128 GB etc. etc. .
having 128gb would have brought the price up to around 400$. Why not make it cheaper for the consumer and let them upgrade the storage for less if they want to.
WayStedYou like any company? LOL
at 532p?
They almost shipped it with 2gb ram...
Thank you so much for this! I was about to buy a fancy A1 card thinking it would improve performance.
I ended up getting a different cars for half the price
The small time difference isn’t worth the extra storage needed to me. I prefer a physical cartridge always. Botw is like 300MBs so a 16GB card will go a long ways...
Botw is 13gb.
Pfff.. 300mb? Just where did you get your information...
Faine212 from my switch...
UltimateDebate Reviews that’s prob your save file lol
worth testing with known tested high read/write speed SD cards. for example a 'cheaper' lexar 633x has very high read and write speeds that are required for dash cam devices, where higher class memory cards still fail to keep up in the same dash cam.
Wait...so there are load times on the cartridge
James Brown
there always has been loading times on cartridges, we just never noticed em on tiny nes and snes games 😅
James Brown There has to be. Even very few SNES/N64 games had to load. The smaller the cartridge, the faster the loading times. Every console (cartridge or not) has loading times. Cartridge systems are so fast that it seems like they aren't there.
Only times there hasn't been load times on cartridge is when the system has the cartridge in the addressable memory space of the CPU, like the Commodore 64.
James Brown yes, cartridges always had load time.
James Brown Street Fighter Alpha 2 in SNES. Look it up!
Excellent content. Thank you!
*spreading bad information?*
the other consoles storage is worse.. you can only have 3-6 games.. in theory you can have near infinite on switch because they......
DON'T NEED TO INSTALL
lol WTF people
Cole Longó why are you angry?
+Bryan Fregoso, Cause many Sony fanboys forget that the Switch's games load as soon as the cartridge is popped in. Well they do have an update that keeps the game in its current version, you can just skip it and play the game if you want to try it out before deciding if it's worth it to keep and update it to its current version.
It's actually really cool. I was surprised when I booted it back up from sleep mode and noticed that my games were still running, too. A PS4 can do the same, but it takes way longer to get to the game after booting it up from Sleep Mode.
Cole Longó i have over 100+ games installed on my ps4 wtf are you on about?
Medachod thats actually pretty interesting; a good way for speedrunners to pick up the best patch with the most exploits to gain better times; good to have options. the problem is the OP is only going to make things worse and also most consoles can have an abnormal amount of games due to external harddrive support. Its just better off not to go on a tempertantrum and just state the misinformation. All consoles have their pros and cons. No need to bash others
Waiting 4 seconds extra on a larger SD card is a small sacrifice.