RolStoppable said:
Soundwave said:
Those are still slow as shit, do you own research. Micro SD Cards are an incredibly dated format it doesn't matter who makes the card. 150MB/sec (and you don't even get that speed) in today's day and age is laughable.
Nintendo is probably going have to change something because if the Switch 2 has more RAM than the Switch 1 (which is almost 100% a given), the loading times that are already pretty bad on the Switch are going to get worse if you just stick to slow ass SD Cards and flash storage from 2010. 150MB/sec to fill an 8GB main memory would take 53 seconds, that's absurdly slow, if the Switch 2 has 12GB or 16GB it's even worse.
Even UFS 2.2, which is ancient and dirt cheap used in budget smartphones for the market in China/India is way faster than an SD Card or the current Switch cartridges. I think Nintendo will change that up to faster flash storage. UFS 2.2 is 1200MB/sec versus an SD Card, even a more expensive "pro" SD Card tops out at like 190MB/sec.
I can't see Nintendo sticking with the current data speeds they have now, so if the Switch 2 uses even dirt cheap, old ass UFS 2.2, that's going to be a massive speed boost over the Switch 1 flash storage which was already faster than SD Cards. In layman's terms, take a look at this loading time:
(video)
For Switch 2, even using UFS 2.2 (again a very dated/cheapo flash storage), that loading time for the internal storage would easily be 5x-8x faster, so like the whole point of "well you can just buy a cheap SD Card!" doesn't come close to telling the whole story. An SD Card is slow as fuck and while it can (barely) keep up with the Switch 1's internal storage, Switch 2 will almost certainly destroy an SD Card in a comparison like above, so in your scenario you claim the person who bought the SD Card was super smart, but they'll be sitting waiting 40-60 seconds waiting for their game to load, while if Switch 2 uses any kind of modern flash storage ... they will be playing that same game within 5-8 seconds if that. Again, you get what you pay for, SD Cards are cheap for people who don't have money, but that's about it. A Switch 2 with more internal flash storage even at 1200MB/sec is going to blow the socks off any SD Card and would easily be worth $50 more going from 64GB to 256GB, that's bordering on a steal frankly.
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All this sounds like Nintendo would have to follow a PS5-like solution where the internal storage is small in comparison to the size of the games and a constant deletion and reinstallation of games is mandatory. People buy HDDs as external storage for the PS5 to keep their games on, then have them be copied over to the SSD from which they play them.
And in this case it would once again be pretty pointless to shell out money for more internal storage for the people who need a lot of space to begin with. They require external storage in any case, so the cheaper console SKU remains the smart way to go.
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You don't really need something as expensive as the PS5's hyper fast internal storage. Sure it is nice, and actually makes more sense for a portable machine, but Sony is also using that speed to do things like using the SSD as almost like a RAM buffer/pool in some games, since it's so fast it can operate almost like system RAM. I'm not even sure how many games even use that but that was their idea.
Nintendo will easily be able to get something many times faster than the existing flash memory in Switch 1 without needing a solution like that.
Flash storage speeds in mobile devices have come a long, long way since 2015-16 because of all the competition in the smartphone space, as I said Nintendo could use something cheap like UFS 2.0-2.2 flash storage, but even UFS 2.2 can give you like 800MB-1000MB/sec, the current Switch internal flash storage is probably around 100-120MB/sec, so that would be several times faster.
UFS 2.0-UFS 2.2 is what's used in no-name budget smartphones, so we're not talking about bleeding edge tech here at all, it debuted I think in the Samsung Galaxy S6 ... which is a phone from 2015, today no flagship phone uses it because UFS 3.0, UFS 3.1, and now UFS 4.0 are available.
EDIT: The Switch 1 uses eMMC 5.1 internal flash storage it looks like, ... which is what smartphones used to use like pre-2015, you can see how much faster even UFS 2.1 is here (keep in mind an SD Card is slower than even eMMC 5.1):
Last edited by Soundwave - on 06 September 2023
