SanDisk Extreme III Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo Caught Speeding at 30MBps

[wraggster]

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/4/2008/05/thumb160x_ExtremeIIIMSPDHG8GB.jpg

SanDisk has unchained their new Extreme III PRO-HG Duo cards and they are tearing ass all over the place with superfast 30MBps read and write transfer speeds. For those of you keeping track, SanDisk's non-HG Extreme III's can only muster 18MBps speeds. Naturally, the PRO-HG will be aimed squarely at users with high end cameras and camcorders who don't mind dropping $90 and $150 on a 4GB or 8GB card. Available starting in June.

http://gizmodo.com/394060/sandisk-extreme-iii-memory-stick-pro+hg-duo-caught-speeding-at-30mbps

[noname1]

Is the psp slim compatible with this great speed?

[myuusmeow]

:rofl: Target sells 4GB normal Sony MemorySticks for $90!

[juiceface]

heh and the 16mb stick is $300 , rip off

[Veskgar]

Wow, I was thinking of getting Sandisk's Ultra II 8GB but now I may want this instead.

So I'll be another one to ask. Will this work with the PSP and will the PSP be able to utilize these impressive read/write speeds? I know this won't make a huge difference but it would let large ROMS load up faster and maybe eliminate lag in some .CSO compressed PSP games.

Either way, its great to see continued advances in memory stick technology.

[ab88]

So I'll be another one to ask. Will this work with the PSP and will the PSP be able to utilize these impressive read/write speeds? I know this won't make a huge difference but it would let large ROMS load up faster and maybe eliminate lag in some .CSO compressed PSP games.

No

The psp can read/write at speeds below 10MBps if I remember correctly.
That's why there is no noticeable difference in using a "high speed" sandisk in contrast with a "regular" one.
The only advantage would be write speeds if you were to use a card reader that supported those speeds (most USB 2.0 ones).

[mike_jmg]

Nice, I want one of those, I was thinking about geting a 8 Gb memory stick, now it'll transfer files faster

[Veskgar]

No

The psp can read/write at speeds below 10MBps if I remember correctly.
That's why there is no noticeable difference in using a "high speed" sandisk in contrast with a "regular" one.
The only advantage would be write speeds if you were to use a card reader that supported those speeds (most USB 2.0 ones).

Thanks for that. With the release of this, it should hopefully push the price of the 8GB Ultra II down even more. Since 30MBS speeds wouldn't be utilized to the fullest on the PSP, the Ultra II will be just fine.

[masterchief929]

wow, thats amazing. too bad i wouldn't have a use for something like this ;)

[alanparker05]

It's not going to be any faster than the ultra II on the psp but i'll bet a lot of people buy one then try to convince themselves and everyone else it is better i just hope people have the sense not to buy this just because it's the latest and best thing

[Art]

I have a feeling the PSP could take advantage f the speed in USB mode,
since the USB controller is a separate device.

[bah]

Art: I didn't notice any increase in speed from a regular blue sandisk to an Ultra II.

Card readers write to ultra II (and possibly standard cards) quicker than the PSP, so I doubt you would see any benefit at all with the PSP as USB mass storage connected to a PC or with the PSP itself.

[tttyyyyyyyy]

Oh my....

I'd recommend a 8GB microSDHC Card and an adaptor to MSPD instead of a high-priced MSPD...at least thats what I've done...

[fpcreator2000]

It is all good, but the main question has not been answered, do 8GB memory sticks work with the PSP (any version)?

From my research, it seems Dark_Alex created an SE plug-in that adds this ability along with improvements with others, but I'm not 100% sure.

[Murdock]

Although I haven't tried an 8 GB memstick in my PSP since they became cheaper only in the past few months, I have read months ago that 8 GB Memsticks work in the PSP ... there was an update in one of the 3xx Firmwares by $ony and Dark and his crew made it available in the CFW, too ...

Anyway ... all these high speed Sticks are of no use for us ... and not for most of the ppl. out their, either ... why?

Well ... 90 % of the card readers I've had the pleasure to work with support fast speeds ... the cheap ones hardly can offer a speed that even uses 100 % of the normal cards' standard speed. U can see the differences if u take an ordinary 10 - 15 EUR non-name drive and compare it to a more expensive one made by a well-known company ... huge differences, even with standard flash chips.

I do not know how fast a PSP can write on those sticks, but since a freakin' 500 MB game takes an eternety longer to be writen via USB cable and PSP compared to my built-in laptop card writer by Acer, I somehow doubt that it can be even close to "high speed" ...

Sad, but true ...

But we should all keep in mind that the PSP was never made to write with very fast speeds ... the only huge load of data it may be meant to copy were ~ 500 MB movie files ... not 1,5 GB games or even 3 or 4 of them :)

[tttyyyyyyyy]

I can confirm that a microSDHC 8GB card does work in my PSP (phat, 3.71M33-4, 1.50 Kernel addon) without any problems.

[wwboy]

really cool but to expensive

[Dunpeal1978]

I can confirm that a microSDHC 8GB card does work in my PSP (phat, 3.71M33-4, 1.50 Kernel addon) without any problems.

But as far as I know the card you have can only go up to a Class 4 (4mb minimum read write time). What class is your card (it will say on the actual card with a 2,4,or 6 in a circle)?I uploaded a memory stick tester.I'd appreacite it if you would test your card and post the results in this thread,since I already have a 4gb microSDHC class 2 and it is so slow I cant play homebrew or emulators

[tttyyyyyyyy]

But as far as I know the card you have can only go up to a Class 4 (4mb minimum read write time). What class is your card (it will say on the actual card with a 2,4,or 6 in a circle)?I uploaded a memory stick tester.I'd appreacite it if you would test your card and post the results in this thread,since I already have a 4gb microSDHC class 2 and it is so slow I cant play homebrew or emulators


My card is class4.

[blackSPEED v2 log]
Vendor : _insert vendor_
Product name : _insert name_
Product ID : _insert id_
Total Space: 7775.297 MiB (8152989696 Bytes)
Free Space: 912.578 MiB (956907520 Bytes)
Cluster Size : 4.0 KiB (4096 Bytes)

read : 6.5672 MiB/sec (Blocksize 1024.0k)
write : 6.3600 MiB/sec (Blocksize 1024.0k)
read : 5.8824 MiB/sec (Blocksize 32.0k)
write : 5.9052 MiB/sec (Blocksize 32.0k)
read : 2.2214 MiB/sec (Blocksize 2.0k)
write : 1.1296 MiB/sec (Blocksize 2.0k)
read : 0.7737 MiB/sec (Blocksize 0.5k)
write : 0.3305 MiB/sec (Blocksize 0.5k)
PI: 354

It might be possible to speed things up by using 8kb clusters instead of 4kb on a 8gb-card thus reducing the FAT-table from 8MB to 4MB (if i recall correctly)...
...but maybe thats just plain wrong, i dunno...

How would a slow card not let you play homebrew?

did u try to speed up your 4gb stick by formatting it to fat16 with a 64kb cluster size?

[Dunpeal1978]

I read about speeding it up by formatting it as FAT,but your saying if I format it as FAT16 it will be even faster?

[tttyyyyyyyy]

partitions >2gb will by deafault be formatted to FAT32 with 4kb cluster size. the trick is to format it to FAT16 (mostly referred to as just FAT) wich uses a deafault cluster size of 32kb thus marking 2GB as the max partition size. However, you can use a 4GB card with FAT16 by explicitly specifing a cluster size of 64kb.

i still dont understand how a slow card could prevent you from playing homebrew?

[alanparker05]

partitions >2gb will by deafault be formatted to FAT32 with 4kb cluster size. the trick is to format it to FAT16 (mostly referred to as just FAT) wich uses a deafault cluster size of 32kb thus marking 2GB as the max partition size. However, you can use a 4GB card with FAT16 by explicitly specifing a cluster size of 64kb.

i still dont understand how a slow card could prevent you from playing homebrew?

it does'nt prevent you from playing homebrew it just means the card is too slow to play game iso's and the more memory intensive homebrew apps

[tttyyyyyyyy]

I konw and that sounds plausible, but


I already have a 4gb microSDHC class 2 and it is so slow I cant play homebrew or emulators

thats why I asked...nevermind

And to stay offTopic =)
Because I didn't find much helpful information on the internet on how to treat a 8GB card for best performance in a PSP, I just tried and formatted my card with FAT32 and a 32kb cluster-size (instead of 4kb wich is the default value for FAT32).
I might be wrong, but this IMHO should result in a 8 times smaller FAT-table and therefore significantly reduce the parsing time of the file system (directory listings for instance). After all, the prcedure of increasing the cluster size is reported to work in speeding up 4GB cards...
So formatted my card I did and I'ld recommend it to any 8GB card owner. Though no speedup is noticalble in regard to loading and saving times, but (and that was my point) the wake-up procedure from sleep mode to IRShell for instance which took ~2 annoying seconds before, now takes a mere fraction of a second. Also the initial directory view in IRShell is MUCH faster and over all the card 'feels' much more responsive (also in XMB) when reading directory indexes...

Everyone with 8GB card should give this a try i think. Would be nice to know if someone can confirm my observations...

[Art]

Yeah the 8Gb MSPD definitely works when DAX's patch is applied.
I got one.

[Dunpeal1978]

@tttyyyyyyyy

So basically to sum up your advice,you're say that it's possible to format any memory card as FAT16 system (mostly referred to as just FAT); which has a larger cluster size than the default NTFS FAT32 system which has a smaller cluster size.

Before we go any further,I'll list the system clusters to make sure we're on the same page.

FAT32 formats 2GB partitions with 4 kb clusters
FAT16 (FAT) formats 2GB partitions with 32kb clusters

But,in your own test you formatted your microSDHC 8GB class 4 with FAT32 and 32kb clusters.And that made your card more responsive.

Well,please tell me how you changed the default cluster size in the formatting process.A small tutorial would be helpful.Thanks in advance tttyyyyyyyy