Video: Do Faster Micro SD Cards Actually Improve Load Times On Switch?

can someone just tell me? I feel like this is either a yes or no, and not need a video explanation.

@Radbot42 I was thinking the same thing.

Summary: Yes they load faster, but the difference is max a few seconds. On the total loading time you save around 5% of time.
UHS2 is not worth it because the Switch doesn't support it.

I used to run Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze on the Wii U from a Flash USB stick.
lol
it took like a week to load

Come on Nintendo, announce the Super Switch already to ease the Bank Holiday barrel scraping!

I can't think of any Switch game in my collection where the loading time bothers me. The dark days of Lego City Undercover on the Wii U appear to be a thing of the past, and when I compare any of the games I play on the Switch to the loading times of Marvel Avengers on my PS4 Pro, I really don't see this as a problem in need of a solution at present.

@Radbot42 yes but only a little bit, the speed of the card is no real difference as the Switch itself is by far the biggest bottleneck when it comes to loading times

So I did everything right with my 400GB from San Disk. Thank you

The actual bottleneck is the Switch's CPU, which was kinda old to begin with (IIRC the Cortex-A57 was announced in 2014 and was made commercially available in 2015) and is becoming increasingly dated as we speak.

I'm not too bothered about loading times on the Switch tbh. I imagine the decrease in loading times is minimal as otherwise it'd be more widely known.

@Radbot42 Right? I hate when articles do that.

"Hey we have this question that needs to be answered! Will we ever answer it? Well, watch this entire video to find out!!!"

Is it yes or no? Just tell me and let me decide if I want to slog through a video afterwards. No need for the click bait.

Quality/reliability is way more important than read/write speed... unless you are recording extremely high resolution and bit-rate video, then you need both.

@westman98
It has artificial bottlenecks put in place to prevent external storage from having huge speed increases other internal or carts, we’ve seen similar measures on Xbone and PS4 where SSDs never had more than 40-50% leads at best over HDD with 25-30% leads being typical, even with PS5’s BC PS4 games still seem to have a bottleneck put in place so they never take full advantage of the insane speeds of the internal SSD.

The answer for these is always "it depends". The card reader and memory bus on the Switch is the max it'll ever get. So the super speed cards won't help. BUT, the cheap and unreliable cards can run much slower than the standard cards. I bought a cheap off-brand card for my 3DS and played Monster Hunter 4 from it, and when it would save my game, It would take 3 to 4 minutes. Replacing it with a more standard card solved it.

@jump x3

@RupeeClock
Seem to remember a video comparing external vs internal vs cartridge a year or so ago.
I think that the result was Internal storage> Cartridge> External Storage.

Would've been nice to see a few other brands compared with the Sandisk, like a genuine Kingston/ Integral/ Toshiba card.

I imagine there are plenty of new people to the Switch that may ask.

Videobait. N'ah thanks.

@6thHorizon Right? Plus, Sandisk has been incredibly unreliable for me, the past few years. I’ve been having much better luck with western digital. More comparisons would have been great.

Wasted my money on 256 GB Sandisk Extreme.. should opt for 400 GB Sandisk Ultra instead.. oh well

Some people love to watch video comparison as proof.. I appreciate it and would benefit new user as well. Thanks NL

I wonder what's the speed of Switch internal memory...probably not that fast...

@westman98 It's definitely old tech but I'm always amazed at how good Nintendo titles look (and certain 3rd party titles).

With the major jumps in performance ARM/Mobile chips are seeing, I really hope Nintendo waits another 2-3 years before upgrading the Switch so we can fully realize those gains. 5nm or 3nm should be what the next Switch launches on imo.

@jrb363
Switch Pro is coming very soon, but yes, a Switch 2 should be expected to adopt 5nm/3nm manufacturing process.

@JohnnyC the worst loading times I’ve come across are on little nightmares. It makes it very unenjoyable to play. Between every death is like a couple minutes of loading or more it feels like. So bad.

@Grim This might be why I'm ignorant of the problem. Switch exclusives (the ones I've played) haven't had loading times that cause me any concern, and generally I get multi-format titles on PS4 due to that system having larger memory and the games generally running better. The multi-format games I do have on Switch (Minecraft, Ori, Street Fighter, NFS Hot Pursuit are examples I can think of) have generally been ok for loading times though.

come on, who would buy a brand like Adata ?
there are only 3 brands to consider, Sandisk, Samsung and Lexar, period

This comparison would've been much better if there was a comparison to those over-priced Nintendo-licensed Sandisk microSDs. If those were put up against regular Sandisk cards, then I would truly take this comparison into account.

Another solution is to have a mindless mobile game handy. Load a new track in a racing game = 3 or 4 shots on Brick Breaker. Load a Minecraft save from cold boot = 3 or 4 entire levels!

@Radbot42
Especially when it's Alex ...

I'm so accustomed to slow load times on everything, especially when it comes to playing Smash online.😆

@CodyMKW

Uhm… I always have.

I hate load times.

My favorite thing about my PS5 (when playing native games) is how fast everything loads. Returnal loads almost instantaneously. Control, a game with really bad load times on PS4 and Xbone, loads in about four seconds when loading a saved game.

@Miu

Im running a Samsung Evo Select 256 gig.

Hasn’t given me any issues. And it was pretty cheap even at the time I got my Switch (December 2019)

I’ve had the “SANNEW” card since early 2018 and it’s been perfect for me and all the games I have stored: the right amount of memory. it’s nice to know that it was the fastest performer in this video comparison.

I paid a little over a $100 back in early 2018 for the 400GB card but I’m sure you can find a much better deal nowadays.

No idea I'm physical only.

@MJF I still have WiiU with 40 games on uSB stick. Load times are very quick. faster than from original optical disk. I got lexar 256GB USB 3.0 stick

TL, DR: Don't buy ultra-expensive UHS-II cards, or ultra-cheap shady ones.

Also, has anyone had experience with the different brands? SanDisk hasn't been too reliable for me, while my current 256GB Lexar is doing just fine.

@TheRedComet My biggest reason to buy PS5 is to play PS4 games.. lol. Faster loading times and longer DualSense's battery life when we play PS4 games there. You're lucky one!

I do say us human in general can't perceive sd card performance regardless of how much we think we know. Alot want to think we know load time vs access time on a solid state memory is fooling ourselves because the industry saying we can tell but that is a fool's game. The one smarter is the industry telling us to buy faster card is faster access when human can't tell ms or ns access times. For OD you can see because it hardware running but anything chips or solid state you are fool harder if you think you can tell the differences. This is because it's in there bottom line $$$ that's what matters to them.

@SalvorHardin imagine how much extra we pay for that research & implementation on those consoles,,too. I think the consoles would be better for everyone without this limitation, but they think it will cost them money, otherwise, i guess....

@themightyant thank you fot the info. I deliberately don't click on videos when i find out these types of things. I always search the comments first to find out. If it's something i do watch for whatever reason, i will go to comments sections & answer the clickbait headline questions, too.

@mobor I use an external HD and it's fine now.