Micro SD or USB?

[Bianchi789]

i play neverwinter on my notebook off of a USB right now, and it seems a little laggy at times, probably my connection, does anyone know if the response time would increase off of a micro sd?
thanks

 

[rgd1101]

you mean the game is on the usb?

 

[Alabalcho]

On most (all?) laptops, SD cards are connected internally to USB. So, you need fast (Class 10) SD card, or fast USB drive. But if the game makes frequent disk requests, it will be "laggy" whatever you do.

 

[IInuyasha74]

Well it depends. If you have it installed on an USB card it might. There are a lot of unknowns here.
First, if the USB flash drive is just a really slow poor performance drive then you might benefit from upgrading. You should download Crystal Disk Mark and do a test.

Also the type of port is important. There are USB 1.1, 2.0, and 3.0 ports common. 1.0 ports are rather rare, and 1.1 aren't super common but if your PC is a few years old it could be. There are speed limits on these, I don't know how slow 1.1 is, but USB 2.0 usually can't do more than 45Mbps, and 3.0 can do I think 300Mbps is the limit. Without the right flash drive, this won't help anyways, but trying a different port could possibly help.

Now to get to SD Cards. They are just as many unknowns. SD Card Readers usually are connected to the motherboard by USB, even in laptops they are hard wired as USB ports often. Typically USB 2.0.
The SD Cards have speed ratings from Class 1 - UHS-1. Its not as confusing as it sounds though.
Class 1 - 1Mbps
Class 2 - 2Mbps
Class 3 - 3Mbps
etc.
Class 10 - 10Mbps
UHS-1 - More than 10Mbps.

So it is actually more common an SD Card would be slower, but if you have a low performance USB drive that gets only around 10Mbps, and if you have the latest and fastest style of card reader in your laptop, SDXC, and if you buy an SD Card that has UHS-1 speed then yes it could potentially do up to twice as fast performance of the USB drive.

However, that is a lot if "if"s. If your USB drive even gets 20Mbps on the test, then it is doing as good as an SD card can possibly do and switching won't help.

 

[Bianchi789]

Well it depends. If you have it installed on an USB card it might. There are a lot of unknowns here.
First, if the USB flash drive is just a really slow poor performance drive then you might benefit from upgrading. You should download Crystal Disk Mark and do a test.

Also the type of port is important. There are USB 1.1, 2.0, and 3.0 ports common. 1.0 ports are rather rare, and 1.1 aren't super common but if your PC is a few years old it could be. There are speed limits on these, I don't know how slow 1.1 is, but USB 2.0 usually can't do more than 45Mbps, and 3.0 can do I think 300Mbps is the limit. Without the right flash drive, this won't help anyways, but trying a different port could possibly help.

Now to get to SD Cards. They are just as many unknowns. SD Card Readers usually are connected to the motherboard by USB, even in laptops they are hard wired as USB ports often. Typically USB 2.0.
The SD Cards have speed ratings from Class 1 - UHS-1. Its not as confusing as it sounds though.
Class 1 - 1Mbps
Class 2 - 2Mbps
Class 3 - 3Mbps
etc.
Class 10 - 10Mbps
UHS-1 - More than 10Mbps.

So it is actually more common an SD Card would be slower, but if you have a low performance USB drive that gets only around 10Mbps, and if you have the latest and fastest style of card reader in your laptop, SDXC, and if you buy an SD Card that has UHS-1 speed then yes it could potentially do up to twice as fast performance of the USB drive.

However, that is a lot if "if"s. If your USB drive even gets 20Mbps on the test, then it is doing as good as an SD card can possibly do and switching won't help.

that was incredibly helpful, ill do some digging when i have the time and decide what to do, unfortunately i have very little space on my HDD for the game
thanks a lot!

 

[IInuyasha74]

Glad to help. The Crystal Disk Mark, and the model of your laptop will probably give all the information needed, but its likely that even if your flash drive is slow that buying a faster flash drive would help more than an SD Card.

Also, you could just buy a larger HDD.