poor SDcard performance on Asus ALLY ROG watch out.

RasmusDC · June 16, 2023

just bought a Samsung Pro A2 card a 120MB/160MB testet card 512GB NOT the UHSII protocol so i guess a card like that would maybe perform better.

card tests perfectly in everything else i have but in the Ally it is slow.. 60 MB/SEC Write (PEAK) and 90MB/sec read (PEAK) and slow low size files even though it should be a high IOPS card 4500+

from what i can read it is a poor controller used on the card reader, something with not being a DDR200, but nomatter.. don´t go buying expensive SD cards, and use the SD card slot for simple things.. not big games, because it is simply two slow.

m9x3mos · June 18, 2023

On 6/16/2023 at 2:59 PM, RasmusDC said:

just bought a Samsung Pro A2 card a 120MB/160MB testet card 512GB NOT the UHSII protocol so i guess a card like that would maybe perform better.

card tests perfectly in everything else i have but in the Ally it is slow.. 60 MB/SEC Write (PEAK) and 90MB/sec read (PEAK) and slow low size files even though it should be a high IOPS card 4500+

from what i can read it is a poor controller used on the card reader, something with not being a DDR200, but nomatter.. don´t go buying expensive SD cards, and use the SD card slot for simple things.. not big games, because it is simply two slow.

The speed is about the same on the steam deck when I tested it.

Alex Atkin UK · June 19, 2023

Its faster than last-gen consoles IO which is likely why most games perform fine from SD card.

I'm not sure how the app performance ratings are supposed to work on SD card but given even full sized SSDs can be poor for sustained read/writes, I would expect SD cards to be a lot worse as they have very little space to dissipate the heat.

The fastest microSD cards I have make the USB card reader I use get too hot to touch and I have no idea if the Deck or Ally are designed to move heat away from their SD slots so I'd expect them to throttle more.

RasmusDC · June 19, 2023

5 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Its faster than last-gen consoles IO which is likely why most games perform fine from SD card.

I'm not sure how the app performance ratings are supposed to work on SD card but given even full sized SSDs can be poor for sustained read/writes, I would expect SD cards to be a lot worse as they have very little space to dissipate the heat.

The fastest microSD cards I have make the USB card reader I use get too hot to touch and I have no idea if the Deck or Ally are designed to move heat away from their SD slots so I'd expect them to throttle more.

the A rating comes into play here... where it defines IOPS... the A2 as i understand it is a minimum of 4500 IOPS where the A1 is 1000IOPS

it is FAR worse than any SSD even older SATA that has 100k+ BUT an X20 Exos 7200rpm spinny boy has 850ish... so MUCH faster than a mechanical drive.

i seem hardlocked at 90/60 but through the whole card, i am actually impressed at how well it runs, because it does run great. playing multiple games, when they ARE installed, seem to not be a problem. but i do place the older games on it.

maybe in the future i will test out the XCII Cards, but right now the price is just insane, then the better choice would be to update the internal NVME 2230 to the Sabrent 2TB drive, and just get that part over with..

People keep saying it is the "samsung cards" but having a Extreme Sandisk, that performs worse in it (only a 128GB) makes me not want to splurge 2x the money for a replacement 512GB...

There is NO heat on the card, my guess is your heat comes from the SD reader. but there is NO throttling behavior, then i would se a degrade in speed, installed 400GB´s of games it ran 60MB/sec all the way through it, and verified with 90MB/sec, 100% stable. there were no WIERD dips or lowering of the speeds.

only thing i am really dissapointed on in my deck, is that my RB is a bit different in sound, but it is minor, and the ABYSMAL batterylife. i would have been okay with a bit more weight and then 2 hours of gaming or 4 hours of light gaming. i feel like i can just get to it, and suddenly i am at 20%.. so it is a "play" with cable in it.. console, and unfortunatly as i read it, the USB C in my car is only 15Watt, but i cannot even maintain a charge at 10watt settings, because it still consumes over 15Watt with everything at that setting.