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laolita
05-20-2009, 02:22 PM
I have been using my TH55 for years with a black memory stick marked:
"Sony Memory Stick PRO 2GB MagicGate".
I just bought a new black memory stick marked:
"Sony Memory Stick PRO Duo MagicGate Mark2" which I am using with the silver/white/blue MSAC-M2 adaptor.

One of the things which irritates me about the TH55 is the slow speed of card accesses... so I did a few quick comparisons accessing databases and copying files and it seemed that the new memory stick might have up to double the read and write performance of the old one. I decided to download VFSMARK to try and get a more accurate idea.

Here are the results I got:

VFSMark Results old stick
File Create: 29%
File Delete: 22%
File Write: 8%
File Read: 425%
File Seek: 97%
DB Export: 27%
DB Import: 246%
Record Access: 209%
Resource Access: 197%

VFSMark: 140

VFSMark Results New stick
File Create: 345%
File Delete: 289%
File Write: 296%
File Read: 539%
File Seek: 437%
DB Export: 415%
DB Import: 403%
Record Access: 524%
Resource Access: 512%

VFSMark: 417

(The site I downloaded the utility from claims it is VFSMARK 1.1 though the readme stated 1.0... if it makes a difference).

So comparing with the tables at http://www.palmclub.nl/tips/vfsbenchmark/ it looks like the new stick is faster. However, I was very surprised by the poor write performance of the old stick as detected by VFSMARK (but not obvious in use). Probably it is just an unreliable benchmark though I wonder if perhaps performance declines with age due to wear levelling or perhaps there is some erroring and correction going on.
(Both sticks have the same data on them)

One other thing I was faintly remember was the old FAT patch to be able to access memory sticks larger thatn 2GB. If I remember correctly it had a fast read speed but slower write speed or vice versa. Maybe the new memory sticks mitigate the performance issue? However, the fact that the patch breaks Audioplayer would probably still stop me from using it.

philpalm
05-20-2009, 08:37 PM
I wonder if you can give some real world examples of slow/fast memory card read write examples? What programs are you using that you would notice slow or fast card readings?

For example when I play Legacy and switch to another program, there is a delay due to closing and remembering where I lefted off. (it rewrites a small placemaker) and probably on my TG-50 takes about ten to twenty seconds.

dmitrygr
05-20-2009, 11:20 PM
use CardSpeed to measure real speed

laolita
05-21-2009, 02:29 PM
OK - Cardspeed 1.2 results.

Old card: "Very poor, Not recommended"
33.80 secs
Wrt32bit: 7 bytes/sec
Wrt8KB: 21575 bytes/sec
Readk8KB: 1191563 bytes/sec

New card: "Excellent. Use any record setting"
1.99 secs
Wrt32bit: 400 bytes/sec
Wrt8KB: 259548 bytes/sec
Readk8KB: 238327 bytes/sec

So there definitely is an improvement though in daily use it does not seem as great as the speed tests indicate.

The kind of tasks where I find myself waiting on the card speed are:
Opening or quitting Pathaway (and associated opening of map images).
Looking words up in MSDict Oxford English Dictionary (very happy with this dictionary).
Generating icons for the photos in Clie Viewer.
Loading documents in PicselViewer
Opening Brainforest databases.

Of course I could move some of these databases to the main RAM but they are hungry and I really want to keep them on the card. The RAM is rather small by modern standards and is close to full.

I also wonder if there is also any significant power consumption improvement in using the new card.

dmitrygr
05-21-2009, 02:38 PM
not that cardpeed
i mean cardpeed from palmpowerups.com

laolita
05-21-2009, 02:46 PM
Opening Pathaway - time until map renders:
Old card: 15s
New card: 10s

Time to exit Pathaway:
Old card: 7s
New card: 2s

PicselViewer - time to open and display an image:
Old card: 6s
New card: 6s

Quicksheet - time to open a particular spreadsheet:
Old card: 4s
New card: 4s

Clie Viewer - time to enumerate 171 pictures and display 6 thumbnails
Old card: 15s
New card: 15s

dmitrygr
05-21-2009, 02:49 PM
get cardspeed results and post the graphs here

laolita
05-21-2009, 03:19 PM
OK - using Card Speed from palmpowerups.com:

Old card:
R (Kb/s: min/max => 2905/29257
W (Kb/s: min/max => 26/11222
Rating R/W => 9301/1447

New card:
R (Kb/s: min/max => 5425/32768
W (Kb/s: min/max => 2584/28744
Rating R/W => 13378/8796

laolita
05-21-2009, 03:27 PM
Here are the graphs:

dmitrygr
05-25-2009, 09:40 PM
set scale to 50 in prefs and then export gra[hs again to note the big diff

laolita
05-26-2009, 06:26 PM
Thanks for the guidance - I attach the graphs with the same scale.
(I re-ran the test for the old memory stick but could still export existing results for the new stick. Difference between tests of the old stick don't seem very significant. It looks like the real difference between the two memory sticks is write speed - an improvement of read speed would actually be of more use to me)

dmitrygr
05-26-2009, 06:42 PM
difference is very significant...look at the yellow line

thacker
06-16-2009, 04:32 PM
Thanks. It's a big difference in speed! Launching apps from the card is much better now! :)

jj2me
06-17-2009, 10:38 AM
difference is very significant...look at the yellow line

Yellow line? Have I lost my tested-perfect color vision? The palmclub.nl link comes up as a blank page for, in case that had a yellow line.

Anyway, thank you for summarizing that the difference is significant. And thanks, laolita, for testing this out and documenting everything. Sounds like it's worth buying the Mark2 and adapter.

laolita
06-25-2009, 07:54 AM
Did anybody else buy the Mark2? In use it didn't seem massively faster to me but that may just be me. I want to believe!

J_F
07-24-2009, 06:03 PM
There IS a decline in performance with use of MS cards. But the technology of your new card is superior. I systematically get better results with Lexar cards