12 replies to this topic

[Kokirii]

Hello all,

 

Can someone who knows something about hardware tell me whether I'd get better performance by running games from the Wii U's internal HDD or my own external HDD??  The external is a WD MyBook 320gb.   

[BrosBeforeGardenTools]

The external would probably give better peformance.

[NintendoReport]

I would assume the internal flash storage of the Wii U would give better performance, but it most likely is not noticeable. An external drive will be just fine.

[Zonark]

honestly i have had the same performance from both

[MorbidGod]

Hello all,

Can someone who knows something about hardware tell me whether I'd get better performance by running games from the Wii U's internal HDD or my own external HDD?? The external is a WD MyBook 320gb.

Internal is usually better, and this case it is flash so be faster.

But at some point, you'll need to upgrade and get more storage.

[The Ferryman]

Actually i think Alex Atkin confirmed that the actual OS of the wii u is on the internal nand flash memory which could explain why you get drastically reduced download speeds when downloading a demo or game onto the internal memory(it is doing two operations at once: reading the os and downloading onto the same memory).

 

Now i have a question of my own, since ssd is basically flash memory as it fills up it becomes slower, this is true with all ssd's would this mean that the deluxe wii u which is left with about 25gb of internal memory might be faster than the standard wii u which has like 3gb of memory left? What i did since day one was not write anything to the system memory, everything was written into the external hhd and my wii u has only frozen twice since launch and has had no slow downs.

Edited by The Ferryman, 25 May 2013 - 08:37 PM.

[Desert Punk]

There shouldn't be much difference speed wise between the built in samsung flash memory, the optical drive (cached with main memory) and a usb 2.0 external hard drive. If Nintendo had fitted a usb 3.0 interface then external would have been better. The optical drive is really fast at 22MB/s and close to the sustained 35MB/s max speed of usb 2.0. It's likely the flash memory is in this range of performance. It's possible loading from hard drive is faster but it will be a minimal improvement.

[routerbad]

There shouldn't be much difference speed wise between the built in samsung flash memory, the optical drive (cached with main memory) and a usb 2.0 external hard drive. If Nintendo had fitted a usb 3.0 interface then external would have been better. The optical drive is really fast at 22MB/s and close to the sustained 35MB/s max speed of usb 2.0. It's likely the flash memory is in this range of performance. It's possible loading from hard drive is faster but it will be a minimal improvement.

Well put

[Alex Atkin UK]

Except latency varies considerably between internal memory, external HDD and optical drive.  The latter specifically should have pretty high latency. 

 

Games by their nature tend to thrash around accessing files from all over the place, so latency becomes a factor pretty quickly. 

 

Someone did a test with Monster Hunter to compare disc, digital on internal, external SSD, external HDD  You can clearly see the disc version start to lag behind on the latency intensive character select screen, because it has to load different assets into RAM.

 

As expected, the results were entirely down to latency with the SSD being quickest, then internal memory, then HDD, with disc coming in last.

 

Like I have said before though, downloads are DEFINITELY heavily limited when using the internal memory which to me is enough reason to avoid it like the plague.  Its also VERY problematic with the new install in the background function as while software is installing it locks up the OS functions.  So keeping everything on external storage should help there too.

Edited by Alex Atkin UK, 30 May 2013 - 03:11 AM.

[grahamf]

I'm using a usb flash drive. Would it be about the same as the ssd?

[BrosBeforeGardenTools]

I'm using a usb flash drive. Would it be about the same as the ssd?

Probably. I think the internal memory is more similar to your USB device than a SSD. After all, 3Dude or someone else once said the Wii U actually doesn't have what you call a SSD. If it's called one, they probably just call it that to sell units and because they can.

[NintendoReport]

Probably. I think the internal memory is more similar to your USB device than a SSD. After all, 3Dude or someone else once said the Wii U actually doesn't have what you call a SSD. If it's called one, they probably just call it that to sell units and because they can.

 

Wii U uses flash memory.

[Desert Punk]

Except latency varies considerably between internal memory, external HDD and optical drive.  The latter specifically should have pretty high latency. 

 

Games by their nature tend to thrash around accessing files from all over the place, so latency becomes a factor pretty quickly. 

 

Someone did a test with Monster Hunter to compare disc, digital on internal, external SSD, external HDD  You can clearly see the disc version start to lag behind on the latency intensive character select screen, because it has to load different assets into RAM.

 

As expected, the results were entirely down to latency with the SSD being quickest, then internal memory, then HDD, with disc coming in last.

 

Like I have said before though, downloads are DEFINITELY heavily limited when using the internal memory which to me is enough reason to avoid it like the plague.  Its also VERY problematic with the new install in the background function as while software is installing it locks up the OS functions.  So keeping everything on external storage should help there too.

 

That video seems to show loading pretty similar across all formats but with internal flash memory as the most laggy possibly due to operating system and game residing on the same silicon. You seem to have actually made a strong case for the optical drive with that link as even SSD aren't really showing much improvement.

 

However that said I'd like to see the same test with need for speed most wanted. That game streams a lot of visual data fast as is the case with such racing games. Monster Hunter is just a visual upgrade on a wii game and unlikely to be pushing the wii u that much and occupying that much memory.

 

Don't forget the optical drive will be cached somehow. The original wii had a 64MB cache (shared with audio buffer) and the wii u likely has a lot more. Nintendo may already be using an optimised write pattern for optical discs to ensure maximum load speed too, where regularly accessed data was close to the spindle but where large areas of data needed to be loaded fast was at the outer edge.

 

Both ps3 and 360 have sata connected hard drives and slower optical drives so it makes sense they would see a bigger increase in load times with hard drives however wii u has a much better optical drive and only connects hard drives via usb2.0 so the loading speed difference should be far less.

 

I'm biased though, hoping the optical drive is competitive in load speeds because I'm not one for buying downloadable games. I prefer physical games I can resell when bored with.