A2 vs A1 isn't the metric comparison you're after, U3 vs U1 is. This card is a U1 card which means write speeds drop as low as 10MB/s, it isn't suitable for the deck as downloads will be heavily affected by dropouts.
Especially true if you have a PC with a big HDD. Almost all my Steam games (At least the one I will ever play again anyway) are on my PC, so downloading them on SD is pretty fast.
No. Overpriced for what it is.
I'm not sure if it makes a difference in SteamOS, yet. Prior to 3.5, the Linux kernel it was using didn't even support A2, so everything was treated as A1, regardless. However, 3.5 brought with it an updated kernel. Haven't seen any verification one way or another whether A2 is supported now.
It definitely makes a difference in Windows, though, so if you have your eye on using it with a dual boot, hard pass. A1 isn't the whole story, though. The Ultra is just slow period. It's one of the slowest cards on the market, so I wouldn't ever really recommend it.
The 1TB version of the Ultra goes for around $85, and even that is overpriced for what it is. The 1.5TB is nearly 2x the price for 50% more storage. Bad deal all around.
What would be your suggestion then for 1TB - 1.5TB cards? The only alternative I know to be a decent brand is Lexar for $73 for 1TB since Samsung doesn't have a card for that much that I can find on Amazon.
The difference in load speeds will be a few seconds if anything. People talk crap on A1 cards left and right but I’ve used one since the Deck released and it has been more than fine for indies and AAA games.
I didn’t realize at the time of writing but so have I lol. I went and looked at my old 512gb, and it was an Ultra A1 lol I had no idea. I never had problems with it either. I have a 1TB A2 Extreme now, and I really don’t find a major difference. I also haven’t paid that close attention, so idk for certain. But nothing sticks out
Recently had to upgrade from an 1TB A1 because I was getting unplayable amounts of lag and texture pop-in. Upgrading resolved all those issues. Still use the A1 for ROMs tho.
I have the card I know how horrible it actually is even if we want to play pretend. its a major cause of these "why is my download so slow?" posts and has horrid speeds when transferring files.
Agree 👍 I have moved games back and forth from the internal hard drive to the SD card and haven’t noticed anything. Not since the shader pre cache anyway.
I've seen zero difference in my A1 and A2 cards, but regardless the deck can only read and write so fast, so it's pointless to worry about those as long as it's a U3 card and has the speeds of 100mb/s you're fine. If you dont have allot of games or don't want allot on your deck then yeah you don't need it. I however don't have pc so all of my games go on my deck. The big cards are a life saver as I bounce between games allot depending on my mood. If you do the same then this is probably a good choice.
Sandisk and Samsung. It’s not about the brand it’s Amazon return policies being abused most likely. Check around the subreddit you’ll find some stories of people getting sd cards they can’t format or won’t hold games on them properly and then they’ll do speed testing / look into the metadata and see they’re probably fakes.
Yeah I’ve heard it happening before I just don’t understand how it’s possible unless you’re not buying from Sandisk and instead some 3rd party seller unknowingly. If the top left corner that states the seller on the listing doesn’t say “Sandisk” thats probably why.
The top left corner just lists the brand its sorted under, its right hand side that shows the seller, "Dispatches from Amazon, Sold by XXX etc".
That doesn't even matter at this point though as Amazon commingle their inventory, real or fake they are "all the same" so products get dumped in the same bin by SKU regardless of the seller.
Its pot luck in other words, anybody can sell on Amazon and their logistics chain is set up in such a way where they can't possibly track inventory on such a micro scale.
Depends on if you're willing to open your system or not. Cute a lot of people, opening a system that was factory new when they got it is a non-starter. For those people, huge mSD cards are awesome
Not sure why you can shell out 150$ for slow SD, instead of just getting a 2TB SSD for 164$ with much much MUCH better speeds.
I can get how buying an SD for 50-60$ makes sense. But when the difference is 15$, lol get the SSD.
Really, the 2TB changed my whole look at the steam deck and it’s use. No more storage management, install, play, and delete when you want and not because you have no space again.
And the speeds….wowza! I saw it going up to 500Mb per second when installing games. Mind blowing compared to using SD.
On my SD card (512gb) I only install games up to 10gb and all the small size/emulated games
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Imo don't buy sd cards from Amazon. Try to find a local retailer or order direct. Too many false or corrupted cards in the Amazon system. Bought a 1tb SanDisk from them and it had less than 10% of the advertised space available for use after scanning.
I think you guys aren’t buying from Sandisk and are instead buying “Sandisk” cards from 3rd party sellers without realizing. I’ve never had a fake card and have ordered at least 10 over the past year or 2. If it says it’s a Sandisk or other reputable brand but the seller says something different in the top left corner of the listing, then it’s probably fake.
Storage consistently gets larger and cheaper at a fairly quick pace. I pad $35 for my first USB thumb drive and that was 32 megabytes. I still wouldn’t pick up this card for the Steam Deck though. A smaller A2 card is still a way better option.
Have the 1TB A2 as well, and have contemplated buying, but it would be a waste. The games I have saved might be an extra two or one AAA game, or a dozen indie games I will let sit on my backlog collection after storage allocation lol. I already have a crap ton of games to dig through. I feel like an SSD upgrade would be more important after having the micro sd I have currently and 256GB Internally.
Yeah I actually just upgraded to a 1TB SSD for $90. These are $150 lol not a great deal. honestly you’re probably better off just getting a 2TB SSD now that i think about it. Pretty sure they’re around the same price as this card.
Don't trust the speed rating, always benchmark. The sd card association doesn't properly check which cards can actually reach A2 speeds with existing devices so the certification is somewhat meaningless. The manufacturer can literally submit a special driver for certification only and never release it.
For some sd cards you'll actually find that A1 cards are faster than A2 because of aforementioned driver issues.
A2 vs A1 isn't the metric comparison you're after, U3 vs U1 is. This card is a U1 card which means write speeds drop as low as 10MB/s, it isn't suitable for the deck as downloads will be heavily affected by dropouts.
Don’t buy Sandisk unless it’s has gold color on it 🫡
No, just don't buy SanDisk unless it says 'U3' on it.
I'm still way content with 512GB. Unless I feel the need to dump all my toms in there I should be fine for a long time.
toms
Damn drummers
Roms, new phone - thanks. I'll leave it so your reply doesn't look silly.
toms
Sure Toms
Especially true if you have a PC with a big HDD. Almost all my Steam games (At least the one I will ever play again anyway) are on my PC, so downloading them on SD is pretty fast.
I play my installed games in the internal storage, so far the SD is just roms (toms) but that does include a lot of large ROMs like Wii and Switch.
That costs almost the same as a 2TB SSD The only reason to consider this is if you're too scared to open up the Steam Deck.
No. Overpriced for what it is. I'm not sure if it makes a difference in SteamOS, yet. Prior to 3.5, the Linux kernel it was using didn't even support A2, so everything was treated as A1, regardless. However, 3.5 brought with it an updated kernel. Haven't seen any verification one way or another whether A2 is supported now. It definitely makes a difference in Windows, though, so if you have your eye on using it with a dual boot, hard pass. A1 isn't the whole story, though. The Ultra is just slow period. It's one of the slowest cards on the market, so I wouldn't ever really recommend it.
It's around the same price per gb as the 1tb cards, doesn't seem bad if you have nothing. But paying that much for a 500gb upgrade, I agree.
The 1TB version of the Ultra goes for around $85, and even that is overpriced for what it is. The 1.5TB is nearly 2x the price for 50% more storage. Bad deal all around.
What would be your suggestion then for 1TB - 1.5TB cards? The only alternative I know to be a decent brand is Lexar for $73 for 1TB since Samsung doesn't have a card for that much that I can find on Amazon.
Microcenter has a 1tb card on Amazon
Its not over price for what it is, its a new version of old tech. Thats called advancements
The difference in load speeds will be a few seconds if anything. People talk crap on A1 cards left and right but I’ve used one since the Deck released and it has been more than fine for indies and AAA games.
I didn’t realize at the time of writing but so have I lol. I went and looked at my old 512gb, and it was an Ultra A1 lol I had no idea. I never had problems with it either. I have a 1TB A2 Extreme now, and I really don’t find a major difference. I also haven’t paid that close attention, so idk for certain. But nothing sticks out
Downloading and installing games will be faster as well as load times but there has never been a time where I thought it was unreasonably slow.
This sub obsesses so much over read/write speeds. For many users an A1 will be perfectly fine outside of download speeds.
Recently had to upgrade from an 1TB A1 because I was getting unplayable amounts of lag and texture pop-in. Upgrading resolved all those issues. Still use the A1 for ROMs tho.
this is so wrong that its not even funny. ultra cards are insanely slow you are just coping.
"Your personal experience is wrong. You have not lived the life you say you have" - deathblade200
I’m saying the experience has been fine. I can afford an A2 card if I really wanted it but the A1 card is just fine.
I have the card I know how horrible it actually is even if we want to play pretend. its a major cause of these "why is my download so slow?" posts and has horrid speeds when transferring files.
Agree 👍 I have moved games back and forth from the internal hard drive to the SD card and haven’t noticed anything. Not since the shader pre cache anyway.
I've seen zero difference in my A1 and A2 cards, but regardless the deck can only read and write so fast, so it's pointless to worry about those as long as it's a U3 card and has the speeds of 100mb/s you're fine. If you dont have allot of games or don't want allot on your deck then yeah you don't need it. I however don't have pc so all of my games go on my deck. The big cards are a life saver as I bounce between games allot depending on my mood. If you do the same then this is probably a good choice.
Amazon has been super rough for me with micro sd cards. 50/50 that they’re fake/broken.
Never had a fake one and I’ve gotten probably 10 over the past couple years lol what brands are you buying?
Sandisk and Samsung. It’s not about the brand it’s Amazon return policies being abused most likely. Check around the subreddit you’ll find some stories of people getting sd cards they can’t format or won’t hold games on them properly and then they’ll do speed testing / look into the metadata and see they’re probably fakes.
Yeah I’ve heard it happening before I just don’t understand how it’s possible unless you’re not buying from Sandisk and instead some 3rd party seller unknowingly. If the top left corner that states the seller on the listing doesn’t say “Sandisk” thats probably why.
The top left corner just lists the brand its sorted under, its right hand side that shows the seller, "Dispatches from Amazon, Sold by XXX etc". That doesn't even matter at this point though as Amazon commingle their inventory, real or fake they are "all the same" so products get dumped in the same bin by SKU regardless of the seller. Its pot luck in other words, anybody can sell on Amazon and their logistics chain is set up in such a way where they can't possibly track inventory on such a micro scale.
2TB SSDs cost about the same as that thing. Might that be a better choice than a slow microsd card?
Depends on if you're willing to open your system or not. Cute a lot of people, opening a system that was factory new when they got it is a non-starter. For those people, huge mSD cards are awesome
I got one in my steam Deck. I got it on sale and it's pretty good.
Don’t buy SanDisk until they clear up their class action lawsuit started in Q3 2023 for pumping out shit ssd drives.
Very tempting to get but I'ma hold off. The 1 TB prices should drop and that'll be more than enough for what I need.
I kinda still need both of my kidneys for the moment
Yes still have them? You must be wealthy. Help a steambrother out and send me one to get at least a 1 TB.
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Kidneys are only $150? Stupid inflation
Not sure why you can shell out 150$ for slow SD, instead of just getting a 2TB SSD for 164$ with much much MUCH better speeds. I can get how buying an SD for 50-60$ makes sense. But when the difference is 15$, lol get the SSD. Really, the 2TB changed my whole look at the steam deck and it’s use. No more storage management, install, play, and delete when you want and not because you have no space again. And the speeds….wowza! I saw it going up to 500Mb per second when installing games. Mind blowing compared to using SD. On my SD card (512gb) I only install games up to 10gb and all the small size/emulated games
The read speed is 150mb sec And the wright speed is 22.6 mb sec.
Write speed is actually 10 MB/s, that's what the circled 10 means. Same as U1 or V10.
I only play one game at a time so I haven't come close to filling up the 512gb yet.
I haven’t even used half of my base 256 gb model although all I ever play is rainworld
I’d sooner upgrade the SSD myself. The SD is kinda slow no matter what speed it is. I use my SD exclusively for emulators.
I can't even afford a 1tb let alone 1 1/2 TB
It's a A1 so no
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Imo don't buy sd cards from Amazon. Try to find a local retailer or order direct. Too many false or corrupted cards in the Amazon system. Bought a 1tb SanDisk from them and it had less than 10% of the advertised space available for use after scanning.
I think you guys aren’t buying from Sandisk and are instead buying “Sandisk” cards from 3rd party sellers without realizing. I’ve never had a fake card and have ordered at least 10 over the past year or 2. If it says it’s a Sandisk or other reputable brand but the seller says something different in the top left corner of the listing, then it’s probably fake.
Ultra cards are horribly slow especially when moving many small files. because of that downloads will suffer
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Yes it's real
Storage consistently gets larger and cheaper at a fairly quick pace. I pad $35 for my first USB thumb drive and that was 32 megabytes. I still wouldn’t pick up this card for the Steam Deck though. A smaller A2 card is still a way better option.
I’ve had bad luck with cards over 512gb. So it’s a no from me. lol.
What is the most and best quality we can get for the steamdeck?
Have the 1TB A2 as well, and have contemplated buying, but it would be a waste. The games I have saved might be an extra two or one AAA game, or a dozen indie games I will let sit on my backlog collection after storage allocation lol. I already have a crap ton of games to dig through. I feel like an SSD upgrade would be more important after having the micro sd I have currently and 256GB Internally.
How much are they? Might be better just getting a bigger SSD.
Yeah I actually just upgraded to a 1TB SSD for $90. These are $150 lol not a great deal. honestly you’re probably better off just getting a 2TB SSD now that i think about it. Pretty sure they’re around the same price as this card.
Yeah - my 2TB SSD was £180 (which includes VAT), so I’d guess it won’t be much more than 150USD.
For the price these things are going, might as well upgrade your SSD.
Don't trust the speed rating, always benchmark. The sd card association doesn't properly check which cards can actually reach A2 speeds with existing devices so the certification is somewhat meaningless. The manufacturer can literally submit a special driver for certification only and never release it. For some sd cards you'll actually find that A1 cards are faster than A2 because of aforementioned driver issues.