Does your SD Card's transfer speed affect the Frame rate on Emulators?

I've been using Snes9x GX alot lately and I'm getting some slow down when lots of objects are being rendered on screen (more so than an actual SNES game) and I am wondering if my SD cards read / write speed could have anything to do with that? I have a fairly slow card.. Class 4.

The emulator shouldn't be accessing your SD card after it reads the ROM in initially. I know, for example, that my USB HDD will spin down if I'm playing an SNES game off of it. Are you sure you're just not remembering the slow down from the cartridge correctly? I know I thought that LttP was slowing down too much in snes9x GX, then when I tried playing it on an SNES again the slow down was the same.

Well I can understand that the emulator wouldn't access the SD card for the ROM data once it's loaded, but the emulator contains the instructions on how to use the Wii hardware which is, of course, on the SD card. It seems like it could bottle neck the processing speed. I was playing Gradius 3 last night with almost unplayable slowdown... way worse than the cart for sure. I'm just trying to decide if investing in a better card would improve the experience. Any thoughts?

No, it has nothing to do with the SD card, it is not used while the emulator is running.

Ok, thanks for clearing that up. Is that normal then for heavy onscreen action? Should this be comparable slowdown to the original games?

Is there a particular game you're having issues with? I know, for example, that Link to the Past has a lot of slowdown if you have a lot of enemies on-screen. Even if there are only a few, charging up your sword can lead to slowdown because of all the effects. It's very possible that the game you're playing had slowdown issues on the SNES.

Is there anyway to speed up emulators that are slow, or do we just have to deal with the pain of running games at a minimal speed?

Well, as I said before, Gradius III is almost unplayable due to the constant swarm of enemies on screen. I've noticed this issue on other action games. I'm just curious why the Wii is struggling to run an SNES game... And I am positive this is not the same level of slowdown found on the original cart.

Is it possible that the Wii's processor is too fast for the original games? I can run GBA games without almost any problems, but N64 games always take forever.

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solareus
Gradius III is almost unplayable due to the constant swarm of enemies on screen. I've noticed this issue on other action games. I'm just curious why the Wii is struggling to run an SNES game... And I am positive this is not the same level of slowdown found on the original cart.

I know Gradius III becomes nearly unplayable due to slowdown on the actual cart, particularly in the second level with all the bubbles floating around... damn does it ever slow down!

I think what you experience is probably normal, compare it to the actual cart side-by-side if possible.

Doesn't sound like the Wii is struggling at all, sounds like the SNES is struggling. As an emulator it's only allowed so much power from the Wii.