Fast as you can get? Cost shouldn't be a consideration. The cards I've used are less than fifteen bucks on amazon.

For the microsd used for firmware at the bottom of the board I've used Sandisk Extreme Pro Class 10.

And I'd probably use Sandisk Extreme Pro for the SD card also, though I'd be tempted by PNY Elite Performance Class 10.

Anything over 8gb should be fine.

Stern is using Adata 8gb, probably not even class 10, so you could probably use anything.

I sincerely doubt that this will make a noticeable difference. Like, I doubt you'll see a one second difference in boot times. Boot times seem to take forever due to hardware checks, especially the Insider Connected needing to get booted up.

I've never heard of anybody who felt it was 'worth it' to put a non-factory-authentic SD card in their new Stern pinball... yet.

When I've had defective SD cards and microSD cards, I've replaced them with the fastest card I had available to me, and wasn't looking to see if that booted faster, but it wasn't significant enough to catch my attention and say 'Hey! Now the game is booting faster, and the graphics come up faster!' There was no observable difference... but I wasn't looking.

(shrugs) A faster SD card is a cost of 13-17 bucks. I don't think you'll 'improve the game' by putting non-factory-original parts in your game, but if it shaves less than a second off your game boot times, and that less than a second difference is important to you, go ahead.

Maybe you'll get five or ten seconds faster boot. I dunno. If the SD speed increased the boot time, it wasn't noticeable to anyone who wasn't looking for it.

Boot times on new Sterns are quite long and that didn't change.

PinMonk has done a bit of SD card testing. He wrote in another thread….

You only gain about 5-6 seconds over the stock one since the improvement seems to be limited by the (slow) bus speed of the CPU board after about 130MB/s, BUT IMO, the 6 seconds is worth it because the card will also be more reliable than the crap ADATA cards.

I did 4 boots on each card to get an average point of comparison because I found that the boot time changed a little bit from boot to boot. I measured from the power supply click after hitting the power on switch until the backbox lights came on.

Also, note that Amazon has a problem with Sandisk fake cards that perform worse or have less than advertised storage, so I try to avoid buying SD cards there and recommend brick and mortar.

Here's the tests I did on Stranger Things that should be broadly applicable to all Spike2.
SD Boot 2024-02-15 (resized).jpg

You're limited by the speed of the bus on the CPU board, so anything over about 130MB/s is a waste of money. See test results above. The 280MB/s was actually SLOWER than most of the others. I tested two different cards because that result seemed weird, but both were slower.

It may have something to do with the UHS II spec. That's the only UHS II card I tested. The spec warns "You can use UHS-II cards in UHS-I-compatible devices, but they won't be as fast in them." I don't know if that means the obvious that UHS II can't perform to full speed in a UHS I device, or that there's some compatibility layer that slows a UHS II card in a UHS I system, which would be some explanation why that card performed slower in a Spike2 machine relative to almost all the other UHS I cards.

Hello, my name is Pinmonk. ADATA cards are total garbage. Worth it to spend $8-10 to put a quality card in there.

Still, it is a ~15% time savings every time. For me that adds up because I turn machines on and off *a lot* when temp testing and modding. For a regular schmoe, maybe not so important. But you still have the better reliability perk.

REALLY pleased to meet'cha! Great work here!

Appreciate the definitive answer!

You 'da man!