GDI Vs CHD on Flycast, what's the difference?

[Waifu4Life]

Would be a good idea to replace my GDI games for CHD to use with the Flycast emulator? If not, why?

 

[ATenderLad]

Well CHD files would contain the GDI and the other relevant game files, it's a compression format like a .zip file. So, sure, if you're looking to save space on your hard drive.

 

[Waifu4Life]

Well CHD files would contain the GDI and the other relevant game files, it's a compression format like a .zip file. So, sure, if you're looking to save space on your hard drive.

Do games in CHD load slower?

 

[AnonymousCookieMonster]

Do games in CHD load slower?

Maybe slightly; That mostly depends on how fast your system is, and how it's compressed. It supports LZMA which is heavier compression, but you can easily tell it to use zlib which will be very fast.

 

[Trainer Red]

From my experience ... answer is no it won't load slower ...
Loads just the same as if it were just a GDI file
CHD really is just a file compression
I mean GDI at around 1 GB when you can have it's CHD counterpart at like 600 MB or around that range ~

I have other CHD files meant for PSX games and still loads the same also

 

[thecrow2313]

If you care about storage space then convert to .chd

 

[JustLooking123]

CHD is occasionally more compressed than 7-zip, but not usually.
I personally use whichever format that compresses more.

 

[thecrow2313]

Basically a .GDI is a 1:1 copy of the gdrom. CHD "Compressed Hunks of Data" is a lossless compressed image.
Since it uses the createcd command via chdman it uses lzma, deflate, and flac compression methods.