The New R4 3DS Dual Core Card Has Been Updated
It seems like most of the guys making the R4 DS cards don't seem to give much of a hoot about the people who actually buy them. Just from reading on sites like GBATemp.net and other homebrew blogs, there seem to be a slew of "abandoned" carts out there. Cards that get updated to a certain point and then get discarded by the manufacturers for one reason or another. I don't pretend to know the reason, because I don't make the cards. But it seems to me like the factories like to make a card, support it for a while. Then, when enough people have bought them that their sales have started slowing down, they dump the card, and stop making firmware updates for it... Then they release a new version of the card in hope of picking up new customers.
Initially, this may seem exactly like the R4 3DS Dual Core card is about. Every year they come out with a new version of the card. This year has been no exception. They've come out with the new 2013 version of the r4 3ds, bringing with it a lot of game compatibility fixes and some new faster loading features thanks to the faster processor in the card itself.
Thankfully though, these guys don't drop their old customers. At least not from what I have been reading. While the have released a new version every year, their old cards continue to work and get the support they need even to this day. A friend has the Dual Core card from back in 2011, and he is still able to use the kernel updates and run everything the card can run. Instead of bringing out new cards and dropping the kernel updates, you continue to get the updates you need. Now, there may be some games that end up not working - but that is exactly why they are forced to keep updating their card and bringing out new versions. I will say that from what I am told, the list of non-working games is rather small, so it really doesn't impact a whole lot of people.
The new 2013 version has some updated compatibility - and a much faster main processor. This is huge, because it's the main processor that does all of the loading and running, while the secondary processor simply helps out by decoding some of the information sent by the main processing chip.
As a quick note: I don't own this card, I have another brand of the r4 3ds, but I after reading all of the reviews, I am thinking about upgrading my card and getting this new dual core version 'cause I want to have a flash cart that actually gets updated. And one that keeps getting updated even if a new model is released. And from what I can see, that is exactly what these guys do. They keep supporting the older model of their card, so you don't have to rush out and buy a whole new card all over again.