Gold wafer versus SMDS cards?

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Anyone know the relative merits of programming with either of these cards for Mediaguard or Viaccess? I've never heard of a problem with SMDS cards melting, as I've seen talked about with gold wafers. Do the surface mount cards have better heat dissipation? Anyone know also if there is any difference between the number of providers each can handle?
 
Let's be careful about the terminology, to avoid confusion.

There is clearly a physical difference between SMD (surface mounted device) cards and the plastic wafer cards. SMD cards are actually chunks of PCB and so are thicker and not as likely to warp from heat. But there are diferent qualities of plastic card too, some more liable to bending than others.

But the term "goldwafer" actually refers principally to a particular chipset, namely the pic 16F84 (or 16F84A) with eeprom 24C16 (or 24LC16). Your SMD card probably also uses that same chipset and so would fall into the category of "goldcard"/"goldwafer".
The number of providers that can be handled by a card (as well as a whole range of other features) is determined by the chipset and software on it, not by the physical nature of the card.

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