Gp2x On The Register


Damnit, I just came here to post that... Curse my metal body, I was too slow.

Anyway, it seems like Craig has been handing out the press releases. I'm not so sure about the 6 hours gameplay, UK release date or 240MHz processor claims (lets face it, they're never actually clocked at that unless you do it yourself), but then again this is marketing and you should always expect the truth to be stretched so much it groans.
 
FluffyPanda posted on May 9 2006 at 11:35 AM said:
Damnit, I just came here to post that... Curse my metal body, I was too slow.

Anyway, it seems like Craig has been handing out the press releases. I'm not so sure about the 6 hours gameplay, UK release date or 240MHz processor claims (lets face it, they're never actually clocked at that unless you do it yourself), but then again this is marketing and you should always expect the truth to be stretched so much it groans.


240Mhz and 6 hours are both true, but not at the same time. :)

It should always have been marketed at a higher clock speed than the 200Mhz, but you can see why when the batteries drained so quickly, with the newer firmaware, and lets fact is serious AA batteries.

I'm not pleased that GPH are still shipping those trick batteries with this thing people get a bad first impession.
 
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FluffyPanda posted on May 9 2006 at 11:35 AM said:
Damnit, I just came here to post that... Curse my metal body, I was too slow.

Ditto - but for the metal body bit...
 
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I agree, alot of users will probably think that their gp2x is broken and even if they discover (either by themself or by sites like this) that they need rechareble batteries, it will leave a foul taste in their mouth's.
 
If he really wanted to stretch things, he could always say it's a 400mhz unit, which, technically, it is. It's just spread across two processors :)

I think the arrangement with 240mhz is that craig has never noticed a 2x that will not go that fast, so may as well market it as such.
 
It's fair enough, they may as well be sold as 240mhz processors, but when someone buys his unit and the included software only takes it up to 200mhz... It's a little odd.

It's kind of like AMD selling 3 GHz chips with "3 GHz!!!!!11" on the packaging but clocking them at 2.6 GHz so they throw out less heat and expecting that you'll figure out how to increase the clock yourself.

It's not dishonest, but it is slightly... odd.
 
FluffyPanda posted on May 9 2006 at 05:42 AM said:
It's fair enough, they may as well be sold as 240mhz processors, but when someone buys his unit and the included software only takes it up to 200mhz... It's a little odd.

It's kind of like AMD selling 3 GHz chips with "3 GHz!!!!!11" on the packaging but clocking them at 2.6 GHz so they throw out less heat and expecting that you'll figure out how to increase the clock yourself.

It's not dishonest, but it is slightly... odd.

Well, my AMD64 3500 does actually run at 2.2Ghz ;) Sure it doesnt say 3500Mhz but that is obviously implying a PR of about 3500Mhz. Of course in actual testing it smokes my P4 3.4Ghz so Im not complaining, nor can my P4 do 64-bit so I'll take the naming as is ;)

Now I do believe saying the GP2X is a 240Mhz unit is mis-leading, and dishonest. They should say 200Mhz (unless the new units will be shipped at 240Mhz??) .. and that it is '240Mhz CAPABLE'.

Honestly though, I still think 200Mhz is pretty darn fast when it comes to hand-held units. Im not sure how fast the PSP is clocked at but I will never consider buying one until Sony open up the SDK so 'BOO' to Sony.

I love my GP2X, I love the GP32 still, and I love you guys!!

:wub:
 
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They all run at 240mhz, but out the box the menu runs at 100mhz. It's upto the user to select the cpu speed they want in emus etc. We all know this. If it ran at 240mhz all the time it would be a waste of batteries.
 
Squidge posted on May 9 2006 at 02:18 PM said:
If he really wanted to stretch things, he could always say it's a 400mhz unit, which, technically, it is. It's just spread across two processors :)

Then we might go further and count switching of every gate inside the chip. How many Hz it would be? ;)
 
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MSweeney posted on May 9 2006 at 05:10 PM said:
Honestly though, I still think 200Mhz is pretty darn fast when it comes to hand-held units. Im not sure how fast the PSP is clocked at but I will never consider buying one until Sony open up the SDK so 'BOO' to Sony.

Sony run the PSP at 222Mhz, but it's capable of 333Mhz - they just don't allow that speed for commercial games (again, battery life worries). Lots of emu's use the faster speed however.
 
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craigix posted on May 9 2006 at 06:12 PM said:
They all run at 240mhz, but out the box the menu runs at 100mhz. It's upto the user to select the cpu speed they want in emus etc. We all know this. If it ran at 240mhz all the time it would be a waste of batteries.
You know what, for future press releases I think "Scalable Dual-Core CPU running at up to 240MHz for amazing performance or as low as 100MHz for great battery life on low-drain applications" sounds even more snazzy.

You could even throw in "overclocker-friendly".

Incidentally, how many hits have you got from the register so far? That's got to be great publicity.
 
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Squidge posted on May 9 2006 at 03:10 PM said:
MSweeney posted on May 9 2006 at 05:10 PM said:
Honestly though, I still think 200Mhz is pretty darn fast when it comes to hand-held units. Im not sure how fast the PSP is clocked at but I will never consider buying one until Sony open up the SDK so 'BOO' to Sony.

Sony run the PSP at 222Mhz, but it's capable of 333Mhz - they just don't allow that speed for commercial games (again, battery life worries). Lots of emu's use the faster speed however.

I wonder how much battery life it would take if it used 300 for commercial games..

...
 
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Squidge posted on May 9 2006 at 12:18 PM said:
If he really wanted to stretch things, he could always say it's a 400mhz unit, which, technically, it is. It's just spread across two processors :)

I think the arrangement with 240mhz is that craig has never noticed a 2x that will not go that fast, so may as well market it as such.


I am glad he didn't as that would be real dodgy advertising. While it technically does have 2 cores only one is useable for games because of GPH's brilliant decision to not give the second core some memory rendering it rather useless for games and emus ;)
 
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FluffyPanda said:
You know what, for future press releases I think "Scalable Dual-Core CPU running at up to 240MHz for amazing performance or as low as 100MHz for great battery life on low-drain applications" sounds even more snazzy.

You could even throw in "overclocker-friendly".

Incidentally, how many hits have you got from the register so far? That's got to be great publicity.

That is indeed a very nice way to put it!
 
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DaveC posted on May 10 2006 at 02:00 AM said:
While it technically does have 2 cores only one is useable for games because of GPH's brilliant decision to not give the second core some memory rendering it rather useless for games and emus ;)

We have now found some undocumented hardware registers which make the 940 much more useful than before :) Its unsure whether these will be best used with or without Linux, but HH is now getting to a state where it is becoming complete (thanks to code in the newly released 2.0 firmware source).

(It seems Magiceyes don't want people to use 940 or the video decoding features, so they discuss them as little as possible, and miss out the descriptions of some of the most useful hardware registers)
 
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DaveC posted on May 10 2006 at 03:00 AM said:
Squidge posted on May 9 2006 at 12:18 PM said:
If he really wanted to stretch things, he could always say it's a 400mhz unit, which, technically, it is. It's just spread across two processors :)
I am glad he didn't as that would be real dodgy advertising. While it technically does have 2 cores only one is useable for games because of GPH's brilliant decision to not give the second core some memory rendering it rather useless for games and emus ;)
Not actually GPH's fault... It's a standard chip from MagicEyes, you should be flaming them ;)

Also, the commercial games in development are using both cores so the second is far from useless. It's not that it doesn't have memory, but rather that it shares a bus with the first core so simultaneous memory access isn't very quick. With clever programming you can get the second core working on cached data and use it for all sorts of processor intesive tasks while the first handles the memory intensive ones.

Programming for 2 cores is obviously harder than just your standard procedural programming, but since 2 or more cores is becoming standard in most devices now people will have to learn the skill.
 
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What DaveC is talking about is that MagicEyes give the option of adding memory just for the second processor (memory that isn't on the A/D bus, so can only be accessed by the 940), so it could run full speed rather than having to share the memory with the 920. GPH decided not to bother to add this memory, so it is them that should be flamed :)
 
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