100 Hand Painted Special Edition Pandoras

[juniorm33]

@Grench Although I understand what your point is.
I would say that's a sure way to divide community. A few special edition ones is one thing, having different speed ones by default is another.
Especially as the majority clocks pretty well anyway.

 

[Aninhumer]

What I'm trying to outline though, is from MWeston's comments above that 750 is the 'average' on OPP3 that units that can do 800 on OPP3 are likely a small slice of the overall set.

The CPU isn't even rated to do 600MHz at OPP3!
That they're getting to 750MHz average suggests the average at OPP5 will be significantly above 800MHz.
And his tests for the Rev1s also suggest this, as they averaged 900MHz at OPP5.

Depending on what kind of variances we're talking about here, this could put a majority of Pandoras well beyond 800MHz.
Gah, now I want more data to model a standard distribution! (Too much Statistics revision methinks)

 

[Monk]

@Grench yea... definately interesting, it'd be interesting to know the actual spread but as for speed binning... a lot has been said about the value of having the units operate at the same speed, so that devs don't write code that some users can't, well, use. Selling a range of speeds would just kill that level of compatability, IMHO.

 

[Sphinxter]

All chips are not created equal. The fact that they will never all operate with the exact same level of performance has never been in doubt.

 

[Monk]

Sphinxter should definately get one cherry picked to max out at 601MHz.

 

[Sphinxter]

Sphinxter should definately get one cherry picked to max out at 601MHz.

That would just be par for my luck.

 

[stustaff]

I apologise in advance for being negative...

lets say 80% hit 750...

A dev makes software that runs perfect on his 800 Pandora and is also fine on the 750 capables...

someone with a 600 tries it and it runs slow and jerky...

dev tries a few fixes but cant immediatley sort this so decides the work involved in making it run on the small number of 600's isnt worth the considerable effort.

person with 600 gets screwed..?

am I being overly pessimistic?

I hope so.

on a positive note... Cases in the UK yay!

 

[Aninhumer]

A dev makes software that runs perfect on his 800 Pandora and is also fine on the 750 capables...
someone with a 600 tries it and it runs slow and jerky...
dev tries a few fixes but cant immediatley sort this so decides the work involved in making it run on the small number of 600's isnt worth the considerable effort.
person with 600 gets screwed..?

I'd say it's a bad dev that tests entirely in an overclocked environment.
Unless you're doing something which is definitely heavy like N64 or Quake 3, no one should be targeting any higher than 600MHz.

 

[may88]

A dev makes software that runs perfect on his 800 Pandora and is also fine on the 750 capables...
someone with a 600 tries it and it runs slow and jerky...
dev tries a few fixes but cant immediatley sort this so decides the work involved in making it run on the small number of 600's isnt worth the considerable effort.
person with 600 gets screwed..?

I'd say it's a bad dev that tests entirely in an overclocked environment.
Unless you're doing something which is definitely heavy like N64 or Quake 3, no one should be targeting any higher than 600MHz.

That's not fair! Dev's don't have order numbers.

 

[WizardStan]

I apologise in advance for being negative...

lets say 80% hit 750...

A dev makes software that runs perfect on his 800 Pandora and is also fine on the 750 capables...

someone with a 600 tries it and it runs slow and jerky...

dev tries a few fixes but cant immediatley sort this so decides the work involved in making it run on the small number of 600's isnt worth the considerable effort.

person with 600 gets screwed..?

am I being overly pessimistic?

I hope so.

on a positive note... Cases in the UK yay!

Dev gets one that can clock to over 900. He writes his program but can't get it optimized for anywho below 900, it just starts dropping frames and skipping, even at 850. So he decides to release it for the 1% that can clock over 900Mhz. Is the other 99% screwed?

I don't know why people keep posting negativity. A 600Mhz machine is not a glass half empty thing. It's a completely full glass! The 800Mhz machines is the full glass, but you also get one of them fancy umbrellas or tiny plastic swords to go with it. Anything beyond 600 is BONUS. The person who can only get to 600Mhz is not screwed, the person who gets 800Mhz is lucky.

 

[Aninhumer]

Dev gets one that can clock to over 900. He writes his program but can't get it optimized for anywho below 900, it just starts dropping frames and skipping, even at 850. So he decides to release it for the 1% that can clock over 900Mhz. Is the other 99% screwed?

I don't know why people keep posting negativity. A 600Mhz machine is not a glass half empty thing. It's a completely full glass! The 800Mhz machines is the full glass, but you also get one of them fancy umbrellas or tiny plastic swords to go with it. Anything beyond 600 is BONUS. The person who can only get to 600Mhz is not screwed, the person who gets 800Mhz is lucky.

I think luck with regards to the overclocking is pretty relative.
If 90% of people can overclock higher than you, I'd say you're pretty unlucky.

Just because you got what you paid for doesn't mean you're not relatively unlucky.

 

[fusion_power]

In my Opinion it would be much better, if all the Pandora Software is optimized enough so we actualy don't have to overclock.
Did they have to overclock the C64 in the Past? Or the Amiga? Devs should optimize their Stuff so that it works at standard clocking or better LESS than standard clocking, especialy onto a battery powered mobile device. All this OC Capabilities just lead to lazy, quick and unoptimized Stuff, that runs good but maybe just at high clock rate, while an optimizing and using every possible Hardware feature of the OMAP colud result in less MHz and longer Battery life.

 

[LineOf7s]

Devs should optimize their Stuff so that it works at standard clocking or better LESS than standard clocking, especialy onto a battery powered mobile device.

In this community, history says they do.

I'm bewildered as to why so many people (not you in particular, fusion_power) keep focussing on stuff that just generally doesn't happen around here in order to have something to cry about.

 

[Tom`]

Devs should optimize their Stuff so that it works at standard clocking or better LESS than standard clocking, especialy onto a battery powered mobile device.

In this community, history says they do.

I'm bewildered as to why so many people (not you in particular, fusion_power) keep focussing on stuff that just generally doesn't happen around here in order to have something to cry about.

Maybe to an extent it's because with the GP2X, there were a lot of platforms where some games weren't quite playable at the standard clock speed (GBA/SNES, maybe), and so it was more desirable to have a unit that could overclock to a certain point. I can see that happening, maybe, on the Pandora, if, say, Perfect Dark or Rogue Squadron was not playable at 600MHz, but it was (somewhat) at 800 MHz - in this case, it's not a case of the developers being sloppy, but simply a limitation of the hardware.

The attitude you describe is more common on x86, though, where pointlessly bloated programs seem to be par for the proverbial course - I've had to use OpenOffice a lot lately, and it's a great program, but it really starts dragging with a couple of big spreadsheets (10,000 rows or so) even on my Athlon 64 3400+ laptop with 1GB of memory. Yes, that PC is almost seven years old now, but it's still got a 2 GHz 64-bit CPU - quite fast no matter how you look at it - and enough memory to manipulate a couple of 4MB spreadsheets without any issues, I would have thought.

 

[juniorm33]

So someone develops an app but no matter how much he tries to optimise it, it wont run well at 600Mhz.
Are people saying it's better to not release it as only people who can overclock to the required level will be able to use it?

Or even why bother develop it in the first place, regardless if it could be a useful project that could really shine on Pandora 2?
He/she may not have the required skill to optimise it to the level required, but maybe someone in the community does. Or it just wont run at 500-600Mhz regardless of who developed it.

 

[Pleng]

It's basically selfish human nature.

It reminds me of a company I worked for. They gave staff the opportunity to invest a very small amount of money and in 3 years time it turned into quite a large amount of money due to a takeover deal (it wasnt, but for the sake of this example we'll say 10,000). The company then said that anybody who hadn't taken the offer 3 years ago would be entitled to a smaller sum (1000).

Legalities of the company basing a bonus payout on such a criteria aside, people who had taken the chance to invest the money in the first place were generally livid that people who hadn't chosen to invest were being given a handout. Even though that handout was only a tenth of what they were getting. They just couldn't bring themselves to be happy for the people who had lucked into a bit of cash.

Even now I can't get my head around it, but people just can't be pleased for other people's luck.

 

[EvilDragon]

Well, besides N64, I can't think of much that NEEDS overclocking.

PSX works nice with default 500MHz with a lot of games, but it hasn't been optimized and isn't playable yet (it has no frameskip at the moment and runs as fast as it can, so games run between 30 and 70 fps).
It runs in software mode currently, so yes, it might need a few months work, but it shouldn't need overclocking.

The Quake 3 I've shown in my videos were also running at 500MHz.

Basically, ALL videos I made were at 500MHz. Vice, UAE4ALL, latest Stella, etc.
All running fullspeed with 500MHz.

And I'm sure stuff can be optimized a lot

Heck, remembering back the GP32 days, nobody thought Genesis was possible, as NES was already a fight to emulate.
And at the end we had a very playable emulator.

Then on the GP2X, the first SNes9x ran with 3fps (snes9x 1.39 - the same recompile runs with 40 - 60 fps on the Pandora).
Nobody thought the GP2X could emulate the SNES well, but with PocketSNES, it was very playable with most games.

Now, we're at the beginning of the Pandoras' life.
Vice is fullspeed. Stella is. UAE4ALL is. GPFCE is.
N64, SNES and PSX need more work. SNES9x needs a nice GUI and some scaling work, PocketSNES is using a messy code that needs a bit more porting work.
So yes, don't expect ALL emulators from the very beginning - but I doubt it will take long until SNES will appear on the Pandora with a nice menu, VSync, etc.

Overclocking? What for? Except N64 perhaps.

 

[Dead1nside]

I'm encouraged that this is a train that I see as picking up speed as all the units are out there, and the second batch is on its way. Developer interest and consumer demand are going to be high. I'm also looking forward to the App Store, and being able to easily donate and pay for certain games and applications.

On overclocking, I hope that developers always try and target that 500-600Mhz default, to optimise in favour for it. That's the best way forward, to target the established baseline. I doubt I'll overclock regularly if at all. For the tasks I want, it's more than enough for most things. I'm really excited about seeing the OS evolving too, faster bootup, better power management.

 

[kikeminchas]

Well, besides N64, I can't think of much that NEEDS overclocking.

PSX works nice with default 500MHz with a lot of games, but it hasn't been optimized and isn't playable yet (it has no frameskip at the moment and runs as fast as it can, so games run between 30 and 70 fps).
It runs in software mode currently, so yes, it might need a few months work, but it shouldn't need overclocking.

The Quake 3 I've shown in my videos were also running at 500MHz.

Basically, ALL videos I made were at 500MHz. Vice, UAE4ALL, latest Stella, etc.
All running fullspeed with 500MHz.

And I'm sure stuff can be optimized a lot

Heck, remembering back the GP32 days, nobody thought Genesis was possible, as NES was already a fight to emulate.
And at the end we had a very playable emulator.

Then on the GP2X, the first SNes9x ran with 3fps (snes9x 1.39 - the same recompile runs with 40 - 60 fps on the Pandora).
Nobody thought the GP2X could emulate the SNES well, but with PocketSNES, it was very playable with most games.

Now, we're at the beginning of the Pandoras' life.
Vice is fullspeed. Stella is. UAE4ALL is. GPFCE is.
N64, SNES and PSX need more work. SNES9x needs a nice GUI and some scaling work, PocketSNES is using a messy code that needs a bit more porting work.
So yes, don't expect ALL emulators from the very beginning - but I doubt it will take long until SNES will appear on the Pandora with a nice menu, VSync, etc.

Overclocking? What for? Except N64 perhaps.

Maybe to make some Dreamcast Games barely playable if an emulator gets released once... Being able to decode Higher resolution movies while Hardware decoding is not implemented? Decode Aerial Digital TV (don't even know if this will be feasible at all...)?

Of course, all of the above should be taken as a bonus...

 

[EvilDragon]

Maybe to make some Dreamcast Games barely playable if an emulator gets released once... Being able to decode Higher resolution movies while Hardware decoding is not implemented? Decode Aerial Digital TV (don't even know if this will be feasible at all...)?

Well, no idea if Dreamcast will ever be playable... it's a cool thing, but playable..? Hmmm...

Decode videos shouldn't be such a big deal, as we definately want to switch to a newer kernel to include hardware decoding as soon as possible. However, that means a lot of testing, so it might take a while.
Though we probably make public beta testing with future firmware images. Put them on your SD Card and help us make this thing better