64mb Ram - What Will This Mean...

[Prophet]

sad thing is just that the resolution of the CPS2 is a bit to big for the gp32.. i think arround x380  and the gp32 has only x320. so we have to rescale it, that will take cpu power, but perhaps this wont be a big problem if the GPU is good enoguh

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Yep you're correct. CPS2 (and CPS1) is actually 384x224.

But the GPX2 surely has scaling functions like the Zodiac has, so it should be fairly easy and fast to scale the 384 down to 320. In fact PSP and Zodiac GPU's can scale emus to full screen with smoothing, all with no hit on the CPU, and I'm sure the GPX2 will have similar functionality. It's usually part of any GPU that has video decoding functions. The loss of resolution from 384 to 320 isn't that bad on on a 3.5" screen. It may look a bit yucky when scrolling horizontally though... Emu devs will cross that bridge if/when they get to it.

Also, look at Saturn or PSX ports of CPS2 games. They used 320x224, and unless you compared them side-by-side with the CPS2 versions you wouldn't notice the loss of resolution much, if at all. But if you look very closely at some of the graphics, especially power bar text, and you're using an RGB monitor - you can spot the rescaled graphics, since some parts were skinnier here and there. But of course they had no scrolling/scaling ugliness since they were using prescaled/redrawn sprites and tiles.

NeoGeo at least, is an easy fit: 304x224 (or 320x224 technically). So it would look crisp and perfect on the GPX2's resolution with no scaling needed.

 

[efegea]

sad thing is just that the resolution of the CPS2 is a bit to big for the gp32.. i think arround x380  and the gp32 has only x320. so we have to rescale it, that will take cpu power, but perhaps this wont be a big problem if the GPU is good enoguh

​

Yep you're correct. CPS2 (and CPS1) is actually 384x224.

But the GPX2 surely has scaling functions like the Zodiac has, so it should be fairly easy and fast to scale the 384 down to 320. In fact PSP and Zodiac GPU's can scale emus to full screen with smoothing, all with no hit on the CPU, and I'm sure the GPX2 will have similar functionality. It's usually part of any GPU that has video decoding functions. The loss of resolution from 384 to 320 isn't that bad on on a 3.5" screen. It may look a bit yucky when scrolling horizontally though... Emu devs will cross that bridge if/when they get to it.

Also, look at Saturn or PSX ports of CPS2 games. They used 320x224, and unless you compared them side-by-side with the CPS2 versions you wouldn't notice the loss of resolution much, if at all. But if you look very closely at some of the graphics, especially power bar text, and you're using an RGB monitor - you can spot the rescaled graphics, since some parts were skinnier here and there. But of course they had no scrolling/scaling ugliness since they were using prescaled/redrawn sprites and tiles.

NeoGeo at least, is an easy fit: 304x224 (or 320x224 technically). So it would look crisp and perfect on the GPX2's resolution with no scaling needed.

​

Yes, the SoC GPX2 uses has hardware scaling, so it's not a problem. It's like xvideo on linux (don't know how it's called on windows). YUV acceleration or something like that :wacko:

 

[Vimacs]

at cps you could also jsut drop a few px on evry side, a tv is doing the same.

 

[Titcher]

I hope Jagged Alliance 2 gets ported to the GPx2, it would probably work on the GP32 if it had more ram.

 

[Prophet]

at cps you could also jsut drop a few px on evry side, a tv is doing the same.

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32 pixel columns per side is a lot to lose. I'd at least want the scaling option to see the entire image.

And do you mean playing CPS2 on TV using a supergun? I don't have one of those, so I wasn't aware of how they handle odd resolutions. But simply cutting off parts of the display is certainly less than ideal. I do have an arcade cabinet, and my monitor can adjust to any resolution (within standard arcade monitor frequency ranges).

 

[Jarska333]

I'm willing to bet many games have redundant areas, that can be cut without problem... Not saying this from experience, though.

 

[Vimacs]

a (crt) tv is allways hideing some pixels at evry boarder, you notie that when you look the same movie on a tft for example, its about 1cm at evry side that gets cropped

 

[Squidge]

Prime candidate for TV-out.

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If you want to play emulators on a TV, then I suggest you buy an Xbox, PS2, or similar, as they will do it much better than a GP32 or GPX2.

 

[iignotus]

a (crt) tv is allways hideing some pixels at evry boarder, you notie that when you look the same movie on a tft for example, its about 1cm at evry side that gets cropped

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1cm doesn't make sense. What if you have a 72" screen? Or maybe an 10" B&W?

The fact is that it's not really that much that's cut off, maybe about 3-5% on each side. You can get the entire picture with a TV-In card on your computer, though.

 

[Jarska333]

Prime candidate for TV-out.

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If you want to play emulators on a TV, then I suggest you buy an Xbox, PS2, or similar, as they will do it much better than a GP32 or GPX2.

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I reserve this place for a witty answer tomorrow, as I'm now too tired to think.

 

[Prophet]

a (crt) tv is allways hideing some pixels at evry boarder, you notie that when you look the same movie on a tft for example, its about 1cm at evry side that gets cropped

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Ah, yes, they overcompensate so people don't see any black borders.

But I think even a Supergun won't cut off 32 pixel columns (which is a lot more than a cm unless you have a 3 inch TV) per side if playing a CPS2 board. Then again, don't have one so don't know.

And you're incorrect about "every" TV. In fact I personally adjusted my Sony Wega (using the "secret" technician's menus) so that my game systems aren't missing any image resolution, just like a PC display.

 

[Vimacs]

ok, evry cheap

 

[mrpig]

Apologies if this has already been said, not got time to read whole thread but...on my chipped xbox which only has 64megs ram, I can play any neogeo game including motw, all the metal slugs, kof series etc and a lot of them are over 64megs zipped, let alone unzipped. How is it done on there (the emu is Kawaks iirc), I guess its caching on the xbox's HD?

 

[Squidge]

Not caching as such, but it just loads the required parts of the emulator into memory as and when needed.

 

[Prophet]

Apologies if this has already been said, not got time to read whole thread but...on my chipped xbox which only has 64megs ram, I can play any neogeo game including motw, all the metal slugs, kof series etc and a lot of them are over 64megs zipped, let alone unzipped. How is it done on there (the emu is Kawaks iirc), I guess its caching on the xbox's HD?

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Yeah, similar strategies may be workable on GPX2 as well. I'm just hesitant to mention that until we have the system. Not sure if transfer speeds between SD->RAM would be fast enough without causing extreme lag. But it might work out OK.

Another possibility, is to use some of the NAND flash. Assuming all 64MB isn't occupied by the OS + built-in apps, it could be possible to cache parts of very large ROMs there as well. Not saying if it would work for sure, or how well it might work, but it's just another idea for loading very large ROMs.

But even with just the 64MB, we could load a LOT of very good games. So nothing to cry about really. At this point, the real big question is how fast the GPX2 will be for emulation. That's where most of the big variables lie right now. After we find out if NeoGeo emulation can be done at good speeds, then we can worry more about dynamic caching and other strategies for loading bigger games.

 

[DijiTao]

I saw this SD card on Newegg -

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16820211314

A-DATA 2GB Secure Digital (SD) Card Model Turbo SD 150X 2G - Retail

Features: High performance, low power consumption, and ultimate storage capacity. Works with your computer and portable products such as DSC, PDA, laptops, and MP3 players. Backwards compatible with standard SD applications.
Manufacturer Warranty: Lifetime
Speed: 150X (22.5MB/sec read, 15MB/sec write)

At 22.5MB/sec read does using the SD card for swap start to look doable? - I really don't know what kind of speeds would be nessessary.

 

[Prophet]

Well, it depends on what is being accessed and when.

Keep in mind that ROM chips provide virtually instantaneous random access to the entire data. Even at 22MB/sec, and that's probably a theoretical "best case" scenario anyway, you won't see the same sort of speed as from RAM/ROM.

But really, aside from saying it may be possible, until devs have these systems in hand and start exploring, we can only say "maybe."

But at least it's fun being able to speculate on what's possible.

Considering how good the GP32 turned out for emulation, the GPX2 will be even better, so that's not bad at all, eh? We just won't know how much better for a while - but it will certainly be better.

 

[DijiTao]

Well, it depends on what is being accessed and when.

Keep in mind that ROM chips provide virtually instantaneous random access to the entire data. Even at 22MB/sec, and that's probably a theoretical "best case" scenario anyway, you won't see the same sort of speed as from RAM/ROM.

But really, aside from saying it may be possible, until devs have these systems in hand and start exploring, we can only say "maybe."

But at least it's fun being able to speculate on what's possible.

Considering how good the GP32 turned out for emulation, the GPX2 will be even better, so that's not bad at all, eh? We just won't know how much better for a while - but it will certainly be better.

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I’ve been lurking around these forums for awhile and I have to say that CPS2 / NeoGeo AES emulation are the two things that will either make or break the new system for me. I know for some other people it’s proper Amiga emulation and for others still it’s GBA, but for me I just want the 2d fighters of my teenage years in a convenient travel size form factor.

The things that are making hopefully that this will be possible is the xbox running Garou smoothly despite that system having 64mb of ram, and all the existing work for emulating 68000 on ARM thanks to the transition of various PDA’s.

 

[mrpig]

The xbox has a 733mhz celeron/p3 hybrid though. I dont know how the arm compares clock for clock but I would be very suprised if a 200mhz one or even a pusedo 400mhz when combining them, would come near the raw processing power of the xbox's cpu? On the other hand it was a rehash of a windows emulator so probably not optimised greatly so there is hope. Garou on a handheld would do it for me, infact I might just fire up the xbox right now heh

 

[DijiTao]

The Xbox's intel cpu is certaintly more powerful then the ARM9 to be in the GPX2 - but I really don't think that processing power is going to be the bottleneck. If you look at the hardware in the Sega Genesis it's some what similar to the NeoGeo and the Genesis doesn't seem to have any problems being emulated by the exsisting GP32. Infact I'm really intrested to hear what the dev of Dr. MD would have to say on the subject. My guess is that the only hard part of emulating the NG will be dealing with it's massive roms.

Yes - this is all highly speculative, but what else is there to do till the hardware is out?