GBA Full Speed Emulation, possible?

[Fyvve]

Ive heard it both ways so i wanted to know what the general census was.

 

[washo]

its really impossible 'coz of RAM limitations (32M should be OK) but the CPU will never be enough fast to emulate another ARM even running @16MHz...
sorry
see you

 

[mr twit]

Maybe there should be an option of "Yes, but only with modifications to the GP32 (32mb RAM upgrade, for example)"

 

[toy]

IMO Even if it could it would't be a good idea cos nintendo would be sure to try and kill the gp32 off.

you know how much they hate piracy.

 

[sininc]

I thought the CPU`s were compatible (GP32 and GBA), maybe i`m wrong.

Is the architecture similar or does the whole chip have to be emulated ?

 

[Kandor]

How do you think nintendo would go about smiting the gp32 if gba emulation happens? Same question for the zodiac.

 

[Rico]

How could they? Technically the emulator is legal and since the initial GBA emus can only run homebrew public roms, we have a good defence.

Of course I could be wrong - if a commercial emulator is illegal, we're still not in trouble. It's up to the people and the sites to distribute the emu, and Nintendo can only shut down the sites.

 

[jlebrech]

I wonder when people will be able to make emulators that dont use the memory and use storage space instead.

 

[SephirothIce]

Nope, not unless the programmers take a different approach at it. Maybe something will come out after SNES and Megadrive emulation is perfected. But at the moment I don't think it will happen any time soon.

 

[rcx21000]

How could they? Technically the emulator is legal and since the initial GBA emus can only run homebrew public roms, we have a good defence.

Of course I could be wrong - if a commercial emulator is illegal, we're still not in trouble. It's up to the people and the sites to distribute the emu, and Nintendo can only shut down the sites.

They could make a commercial of a gang of bad guys with a GP32 as their gang leader going to beat up a poor helpless GBA, then the police come and arrest them. Then theres the text, "Don't be illegal, buy a GBA"

 

[Fyvve]

alright so if i want to play GBA roms i better get a flash card eh?

 

[Shaking Spirit]

Look! Fyvve! Stop being an idiot making stupid, spammy posts in every thread!

 

[Sonic-NKT]

a ok gba emu should be possible on a 32MB gp32, but if i say Ok, i talk about nearly full speed without sound, but it would be still fun, perhaps a better gba could be possible if it would be programmend from scratch on the gp32!
i would like to see a new better gba emu, but its no a musthave i think, snes would be a lot better also also more possible!
lets hope for a new snes emu!!!

 

[Daz_Genetic]

Why does there seem to be a huge group of people misunderstanding what the memory upgrade offers.

The memory upgrade *WILL NOT* make your GP32 any faster. If a full speed GBA or SNES emulator was possible, it would still be possible on a 8MB GP32. You would just have a limit on what size of ROM you can load.

If the memory is rated higher, I guess there is a chance for more stable overclocking, but in general, you are not going to see any performance increase.

 

[Ruune]

Daz_Genetic hit the nail on the head im afraid But more ram could make your GP32 a little faster, just like a PC is a little faster with a little more ram.

 

[Fyvve]

Geez, what did i do...?

 

[Rico]

Daz_Genetic hit the nail on the head im afraid But more ram could make your GP32 a little faster, just like a PC is a little faster with a little more ram.

The reason for that is because you don't have enough RAM, your PC uses 'virtual memory', i.e. fake memory stored on the hard drive. HD access is a lot slower than RAM so your performance will take a hit. If you have enough RAM, you won't suffer that hit.

With 32 MB of ram, larger roms -will- run faster than if they were on the 8 MB ram, and most likely 'streamed' from SMC. Also, more memory means bigger lookup tables, less calculation and faster speeds.

But of course the memory mod will not affect the speed of the processor one bit. It just helps indirectly at speeding games up - IF the games take advantage of it.

 

[ColinR]

Additional to Rico...
Actually Daz, more memory makes the machine slower. When a program asks for a chunk of data and it can be anywhere in (say) 512MB of memory it'll take it longer to find it than if it only has to search through 256MB (as already stated by Rico). Real life example: I took a performance hit in 3dMark01SE when I did that exact upgrade because 3dMark doesn't get to use all of that memory.

Larger roms 'streamed' from SMC? Ouch! Poor SMC!

 

[Rico]

Actually Daz, more memory makes the machine slower. When a program asks for a chunk of data and it can be anywhere in (say) 512MB of memory it'll take it longer to find it than if it only has to search through 256MB (as already stated by Rico). Real life example: I took a performance hit in 3dMark01SE when I did that exact upgrade because 3dMark doesn't get to use all of that memory.

Um??

When memory is accessed, an exact address is given. No 'sifting' through memory required.

And I never said that more memory makes the machine slower, it makes it -faster- because the SMC doesn't -have- to be used for rom storage and so on.