Gp2x Emulation Status


g4m3r

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Joined
Oct 29, 2005
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435
Hello,

I was wondering how all the emulators on the GP2X are coming along. Which systems are emulated full speed, or at least close to full? How possible is full speed SNES eventually? How much longer until the GP2X fully "evolves"? Sorry if this has been discussed anywhere else in the forum, but searching didn't bring up many good results.

Thanks,
g4m3r
 
We should really have some kind of a State of the GP2X address thread or something .. just make a new one periodically, put it on the Wiki or something ...

GB Emulation: Full speed at default ARM920T clock (200 MHz) with Gnuboy2x

NES Emulation: Over 95% of full speed at default, Full speed with tiny overclock (GPFCE)

MegaDrive/Genesis: ~45-50 FPS on most games at 200 Mhz default clock, at 233 MHz+, nearly everything runs at 60 FPS .. at 250+ MHz everything is full speed (60 FPS) period.

SNES: Not quite full speed, but close, in most games. Runs smoothly with Frameskip 1 (30 FPS). Sound issues (fairly minor) and transparencies are either hacked to semi-work, or don't work. Otherwise quite playable.

PC Engine: Far as I know, full speed (60 FPS) at 200 MHz, with no sound so far. The PC Engine emulator WITH sound is not quite full speed but might be with a substantial overclock. Vobbo's emulator will probably run at full speed with sound soon, with a minor overclock or none at all. I believe it's called Hu6280.

Master System and Game Gear: Full speed at ~100 MHz (50% underclock of the GP2X's ARM920T) .. that's 60 FPS. Could probably run at full speed at 66 MHz or lower, too. Emulator is Alexkidd2x. New DrMDx releases have SMS/GG support but I've not tested it.

Pre-NES consoles e.g. C64, 2600 .. - Not used them, but I hear these run at full speed at default ARM920T clock, they should as they are quite simple and old hardware.

Atari ST - Not tried it but probably runs at full speed near default clock, same CPU type as the MegaDrive/Genesis and I do not believe any unusually demanding-to-emulate video or audio hardware.

Amiga - From what I hear, fairly slow but playable. Not sure which models are being emulated. M68000 based? ..

MAME - Depends on the game. Most games using an M68000 at 12 MHz or below, and a Z80 at 4 MHz or below, run at full speed with a substantial overclock, e.g. 266 MHz on the ARM920T. This is with 100% Video Clock and 100% Audio Clock. You can drop these to 80% normally though since the hardware does not usually utilize all of its capabilities for most of the emulated games ... most games just based on Z80s like 1980s arcade games will probably run at full speed closer to 233 MHz or lower. Maybe stock too.

Neo Geo MVS: Runs at full speed in games that do not use hardware scaling (most of them), that is to say, 60 FPS with sound at high quality (22050hz) with about 299 Mhz ARM920T clock. With 11050hz audio, runs at about full speed at 266 MHz too. Can run at full speed with sound off at 200 MHz as well.
 
Thanks for the info, I was wondering about this myself.

When you mentioned gameboy, did you only include the original? How do the GB colour and GBA run on the GP2X? Is the Sinclair Spectrum supported and which models?

Regards,
Lealoc
 
Gameboy, I only tried original.. I think GBC is supported in Gnuboy2x, and if it is, I'm sure it'll run at full speed as well. The GBC had a faster CPU IIRC, but it's not a huge difference at all-- I don't expect you'd need to overclock to get full performance out of it.

GBA .. there is no emulator that runs acceptably. Maybe in the future there will be, but it'll be quite a project.

Spectrum, probably. I think I heard about it. But I never played one, I don't know anything about it. Not sure what models either. Search the archive's emulator section I suppose.
 
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Great stuff, thank you.

I really need to get my act together and place an order for this gadget!!

Regards,
Lealoc.

P.S. Sorry to g4m3r for hijacking the thread, but I was going to post something very similar when I noticed yours :)
 
Thanks alot for all the info. I appreciate it!

@lealoc - Don't worry about it, I'm just glad that this thread helped you :)
 
Is it likely that some of these emulators (MVS in particular) will run at full speed with sound in the future with lower overclocks? Problem being is i just got my GP2x and it only overclocks stably at abot 245/250 mhz
:(
 
Atari ST - Not tried it but probably runs at full speed near default clock, same CPU type as the MegaDrive/Genesis and I do not believe any unusually demanding-to-emulate video or audio hardware.

It does run at full speed with most of graphics effects and decent emulation of its sound chip. Some hardcore things like the Spectrum512 and sync-scrolling don't but those are rarely used in games.
(but much more often in demos)

There is also decent ZX Spectrum Emulator the Fuse:
http://www.zen71790.zen.co.uk/

It's truly a classic and if someone don't know what JetSetWilly was or the JumpingJack then it's time for some playing of all those old classics.

Yeah - my first game (EVER) in my life was JampingJack, then ChuckEgg. They all were so awesome on such puny machine by todays standards..,
 
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It's truly a classic and if someone don't know what JetSetWilly was or the JumpingJack then it's time for some playing of all those old classics.
Seconded! :)

My first ever game was Flight Simulator by Psion on the rubber keyed 48K Spectrum in 1984. I can still remember sitting there on Xmas morning with my family watching the coloured loading bars flickering on the TV screen for five minutes before the game started. I was awestruck and instantly in love with computers from that moment on. This was closely followed by Chequered Flag (also by Psion) and The Hobbit adventure game that I played for many hours.

Ahhh, those were the days. Man, do I feel old now!!! :D
 
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About MD/Gen emulation not running at 60fps with default clock; I hardly notice it, and I bet most won't. There's plenty of opportunity for speedups if I've read what Reesy's posted so far, so it'll most likely run at 60fps using the default clock frequency eventually.

How do the GB colour and GBA run on the GP2X?
GBC games run at full speed. GBA; no emulator working very well. It's possible, but probably not in a foreseeable future.

Is it likely that some of these emulators (MVS in particular) will run at full speed with sound in the future with lower overclocks? Problem being is i just got my GP2x and it only overclocks stably at abot 245/250 mhz
Yeah, somewhat likely. From what I heard there are a few things that can be optimized.
 
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The bad thing about the wiki is there is no real table of contents, you need to search for everything. Odds are 80% of what's on there, I'm not aware of because I have no means to learn about it BEFORE I see it and thus SEARCH for it. There is no real news page, the index page doesn't get updated often and doesn't point to major content. The sidebar table of contents also does not go to anything useful.

Maybe if I can find the time I will work on cleaning up a bit, but there's probably someone better for the job than me; someone who actually knows everything that is there...
 
OMG I was just going through Jet Set Willy this last few days... gawd bless Save states... that game isn't possible without them.
Incidently, if anyone gets stuck in the StarDrive (early brick version) room in Jet Set Willy: Final Frontier just give me a buzz and I'll explain it... took me a day of searching the web to find the solution (and it was in spanish - not easy to read the babelfish translation).

Oh and Manic Miner... if you haven't played that then you must! It's surely one of the foundations of the platformer genre... and still very playable today. You can try it online here, but far better to get the original and run it on your gp2x :)
 
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