Gp2x - What I Think

[Radek]

It's strange that many people play games perfectly on their GP2X (often after replacing the cap). I'm wondering why the discrepancy? Are some units better than others, or do some users have a lower tolerance/dexterity?

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Except for the cap touching the case all sticks are the same. For me how well stick handle depends strongly on a game. Some are quite ok (Noiz2sa - already finished all levels without problems), some others not that great (Nebulus) and some are terrible (jumping in Turricans in Castaway is very difficult to do precisely).

I will repeat that implementing DaveC's famous biasing schemes is mandatory. It will not fix everything but it's a best thing what can be done before hardware modding.

 

[GeminiDomino]

It's strange that many people play games perfectly on their GP2X (often after replacing the cap). I'm wondering why the discrepancy? Are some units better than others, or do some users have a lower tolerance/dexterity?

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Actually, the joystick is almost PERFECT for fighting games and whatnot. The Larger-diagonals make the Hadoken-moves (the standard D-DR-R motion so popular in fighting games) pure sweetness. Far easier than on an analog stick, in fact, because it does have that d-pad-style base.

But in games that require lots of sudden direction changes (Megaman, Gradius, etc.) its too easy to hit the diagonal when you actually WANT to go from right to up to left without hitting a diagonal.

 

[DaveC]

Considering Squidge's SNES has only been out a week or so I'd say it's well on track to surpassing the PSP.

Why is it not worthwhile without sound or transparencies? Many games don't use transparency at all, and sound really isn't a big deal on a handheld (I usually turn my GBA's sound off).

YOU may not enjoy playing it, but I think it's a bit rude to these hard working devs to say it's not worthwhile -- a lot of people are enjoying it already!

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It may surpass it, it may not. If sound and transparencies were added it would slow to a crawl. The PSPs faster CPU and RAM help alot. Sure you can get decent speed if you only emulate half of the system. The point is that it is better on the PSP because it emulates ALL of the snes not just part of it, and does it at a good speed. So saying SNES on the GP2X is better than the PSP is just plain false.

While you may think playing games with no sound is ok many of don't like doing it. It totally ruins the experience for me, and I am sure others too. While some games don't use transparency MANY do use it and some are literally unplayable without them.

 

[Radek]

Considering Squidge's SNES has only been out a week or so I'd say it's well on track to surpassing the PSP.

Why is it not worthwhile without sound or transparencies? Many games don't use transparency at all, and sound really isn't a big deal on a handheld (I usually turn my GBA's sound off).

YOU may not enjoy playing it, but I think it's a bit rude to these hard working devs to say it's not worthwhile -- a lot of people are enjoying it already!

​

It may surpass it, it may not. If sound and transparencies were added it would

Sony may stop possibility to run any unsigned software , it may not.

slow to a crawl. The PSPs faster CPU and RAM help alot. Sure you can get decent

Please, not again. The PSP is using MIPS 4KE variation and looking at its specs it's more or less the same as the Arm9TDMI. It's hardly more powerfull and for clockrates the gp2x is also seriously "underclocked" by default.

speed if you only emulate half of the system. The point is that it is better on the PSP because it emulates ALL of the snes not just part of it, and does it at a good speed. So saying SNES on the GP2X is better than the PSP is just plain false.

It was so good just after first PSP's shipments?

While you may think playing games with no sound is ok many of don't like doing it. It totally ruins the experience for me, and I am sure others too. While some games don't use transparency MANY do use it and some are literally unplayable without them.

​

There is hardware transparency and alphablending (and color keying too) for surfaces in the MMSP2 chipset. There is powerfull blitter too. So far software isn't using gp2x's capabilities even to half its potential. Assuming that it will stay the same is unreasonable. We have some signs of incoming improvements already and we are just at beginning of it.

Every system was improving with time. PSP had just more time for it - let make comparisons after the same time.

And transparencies don't have to be slow even in software. There are tricks with lockup tables for an example.

 

[torpor]

I bought another one, I definitely do not think its pants.. from a Linux hacking perspective, its excellent: RAW, basic, elemental. Exactly what you need to have fun in Linux, which is after all why we have such diversity in the f/oss world; lots of the same itches to scratch!

with two, the world becomes interesting, and with the EXT2 breakout box i'm constructing, its even more interesting .. put Host USB on one end, Slave USB on the other, SD-serial on another, then hook up two more, and you've got network play.

thats one cable 'standard', as easy to make as cell-phone datacables (dead easy), and we can do 4-way easy networking on a factory GP2X that scales up to 8-player capabilities ..

When we can play War2/Starcraft on $180 hardware that ships with such a cable, it is most definitely and seriously 'on', gentlemen ..

 

[thejustone]

If comparing the joystick of the GP2X to the joypad of the Gameboy Advance SP, I found that Pac Man (original) would not direct the muncher upwards when I wanted (this is on the GBA). This happens alot, making the game pretty much unplayable. Don't know, but this could be because I was pressing diagonal by accident (which should not even register for this type of game as there are no diagonal movements to be made in this game). Has anyone played Pac Man on the GP2X and found the same problem?

 

[Greenchili]

Which comes back to the GP2X. The hardware is certainly not as good as a PSP but you could say you like it better because of the scene etc.

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Better for Emulation though, the megadrive emu on the PSP is laughable compared to the Gp32/Gp2x. Same with Snes, actually pretty much any emu.

But for 3d PSP blows it out of the water, but thats not th reason we bought one now is it? Although it may surprise us...(not bloody likely)

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:blink: :blink: :blink: :huh:

BTW it makes no sense to compare what could be (GP2X emulators) and what already is (current state of PSP emulators). Cause no one knows for sure if what could be will be.

 

[Radek]

Which comes back to the GP2X. The hardware is certainly not as good as a PSP but you could say you like it better because of the scene etc.

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Better for Emulation though, the megadrive emu on the PSP is laughable compared to the Gp32/Gp2x. Same with Snes, actually pretty much any emu.

But for 3d PSP blows it out of the water, but thats not th reason we bought one now is it? Although it may surprise us...(not bloody likely)

​

:blink: :blink: :blink: :huh:

BTW it makes no sense to compare what could be (GP2X emulators) and what already is (current state of PSP emulators). Cause no one knows for sure if what could be will be.

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I'd like only to add that when talking about "blowing out of the water" then there are some handhelds what are making the PSP looking poor. The Dell Axim X51v is such example with VGA 640x480 screen, over 600MHz cpu, 64MB of ram and dedicated 2d/3d accelerator with integrated 16MB of memory. Looking at some 3d titles available on X51v it's clear that PSP isn't so impressive anymore. Yet X51v is based on common parts and we might see more comparably powered handhelds from others manufacturers. Then prices will drop and such specs will be an entry level eventually.

Sony (and Nintendo too) will have to compete with a common platform.

Point is the gp2x isn't best technically but has enough capable specs to make it worthwhile.

 

[skeezix]

PDAs (including the Axim X50 series) are crap for gaming; the VGA is nice (good for watching divx for instance, and for sharp fonts for apps) -- the 3d can be okay, but in general the framerates aren't where they could be; certainly, no one is actually using it hardly yet (a shame, as the X50v has been around a couple years now..)

The 480x640 is stunning, though. The Axim's (despite being _Dell_ are actually pretty solid machines.. good performers (with free 3rd party drivers; the biult in drivers stink for displau) with very sturdy hardware. Pocket PC is a crap OS to use, but a very good kernel and development platform.

Overall, big thumbs up, but a shame MS can't make a useflu GUI if their life depends on it :/

jeff

 

[Radek]

PDAs (the Axim X50 series) are crap for gaming; the VGA is nice (good for watching divx for instance, and for sharp fonts for apps) -- the 3d can be okay, but in general the framerates aren't where they could be; certainly, no one is actually using it hardly yet (a shame, as the X50v has been around a couple years now..)

I had only in a mind the technical aspects. The chipset i2700g isn't newest yet with its deffered render even with ~80mpixs/s of fillrate it's far more powerfull than the Voodoo1 and should be on par with Voodoo2.

Sony claims over 600mpixs/s for PSP but it's hard to believe. There were some outrageous claims about PS2 too from this company. We have the same situation with PS3 already - too much of hot air...

The 480x640 is stunning, though. The Axim's (despite being _Dell_ are actually

The resolution of VGA is awesome for such small device. The chipset is old and the ones based on SGX instead of MBX will both be faster and more capable. There are Arm based processors with over 800mips and FPU/VPU so at one point we will be getting quite powerfull handhelds. Perhaps in the SoC form even and I think that such machines will replace the PCs as we know today.

Imho this all could be pushed more but firms like Intel are afraid of endangering its big and profitable (yet so inefficient from users' standpoint) "classical" cpu bussiness.

 

[skeezix]

It comes up even now .. that machines just a few years ago have bottomed out in value; A friend of mine picke dup one of the SGI machines.. an Indigo or an O2 or osmesuch, that just a few years ago cost 40,000 UK pounds.. cost him $100 CDN. Many of the servers doing important duties for large companies are less powerful than my X50v or even my smartphone. Pretty nutty. I ran my firewall/mail-server on a Pentium 200 for 5-6 years before it finally keeled over .. hardware is good, and far more useful than people think

SGX versus MBX? Those are acronyms I'm not familiar with.. who is this crazy Radek-man

jeff

 

[DaveC]

Sony may stop possibility to run any unsigned software , it may not.

Please, not again. The PSP is using MIPS 4KE variation and looking at its specs it's more or less the same as the Arm9TDMI. It's hardly more powerfull and for clockrates the gp2x is also seriously "underclocked" by default.

It was so good just after first PSP's shipments?

There is hardware transparency and alphablending (and color keying too) for surfaces in the MMSP2 chipset. There is powerfull blitter too. So far software isn't using gp2x's capabilities even to half its potential. Assuming that it will stay the same is unreasonable. We have some signs of incoming improvements already and we are just at beginning of it.

Every system was improving with time. PSP had just more time for it - let make comparisons after the same time.

​

There are downgraders to run emus with older FW. Plus you could just buy a PSP for emus and not upgrade.

Please don't talk about overclocking the GP2X. You get shit battery life at the default 200 MHz (I get about 1 hour with 2000 MAh Rayovac 15 min.) , overclock and you will get like 15 minutes, not practical.

Snes was pretty good on the PSP after about a month. It had full sound, full transparencies, just was a bit slow but not that much slower than the half SNES emulation now on the GP2X. Snes was better on the PSP comparing the times out. Likely due to the Faster CPU and RAM access.

Things will improve with time hopefully, but the origanal statement was that SNES is better on the GP2X than PSP and that is not true that is all.

 

[Rayek]

And, as I was just informed there's an exploit that works with firmware up to 2.0... That's given me something to do until the GP2X arrives..

 

[skeezix]

Rayek -- you're way behind

On FW 1.0 you can go to town; on FW 1.5 you can run 'kxploit' binaries right from the PSP launcher, and boot .iso's and all sorts of madness.

On FW 2.0 you can use fanjita's eboot loader ot run much (not all) homebrew (emus and games) .. no isos and such. You can however run the Sony FW updator 'just so' and rewind back to FW 1.5 .. takes only a few minutes. I've rewound back and forth between 1.5 and 2.0 a few times.

For 2.01 and later, there are very limited exploit;s very recently, a GTA save-game buffer overrun exploit has been found, so its possible to boot some homebrew from GTA; fanjita is looking into porting his eboot loader to GTA to blow things open, though things are still early. So far, no way to rewind to <=2.0 from >2.0 ..

jeff

 

[Radek]

It comes up even now .. that machines just a few years ago have bottomed out in value; A friend of mine picke dup one of the SGI machines.. an Indigo or an O2 or osmesuch, that just a few years ago cost 40,000 UK pounds.. cost him $100 CDN. Many of the servers doing important duties for large companies are less powerful than my X50v or even my smartphone. Pretty nutty. I ran my firewall/mail-server on a Pentium 200 for 5-6 years before it finally keeled over .. hardware is good, and far more useful than people think

Even on my old PIII450MHz notebook the top command is telling...
(average cpu's utilisation is less than 10 percent)

SGX versus MBX? Those are acronyms I'm not familiar with.. who is this crazy Radek-man

jeff

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Not crazy at all.

www.powervr.com

Sony may stop possibility to run any unsigned software , it may not.

Please, not again. The PSP is using MIPS 4KE variation and looking at its specs it's more or less the same as the Arm9TDMI. It's hardly more powerfull and for clockrates the gp2x is also seriously "underclocked" by default.

It was so good just after first PSP's shipments?

There is hardware transparency and alphablending (and color keying too) for surfaces in the MMSP2 chipset. There is powerfull blitter too. So far software isn't using gp2x's capabilities even to half its potential. Assuming that it will stay the same is unreasonable. We have some signs of incoming improvements already and we are just at beginning of it.

Every system was improving with time. PSP had just more time for it - let make comparisons after the same time.

​

There are downgraders to run emus with older FW. Plus you could just buy a PSP for emus and not upgrade.

You can do like this now but for future I'd not be so sure.

Please don't talk about overclocking the GP2X. You get shit battery life at the default 200 MHz (I get about 1 hour with 2000 MAh Rayovac 15 min.) , overclock and you will get like 15 minutes, not practical.

Not with mine. Not fully charged set of GP2100 just passed out after 46 minutes of Q1 running at 266MHz. With fully charged it'd last around 1 hour and by using better batteries it could be probably extended to 1.5 hours. With 200MHz clock I'm getting at average 3 hours of playing.

Are you sure you didn't damage your batteries by fast charging? You know... companies often do claim many things - the mAh rating means nothing without a voltage curve. It would be far better if companies would be rating batteries in joules and average voltage output.

Consider the PSP has custom made Lithium-Ion battery too.

After all even 1.5 hours is little to small indeed. Hopefully the 266MHz will not be needed for decent speed.

Snes was pretty good on the PSP after about a month. It had full sound, full transparencies, just was a bit slow but not that much slower than the half SNES emulation now on the GP2X. Snes was better on the PSP comparing the times out. Likely due to the Faster CPU and RAM access.

Without profiling it's just a speculation.

Things will improve with time hopefully, but the origanal statement was that SNES is better on the GP2X than PSP and that is not true that is all.

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That wasn't my claim. However I will insist that there are capabilities in the gp2x to do decent emulation of machine like snes. I can back up it by some promising developments, some technical knowledge and by comparing few things.

 

[RogTheDodge]

Hi again it's me, the instigator of this thread! I have had another look at my GP2x, updated the firmware to 1.2.1, loaded Hexen, and wadya know?! - Videos now run perfectly without crashing, and Hexen runs fast and smooth. I might have to eat my words!! This is looking good.

Regards

Rog the 'gruntled'?