Gp2x Writeup On Digg - Take Two

[daclassicgamingmaster]

Awesome! It was worth signing up afterall.

lol craig im sure you're rubbing you hands together as this means only good for you :lol: :rolleyes:

 

[DaveC]

Awesome! It was worth signing up afterall.

lol craig im sure you're rubbing you hands together as this means only good for you :lol: :rolleyes:

I don't know. Some of those guys really bash it with lies or out of date info.

What is it with people and goddamn wifi? It is like every device has to have fuckin' wifi or they freak out. It is not a PDA or laptop jesus christ get over it.

 

[TelcoLou]

Someone should go there that is registered and refute all of his bullshit. I would do it but I don't want to fuck around with registration.

Refuted'd!

 

[craigix]

It is suprising how many people will bash the GP2X just based on what they read late last year and almost entirely based on liksang's shitty review.

What liksang posted has caused more rumours and bashing of the GP2X than anything else.

I've voted down the bad comments and told people to come here and judge for themselves from people who actually own a gp2x.

Still, this is good publicity for the GP2X indeed.

 

[DaveC]

How about this moron:


"mine is in a drawer. sounds great, until the battery dies in a few clicks and the thing reboots or freezes. There's promise of emus, but those aren't ready for primetime yet. haven't gotten it to play video well. If you want it you can have it. Also, the "screen protector" on mine was scratched up. I realize this after I glued it on. Did I mention the thing sucks battery like crazy?
Also, this "news" article is very old."


Mwwahahhaaaa TAKE THE FUCKING SHIPPING FILM OFF YOU IDIOT! :rolleyes:

 

[TelcoLou]

Someone should go there that is registered and refute all of his bullshit. I would do it but I don't want to fuck around with registration.

Refuted'd!

@DaveC: Refute it yourself as I did, don't just complain about it here (as much as we all love your diatribes on morons )

 

[Epicenter]

I wrote a beefy, objective reply on my experiences with the GP2X; its strengths and weaknesses and how they've influenced my time spent with the '2x. I think it sums things up pretty well. Here's a copy of it ... sorry if it's a bit of an earful.

As a GP2X owner, but far from a fanboy (I'm looking forward to the XGP, and if the hardware in the PSP appealed to me more, I might want to buy one as well) .. I feel I should post my experiences with the machine and help set the record straight between the 'extremists' on both sides.

Raw Performance: The most important bit to me. The machine has a MagicEyes SoC (System on a Chip) containing 2 ARM9 cores- an ARM920T and an ARM940T, both rated for 200 MHz. I am able to run my ARM920T core, the one that runs the vast majority of software, at up to 312 MHz. At this speed, the performance is astouding-- and it's amazing at 200 MHz as well. Nearly all emulators run at or near full speed-- only the most extreme platforms to emulate usually experience any serious slowdown at all. I'm developing for the machine, and I'm blown away by what it can handle. It also bears mentioning the ARM9 is one of my absolute favorite processor architectures, and this was the ideal choice for the machine as far as I am concerned as far as balance betweeen performance and battery life is concerned.

The second CPU, the ARM940T, has no MMU and less cache so it's fairly specialized in what it can do- it takes a lot of programming finesse but it has some great uses, like assisting video encoding or some emulation assistance. Developers are figuring out how to use it, and I am extremely confident libraries will soon exist to run common tasks on the 940T like audio/image decoding/handling to lift some burden off the main ARM920T. Overclocking the 920T is simple and painless and can be done in software at any time. You can also underclock for better battery life.

Memory: One of the biggest advantages the GP2X has-- it has an enormous amount of RAM available. There is 64MB total, and only about 8MB is used by the OS. So you have about 56MB of RAM to play with as a developer-- that's incredible, and a big part of why NeoGeo Arcade emulation is possible on the GP2X despite how huge such games are. This is a godsend for me, as a developer using a LOT of memory-intensive graphics AND music! When your handheld has as much memory as an XBox, you've got something impressive.

Storage: The onboard NAND memory is 64 MB, 32 MB of which can be used for storage and 32 MB is reserved for the basic kernel and programs. The fact that it uses such a cheap and readily available format, for which I have a reader on every one of my machines (and my camera uses SD!) this is really ideal. My 1GB SD card cost me very little ($50.) This is nice compared to Memory Stick especially.


Graphics/GFX Performance: The '2x contains a 2D blitter which speeds up 2D graphics operations (Drawing, filling, etc.) dramatically. It also contains 2 scaling units that can resize/zoom and flip the display so applications that are not the native resolution of the display (320x240) can run just fine. There is no hardware 3D support, but given the lack of good, gameplay-rich 2D games as of late compared to the industrywide influx of less creative, less inspired 3D titles, I can do without the pretty realistic visuals for impressive and immersive gameplay. Like the good old days. Lack of a 3D GPU also aids battery life.

Speaking of graphics-- the LCD. Only the earliest MK1 units had the 'flickering' issue, it was rapidly fixed and resellers offered to replace units with the issue. Later MK1 units like mine have it fixed and come from a much better factory, with higher quality fabrication. MK2 units have a whole new LCD with a crisper appearance. There is a 'scanline' effect on MK1 displays (not present on MK2s) but it can be eliminated with a quick 10-second adjustment in the settings menu, which never needs to be done again. The display is bright, crisp and not blurry at all. Much better than I expected for the price.

Audio: Fantastic audio quality; even the 2 onboard speakers sound good. You can of course attach your own headphones or speakers easily and they sound superb; as good as my PC does easily. The built-in audio player is simple and to-the-point and plays all my Mp3 and OGG files without a hitch. It's not very fancy but it does offer some seeking and equalizer functionality; and apparently the new version coming out with the next firmware update adds such things as playlist support (excellent.)

Video: The machine has built-in MPEG4 decoder hardware that supplements the ARM920T, and works with the ARM940T. Even high-definition resolution video (e.g. 1080, 720 lines tall video) plays at a smooth framerate, usually 30 FPS. The machine can play MPEG4 video or DivX and XViD, which is about all I encode to anyway. You can play AVI containers or OGM ones (renamed to AVI). The player is open source so new formats and codecs are being added by community members at the moment. Battery life is much decreased when using the video player due to the extra hardware that's engaged, but you can put a big dent in that by just using videos encoded to 320x240 so the battery-hungry scaler doesn't need to do anything- you can comfortably view videos for quite a few hours on 2 rechargable NiMH AAs.

Photos: The built-in photo viewer is nice and has an integrated explorer, can flip images to view them at different angles, zoom in or out. This is especially nice for me since my camera stores JPEG photos on SD cards, so I can see a big, high-quality copy of my photos the moment I take them! (My laptop has an integrated SD card reader too, so this is extra-convenient.) There are some bugs where the player crashes reading some files, but the majority work fine. It even supports very large images (I think it tops out around 3000px across. But that's pretty reasonable.)

Controls: As has been said the control stick is on the sketchy side and isn't as precise as I'd like, but is much improved with the custom cap that I ordered and with the new one that is provided with all new units (you can also order one separately.) I'm replacing my stick with a D-Pad shortly with a kit provided by a community member, and other replacement kits are in the works. For most games though, the stick is really just fine, and you get used to it amazingly fast. I'm just a picky bastard. The rest of the buttons are great; very comfortable with good response-- the shoulder buttons could use to 'click' more but this is fine; it doesn't hinder me in any way.

Battery Life: I get about 5-6 hours of life playing very stressful emulators like NeoGeo or SNES, and can cram in some audio and photo viewing in there too-- this is on some cheap $15-for-a-pack-of-4 2800MAh Duracell NiMHs or 2500 MAh Energizer NiMHs. On a pair of Lithium AAs it lasts at least 9 hours on average, I stock up on those when I can't recharge. Where there's a wall outlet, I use my tiny compact AC adapter, works perfectly. The cord plugs into the side where it's a bit odd, but it acts like a bit of a 'grip' for me so I don't mind it. As long as I have 4 AAs with me I never have any sort of power issue.

Software: The emulators and default apps for media playback are great, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. There are lots of great ports like classic FPS'es-- Quake, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Rise of the Triad, Duke Nukem 3D and Marathon for example. There are ports of great 2D PC games like Noiz2sa and the "ScummVM"-supported Lucasarts adventure titles. There are LOTS of homebrew games in development and released, like the fantastic arcade-style Vektar or a nice selection of others. The best stuff is in development and shaping up nicely.

Homebrew: Developing for the machine is a breeze; I had never used SDL or coded for a handheld Linux machine prior to my existing projects, but it was a piece of cake to get used to it. You just compile your applications on your PC with easy-to-use SDK tools (or an IDE) and copy your executable to your SD card, or run it over the USB cable via Telnet, copy it over via Samba (yes, it CAN share files with Windows.. or act as an FTP or HTTP server) and run it. Very, very easy.

At the moment I'm the programmer for a team developing a very intense 'danmaku-style' top-scrolling shooter called Stargazer (a.k.a. Project Luminance), and an FPS, Armor of Acheron G, as well as an air combat sim (based on Quake), both with single-player and multi-player support; Stargazer to support multiple players via USB controller connectivity, especially useful with the GP2X's TV output!

I really couldn't be much happier with the machine; it's few quirks are mostly minor issues. I can see the negativity from some people who weren't ready for the risks inherent to being an early adopter and got one of the crummier models from the first production run which didn't last very long, but that really comes with the territory. Nowadays, things are pretty peachy in GP2X-land. If you are considering getting a GP2X, you'd be doing yourself a favor to do so.

 

[iignotus]

I wrote a beefy, objective reply on my experiences with the GP2X; its strengths and weaknesses and how they've influenced my time spent with the '2x. I think it sums things up pretty well. Here's a copy of it ... sorry if it's a bit of an earful.

GOOD GOD THIS IS A LOT OF TL;DR

Oh wow, please try to keep the length down a little bit. Spread out your point among a bunch of comments Most of the little trolls (basically anyone "reporting" this topic to the digg police) don't have much of an attention span, so they won't be able to latch on to your excellent points.

I've been trying to spread the gospel, digg me up if you agree

 

[Epicenter]

If they can't even skim it, they probably shouldn't be trying to read it as they'd be unable/unwilling to grasp it .. e.g. it might differ from their preconcieved notions. Easier to type that up than to go through putting a bickering argument on each false statement, which makes me look like a blind fanboy. Sure, the '2x has faults, I've been vocal about them. But most of the negativity so far in this discussion was outdated and fixed issues or just outright bullshit.

 

[oneandoneis2]

The joystick is fucking shit, it lacks any real control and it hurts your thumb.

Actually, I agree with that - I really must look into getting a replacement, because it's starting to affect my typing

And I'd also have to say that no amount of fiddling has made the GP2X's screen quite as sharp & clear as my GP32's. .

 

[Draken]

"the GP2X is not anywhere near the PSP in terms of performance. It is some where between the Gameboy Advance and the DS."

Fucking incredible. The above should translate to:
"Hmm yeah, IMO the gp2x is somewhere inbetween the GBA and the DS, even thought I didn't even bother looking at the real specifications and I'm just talking with my head up my arse. Please, someone, love me before I kill myself."

 

[blakespot]

Just as an FYI - whereas I normally see about 80-100 pageviews/day at my retro bog, Byte Cellar, thanks to the Digg front page listing, I saw just under 14,000 pageviews of the original article:

http://www.bytecellar.com/archives/000076.php

So it seems the word has been spread a little bit further with this effort. Good news!





blakespot

 

[DaveC]

The joystick is fucking shit, it lacks any real control and it hurts your thumb.

Actually, I agree with that - I really must look into getting a replacement, because it's starting to affect my typing

And I'd also have to say that no amount of fiddling has made the GP2X's screen quite as sharp & clear as my GP32's. .

Then you have a busted screen. Or you must have one of the first units with the bad resistor. The GP32 screen is washed out dim and has very poor contrast and color saturation. It isn't even close, while not perfect, the GP2X has a much better image than the GP32.

 

[oneandoneis2]

The GP32 screen is washed out dim and has very poor contrast and color saturation.

Umm.. can't agree with that at all. Maybe you have one of the FLU units or something. My BLU+'s screen is about the best TFT I've ever come across.

 

[dsd28]

Just as an FYI - whereas I normally see about 80-100 pageviews/day at my retro bog, Byte Cellar, thanks to the Digg front page listing, I saw just under 14,000 pageviews of the original article:

http://www.bytecellar.com/archives/000076.php

So it seems the word has been spread a little bit further with this effort. Good news!





blakespot

How much did that make you from the google ads?!

 

[Mr.Jabberwocky]

Umm.. can't agree with that at all. Maybe you have one of the FLU units or something. My BLU+'s screen is about the best TFT I've ever come across.

I second that.

 

[furikuri]

Dugg - 924

 

[murak]

2 tumbs up for Epicenter! Great text.

 

[DaveC]

The GP32 screen is washed out dim and has very poor contrast and color saturation.

Umm.. can't agree with that at all. Maybe you have one of the FLU units or something. My BLU+'s screen is about the best TFT I've ever come across.

Maybe you have a magic one. The GP32BLU is actually the WORST screen I have ever seen. I have a couple and have seen many and while a bit better than a FLU they are terrible. I used to think they were ok after having a FLU and NLU. However the "blacks" are actually medium grey, the colors are very faded and washed out, and the display is extremely dim. It has to be the dimmest backlit display I have ever seen.

Now there have been a few batches of the GP2X that have a poor screen. The first ones have a wrong resistor value making the display washed out and actually blurry (you can have that fixed). Then there are batches where they are a bit TOO bright. If you have one of those then yeah I can see why you would think the GP32 is better. I guess the opinion on GP2X screen quality is so varied because the screens on the GP2X are actually different depending on the one you have. Still, all but the very first GP2X screens are still better than a GP32.

 

[blakespot]

How much did that make you from the google ads?!

Less than $3. But that's not what I was interested in. I only have ads on that blog pages to see how interesting Google ads look targetting Commodore 64 users, etc.

For $$, look to my other site: http://www.ipodhacks.com



blakespot