Gph: The Wiz - Official Announcement

[icurafu]

It's only $180 at play-asia, so I'll grab one there as soon as some people get their hands on some and don't mention the double d-pad being a deal breaker.

 

[invinciblegod]

I like the world of warcraft box.

 

[dodgyville]

I can't believe it doesn't have wifi ... that's an absolute 100% must for a next gen handheld. ARGH!

 

[Retroid]

~£91 at Play Asia for a machine which is double the speed of a 2X, with a better battery and promise of 3D acceleration in future apps?

Yes please.

This has the price sweet spot for an upgrade as far as I'm concerned...

Blimey, I'm just thinking how Amiga, SNES emulators & MAME would perform this this much of a ramp up in CPU speed; they're bloody good at up to 240MHz, at this CPU speed they're going to be beyond perfect!

Actually... I'm wondering if the CPU clock in this is as scalable as the 2X's, because if it is that could lead to a battery life longer than the quoted ~5 hours. 250Mhz to run VICE and UAE4All and I'd be as happy as a pig at a vegetarian convention! h34r:

As for the second Dpad.... hopefully that'll get fixed either by GPH (yeah, right) or, by the looks of it, someone will provide a replacement solution like the replacement sticks for the 2X. And this doesn't look anywhere near as big a problem as the stick was.

 

[slaanesh]

I'm quite happy because I've spent all the day finding the way to access 8 bpp mode (I'm implementing a low hardware access library like Ryleh's Minilib).

Awesome.

@ Franxis - are you going to port MAME4ALL to this?

 

[Mr 2X]

Oh well... who will be the first to make a 4 buttons mod for right DPad ?

 

[Jae686]

I have a F100.
1st - the head phone jack's solder broke off.
2nd - the stick sucks a##.

The device delivers........although the quality left much to be desired.

Honestly, i dont know if i'm willing to hand more money on a GPH handheld.
I'm going to wait for both pandora and wiz to come out, read reviews and then decide.

But in the back of my head the voices say "too little to late..."

 

[lizard808uk]

WTF?? They've gone and taken Blood Cross and rebadged it as Asura Cross Wired!.. It doesn't even look any different to the old GP32 version.. I also expect the build quality to be less than satisfactory too (as has been the case with Gamepark / GPH in the past).

I'm all about Pandora.. the fact that I'll be able to ssh on wifi while eating in Subway below my office is enough for me

 

[EvilDragon]

The Wiz already has a basic Fenix runtime, it took about half an hour to get running .

Hmm, sounds like GPH really came out and talked to some in the community before releasing it. Or at least you Orkie know quite a bit than the rest of us.


Some know more (like Orkie) because they already have a prototype.

I find it interesting though - except for the SoC and the Dual-DPad, these are exactly the changes we (Craig, Fatih and me) suggested them for a new revision of the gp2x back in October 2006...
We suggested Touchscreen, battery built-in, better display, DPad and games built-in.

What happened AFTER our meeting with them was the Value Pack... with added goodies and a slow FW 3.0.0. After that we decided to do it on our own and the Pandora was born.

One year ago, at the IFA, GPH told me about their new system and asked for some ideas and advice.
In February they did contact all the devs of the games they wanted (I helped them a bit, as I know most devs here ) - and these devs got a prototype in exchange for their game.

I'm quite happy with the outcome, if the Button-DPad is not that bad, we basically have a GP2X Mini - as recompiling is fast, so a lot of the gp2x software library can be ported in nearly no time.

 

[gruso]

Second d-pad aside, I rather like it. Definitely an option for those not making the leap to Pandora.

 

[sam fisher]

Second d-pad aside, I rather like it. Definitely an option for those not making the leap to Pandora.

Or just those who wish to support both. It is entirely possible to support both consoles at once

 

[Franxis]

My (bad) impressions about the GP2X Wiz:
- I really don't understand the second d-pad :blink: :blink: :blink:
- Only 64 Mb of RAM? The same memory limitations in MAME :blink: :blink: :blink:

I also don't like the Pandora design at all, and maybe a bit expensive.

About the MAME ports for Wiz and Pandora it will be really easy to port latest MAME4ALL for both consoles with minimum changes because the console specific code is really small, nothing to be worried about...

But the point would be to port the latest MAME version, and maybe in the Wiz it will be more difficult due to memory limitations. I suppose the power of both consoles are enough for that (aprox. GP2X x2).

 

[sam fisher]

GPH seem to be far more interested in homebrew games than emulators and 64MB is certainly enough for some very good homebrew games.

 

[flammablepiss]

Well it looks good and its pretty damn cheap too. If there are shoulder buttons i think it has enough buttons as well.
I want the Pandora though, this "Wiz" doesnt really pack that WOW factor that Pandora does. So I won't be buying one if i own the Pandora and 2x. Dont need three handheld that do the same thing

 

[Orkie]

If there are shoulder buttons i think it has enough buttons as well.

It does have them.

 

[centrlink]

Well, took the plunge and pre-ordered at Play Asia for $US180 - obviously I am hopeful the second d-pad is better than it looks ;-) but if it can manage full speed Miggy emulation, I figure one button functionality will be fine anyways

Critical - if you're out there, any plans to port UAE4ALL to the Wiz? I am guessing it will run like the clappers on this thing.....

Cheers
Simon

 

[pepone]

My (bad) impressions about the GP2X Wiz:
- I really don't understand the second d-pad :blink: :blink: :blink:
- Only 64 Mb of RAM? The same memory limitations in MAME :blink: :blink: :blink:

if the sd card speed issue are removed, then streaming from the sdcard shouldn't be penalizing.
Also, hopefully, the memory will not be divided in 2 part like on the gp2x.

 

[Orkie]

Also, hopefully, the memory will not be divided in 2 part like on the gp2x.

The memory is divided 48/16, the upper 16MB being used for YUV/3D/RGB/sound buffers (though you could probably use a lot of that for whatever you want if you aren't using 3D and YUV for example). It has to be this way because the video hardware can't access memory that is being controlled by Linux.

 

[taintedclarity]

Is there backwards compatibility with gp2x apps?

 

[Puck2099]

Actually... I'm wondering if the CPU clock in this is as scalable as the 2X's, because if it is that could lead to a battery life longer than the quoted ~5 hours. 250Mhz to run VICE and UAE4All and I'd be as happy as a pig at a vegetarian convention! h34r:

I've changed Wiz clock to 200 Mhz as well as 650 Mhz without any problem