DaveC posted on Jul 27 2005 at 11:47 AM said:
Only 32 Meg of RAM? I guess NeoGeo is out too
Someone should get the cheap asses to put in 64 MB. I have to admit the specs are a bit underwhelming. 250 MHz? Some current GP32s go that high.
Also as Skeezix isn't going to be doing anything for it and may go to the DS (Not sure how he will like the small low res screens though) It is already getting the cold shoulder from some homebrew devs.
It should have had at least 400 MHz. Basically as is now it will basically just do the stuff we have now only a little smoother, and MAME worse in vertical mode.
Oh well, this one is a definate "wait and see"
DaveyC -- you'are always so quick to jump to negative
You already know I dev across platforms, and further from previous posts you already know I'm 100% underwhelmed by PSP and NDS. (I went to the game store and .. theres nothign for NDS interesting, or I'd pick one up.)
Anyway, what I'd like to see is solid reliable specs. So far it doesn't sound like its all that much more impressive than existing GP32's.
As to homebrew.. if peopel have it, they'll homebrew for it. If lots of people get it, there will be lots of of homebrew. Cold shoulder is too hard to tell, since its not released yet.
If I had one, I'd make sure my stuff runs onit natch, and I'll dev for whatever is on hand at the time. I'm pretty tempted to get one..
But I'll tell you what worries me the most --
GP and GPH -- I'm not going to buy two new GP32-descendants, so I worry that theres this one.. and another one. Are we going to divide up the GP32 scene into 2 GP and GPH scenes? Thats an awful mess... so thats quite discouraging.
The GP32 itself is not an impressive machine, but thats what made it unique -- being all off-the-shelf, its easy to code for. No custom hardware limits you, but means the tricks are all up to you. So these guys will likely be in the same vein.. common goods making it easy. However, relying on multiple CPUs for power instead of single more powerful CPU ratchets it up a touch, so newbie devs will be outclassed (at least for awhile.)
ie: Does Fenix support multiple CPUs and threading? If Fenix has thread support, then perhaps it can work across multiple CPUs. But if Fenix is single threaded, then it would still be limited to 250Mz, and -- theres already 250MHz GP32s, though most of us are at 160 give or take.
So the 'actual speedup' for a lot of things would be 160 to 250 -- a 30% or so speedup. Add in a CPU-class and bus improvement etc, and maybe the new units are twice as fast, single threaded.. at best, for newbies. For coders who get into multi-cpu action *dual core or not), then you're looking at best at a 4x speedup, but "two cpus" doesn't necessarily mean "double performance" -- they need to chatter back and forth and negotiate, and you generally are not running both maxxed out.. usually one CPU is waiting while the other is maxxed out.
So fudging enormosuly (ie: big guesses, high inaccuracy) perhaps we're talking an average of 2 to 3 times speedup over GP32, depending on the skill level and time investment of the coder.
(Also, if the CPU has some 2d acceleration, that could be nice. ie: Like the Zodiacs scaler and smoother.)
Its a shame theres no 3d GPU, which would make N64 and PSX emulation possible; as is, its not likely that 250 or dual-250 could pull off PSX or N64, since a 600MHz PoPC does it badly. (However, this would have less OS overhead than a PoPC, so PSX does sound doable. Certainly, its doable at high frameskip!)
So there you go.. its still "ARM in a box, not much added". So the question is.. do you want to spend another 200UKP to get somethign 2-3 faster than a GP32?
I don't know yet..
But sure enough, if everyone else gets one, I'll get one.
Gotta have CaSTaway right?
And I (or someone) would port UAE, since thats easily in the class to run UAE at least "okay".
But so far, I'm in the "wish it had more" boat, and will wait until everyone else gets one.
(Like you .. you buy one, glass-mod it, then I'll buy it off you?
jeff
Edit: I should note that yes, I can do arithmetic and 166->250 is a different %age. Doh
Edit: Note that.. a worry is how much can this be pushed; ie: Minimal UAE and 'better SNES' and such is all well and good.. but not that much more over GP32. ie: Will peopel dole out some more cash to get 'better' but not 'perfect'?
Certainly, over time people will.. if GP32s stop being sold, people will buy this as 'the new GP32'. But will people migrate _quickly_ or _slowly_?
We need real info. ie: Someone could make a poll "Will you buy the new GP32?", but no one can truly answer until we know true specs.
(But if its linux kernel, that'll entice a lot of people