How's Picodrive Looking

[EmuGuy]

Amazing stuff...Pandora is the ship of dreams...

Thanks Notaz & and all the devs, you are all the f'ing man!

 

[PokeParadox]

Thanks for that Notaz, it's great to see videos of the Pand in action.

 

[AireTamStorm]

My favorite game on the Genesis, too. Looks fantastic.

 

[Hotcooler]

Amazing. I'm stunned!

 

[Blazix]

Thanks EmuGuy for the great inspiration


Needed an idea for my pandora sig thanks

(this would make a fun shirt design too)

 

[Tobriand]

Wow... both those videos are insane.

Not that I'll plan on playing any games at that sort of speed, but still... I'll definitely look forward to the underclocked Pandora versions of Picodrive. As has been said, battery life with this beast is going to be very good indeed.

That said, I do wonder how much extra power is used with L2 cache enabled vs with it turned off...

 

[trooper]

:blink:

WOW, My underpants have got very tight all of a sudden :blink:, This is looking sweeter by the day.

Thank you very much notaz for those very impressive videos.

The Pandora is going to be one awesome machine.

Trooper

 

[Spadoof]

Its funny going from talking about the gp2x months ago and having to overclock, to the Pandora and underclocking.

-Spadoof

 

[icurafu]

Amazing, and even without DSP or OpenGL accelleration right?

Thanks for spending the time to submit the video.

 

[earx]

Those videos are pretty hot. And that's at a 'mere' 500 MHz. Wow!

 

[Firefox]

That said, I do wonder how much extra power is used with L2 cache enabled vs with it turned off...

Ah, but, having the L2 cache enabled means it goes faster, which means you could lower the clock speed even more to run your programs at the same speed. But will that mean a lower amount of current being drawn from the battery compared to running at a higher clockspeed with the L2 cache turned off? Who knows?!

Seriously though, we're seeing some pretty big performance jumps from having the L2 cache on, so it probably is worth the extra little bit of current draw. Doubtless tests will be performed in due course.

 

[Tobriand]

Oh, I'm quite sure it'll mostly be worth it. But it will be an interesting balance to try and strike.

That said, given the battery life increase once programs are aiming at "full speed as efficiently as possible" instead of "as fast as the CPU can make it go without any power saving features turned on", I doubt it will be an issue, except maybe for programs that really do need 600-900MHz of power continually. We'll see, anyway...

 

[Javacat]

Any chance of a video of Sonic with the Pandora clocked to 900mhz + L2 cache?

 

[fusion_power]

I'd just like to remind you all that Picodrive was the first video after fixing the L2 cache issue, which means that all the former videos were actually running a good deal slower than they can now. I'd also expect more discoveries in the future that might give us more speed

I didn't even know, there was a "L2 cache issue". ^_^
Was this a OMAP Design issue, a issue of the Pandora-Hardware, lack of documentation or just another "NDA" story? ^^

About Sega CD:
About 32x, I do plan to add support for it, but that will probably happen some time after Pandora's release.

How hard is it to make a 32X Emulator? I don't know much of this System and it's Hardware.

by the way, I love Picodrive! One of the most playes Emulators onto my GP2X. (And if there would be a "Advance Wars" for Megadrive it would be the most played Emulator onto my GP2X :lol: )
With Picodrive onto the Pandora, there is at least one familar thing and the possible Underclocking of this Emu onto the new Platform is a big reason to switch from GP2X to the Pandora. I'm sure this optimized Picodrive could run easily 10 Hours or more with one Charge.

 

[notaz]

I just noticed GP2X had "fast renderer" enabled, so it has unfair advantage in SegaCD video.

I didn't even know, there was a "L2 cache issue". ^_^
Was this a OMAP Design issue, a issue of the Pandora-Hardware, lack of documentation or just another "NDA" story? ^^

No, just incorrectly compiled Linux kernel.

How hard is it to make a 32X Emulator? I don't know much of this System and it's Hardware.

The addon is not complex, the dynarec for SH2 CPUs will require most work.

 

[God Ginrai]

About Sega CD:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuLLYzaZaJ4

Also note that in these videos, both PSP and GP2X are clocked to their max, and Pandora board is running below it's planned nominal clock.

About 32x, I do plan to add support for it, but that will probably happen some time after Pandora's release.



That's great to hear. I can wait for you to implement 32X, it's not like that would be the only emu I'd play.

Any chance of a video of Sonic with the Pandora clocked to 900mhz + L2 cache?

+1

-God Ginrai

 

[azmodean]

One point, I see a lot of people asking, "how much will it underclock?" but wasn't one of the cool features of the OMAP that it had a very efficient no-op that made manually underclocking the processor mostly unnecessary?

EDIT: Oh, and praise_and_adulation++;

 

[Trip]

You gotta luv that L2 cache
Superb as always Notaz and I'm dying to see the finished port too.
Now all we needs the multi-player code integrating back into most of these emulators and were laughing

EDIT: In fact, which of the emulators originally had the multi-player code removed?

 

[fusion_power]

Any chance of a video of Sonic with the Pandora clocked to 900mhz + L2 cache?

+1

-God Ginrai

I recommend "Sonic CD" for a good Performance Test. It needs a litle bit more Power than the pure Module Games and it has some slowdowns even onto the great Picodrive. I would like to see Sonic CD with the 16-Bit renderer and all Quality Options enabled and high Sound Quality to. The "Wacky Workbench" level (past) has some slowdowns with the better renderers onto the GP2X and if Sonic looses many rings, the game is pure slo-mo... ^_^

 

[StealthBagel]

With all the extra CPU time to throw around, I hope audio performance is improved. It's getting there, but still doesn't fare well against more developed PC emulators like Kega Fusion or even Gens' audio reproduction. Also I expect performance at 44100hz will be much better; even the PSP at 333 MHz has trouble with that.

Also if 32x support is added I hope SH-2 clock speed control is adjustable somewhere-- that would be a great feature for games that ran like ass on a real 32x (like T-Mek with its constant horrific slowdown)