I Need Help..can't Decide Which One: Psp Or Gp2x?

[gaterooze]

it's kinda sad how GPH didn't make the 2X powerful enough to accomplish fullspeed snes with sound / transparencies and all the fluff

Who says they didn't? Wait & see

I know what you're saying, but they had to draw the line somewhere. If they'd made it $20 more to do what you want, then someone else could say, but another $20 and it could do PSX fullspeed, and then another $20 and maybe N64 would be decent, and so on... Plus peoeple who say, well, I would've payed an extra $20 for built-in WiFi, or an extra $50 for an internal 10GB HD, or an extra $40 for a touch screen, and so on... In the end, you're looking at a $500 beast!

Decisions were made, and it seems the whole thing has turned out pretty damn good IMO. The price/power ratio is superb, that certainly can't be disputed.

 

[xinfernoofdantex]

hey another question, which has a faster processor? psp or gp2x?

PSP, but not by much.

The PSP's main processor is 333mhz (clocked to 222mhz) and it has an auxillary graphics processor at 166mhz.

The GP2X's main processor is 240mhz (it varies; clocked to 200mhz) and it has an auxillary coprocessor at the same speed.

About 500mhz to 480mhz, though there's also the fact that the second gp2x processor isn't like the main one in all respects, let alone being comparable to the psp's gfx coproc. But the gp2x also overclocks much more easily; its main processor goes up to 280mhz on many units (and doesn't on many others...)

Don't quote me on this but i'm pretty sure the second cpu in the psp is 333 mhz
edit

CPU Core:


MIPS R4000 32-bit core

128-bit bus

333MHz, 1.2V

8 MB eDRAM main memory

2.6GB/sec bus bandwidth

I-Cache, D-Cache

2.6GFlops, FPU, VFPU (Vector Unit)

3D-CG extended instructions

Media Engine:

MIPS R4000 32-bit core

333MHz, 1.2V

128-bit bus

2 MB eDRAM sub memory

90 nm CMOS manufacturing process

 

[darkman]

I was considering a PSP within the next couple of weeks, but then the Gp2x M2 was released last month. I at that point had to ask myself, what is it that I really wanted to play? I looked at what I am doing right now. I am spending all of my gaming time on the BLU. I love retro and homebrew. In thinking of the PSP, all that interests me on it right now is the Capcom Collection, and the up coming Metal Slug and Gradius collections. All retro. I thought to myself, I want a 2X. I will get a PSP sometime later. Right now it is 2X for me. In the next couple of weeks my money will be right and you will see me in the, "I got mine" thread.

 

[weirdocollector]

I've solved this dilemma buying both a GP2X and a PSP (and a GP32, and a GIZ and a NDS... )

 

[xinfernoofdantex]

lmao, you bought a Giz. lol.

 

[minkster]

Plus SNES emulation on the GP2X is getting very good

Is it? The last version I tried was pretty slow, needed max OC, had no transparencies, sprites were messed up, and had awful sound. It seemed very rough like it has a LONG way to go. Maybe It has improved a bit?

The latest version has improved ALOT in my opinion. Every SNES game I've thrown at it has played at fullspeed with the autoframe skip hack. The sound really isn't "terrible" IMO in this version. Just make sure you take off the frame limiter and set the frameskip to zero (with the hacked version), since it automatically will skip frames when needed. I suggest though, overclocking to 266mhz because this is how I achieved fullspeed with smooth frames in most of the games i tried.

 

[weirdocollector]

lmao, you bought a Giz. lol.

Don't understimate the little fellow: I play on it Emus (a very good SNES one too), Original Games (now freely available) and I use it with GPS TomTom Software

I also do SMS, MMS and can shoot photos with its VGA Camera: all the above for little more than 100 Euros

 

[DaveC]

Plus SNES emulation on the GP2X is getting very good

Is it? The last version I tried was pretty slow, needed max OC, had no transparencies, sprites were messed up, and had awful sound. It seemed very rough like it has a LONG way to go. Maybe It has improved a bit?

The latest version has improved ALOT in my opinion. Every SNES game I've thrown at it has played at fullspeed with the autoframe skip hack. The sound really isn't "terrible" IMO in this version. Just make sure you take off the frame limiter and set the frameskip to zero (with the hacked version), since it automatically will skip frames when needed. I suggest though, overclocking to 266mhz because this is how I achieved fullspeed with smooth frames in most of the games i tried.

I can't OC to 266, it locks up solid.

 

[wipeout2000]

Is it? The last version I tried was pretty slow, needed max OC, had no transparencies, sprites were messed up, and had awful sound. It seemed very rough like it has a LONG way to go. Maybe It has improved a bit?

Lets be honest here,full speed snes emulation is definitely possible on the gp2x. Yea it might lack certain things like transparencies but a lot of other snes emulators do too. The real problem is that no one person or group has taken enough time and effort to develop a complete snes emulator (Although Squidge did do a good job). That is part of the reason why the psx emulator has come so far because they have a team of guys working on it and optimizing it all the time. If you think about it, the current snes emulator is only a hack of an incomplete emulator and its running pretty damn good imo. And on top of that Reesy said he can still gain improvements by optimizing the sound core etc.

 

[DavidBeoulve]

...The real problem is that no one person or group has taken enough time and effort to develop a complete snes emulator (Although Squidge did do a good job)... And on top of that Reesy said he can still gain improvements by optimizing the sound core etc.

Bingo.

That said, when I get my GP2X Mk2, 260MHz won't even be where it finds its second wind. I feel for Dave, but then, that's why I took precautions.

PSP versus GP2X debate
I struggled with not only this, but thoughts of an NDS. You see, I have four children who get to use their hand-me-down GBA's in the van (one GBA, one SP), and while the NDS had more games for them, it would be costly to acquire games. The PSP spoke to me, with that big, beautiful LCD screen, but there aren't as many good games (it's trying to catch up, I've read), it's costly as all get out, and Sony has been actively trying to kill their homebrew scene.

Wikipedia pointed me to the GP2X when I read up on the history of all handhelds, and here I am.

The GP2X is better than the PSP if you aren't interested in buying a bunch of 3d games, and would rather game retro, buy a few commercial releases, and experience part of the gaming market that, frankly, won't come again.

One day, 3d GPUs will be so easy to make, even Tiger could do it, and once that happens, the days of the amatuer, non-3d math inclined programmers giving it a go will come to an end.

 

[zektor]

Plus SNES emulation on the GP2X is getting very good

Is it? The last version I tried was pretty slow, needed max OC, had no transparencies, sprites were messed up, and had awful sound. It seemed very rough like it has a LONG way to go. Maybe It has improved a bit?

The latest version has improved ALOT in my opinion. Every SNES game I've thrown at it has played at fullspeed with the autoframe skip hack. The sound really isn't "terrible" IMO in this version. Just make sure you take off the frame limiter and set the frameskip to zero (with the hacked version), since it automatically will skip frames when needed. I suggest though, overclocking to 266mhz because this is how I achieved fullspeed with smooth frames in most of the games i tried.

I can't OC to 266, it locks up solid.

Don't feel bad, neither can I. But still, I never saw the need to. The SNES emulator runs pretty nicely on this end (minus the mode 7 effects) and sounds nice too. I had a PSP, and the SNES emulator there was somewhat of a hack as well. I would say they are now at about the same rate in speed and sound....except of course what I stated about mode 7 (and other effects) not being present...yet. I'm sure it will improve in time.

 

[nickspoon]

Plus SNES emulation on the GP2X is getting very good

Is it? The last version I tried was pretty slow, needed max OC, had no transparencies, sprites were messed up, and had awful sound. It seemed very rough like it has a LONG way to go. Maybe It has improved a bit?

Characteristic DaveC post

 

[Deed]

it's kinda sad how GPH didn't make the 2X powerful enough to accomplish fullspeed snes with sound / transparencies and all the fluff

So you're thinking that if there is not a perfect snes emu ALREADY, it is gph fault ? Don't you think that it may be because no skilled developer(s) has taken the time to work (very) hard on it ? :rolleyes:
Of course full snes emulation is possible on gp2x. If you're tired of waiting, learn asm and start coding

 

[Epicenter]

it's kinda sad how GPH didn't make the 2X powerful enough to accomplish fullspeed snes with sound / transparencies and all the fluff, i mean..from a marketing point of view, such an emulator would attract more buyers..they shot themselves in the foot for something which could have cost an extra 20 bucks or so but i'd pay an extra 20 bucks for fs snes.

why do people always do such annoying things like this? playing your favourite game, and you think..wouldnt it *rock* if this game had vehicles/this weapon/this feature, seriously, it'd kick ass. and the guys never add X feature..its the same with the 2X...it could have been so much more powerful and im sure people would have paid a bit extra to get more power for better emulation, but instead everyone is flailing about like beached whales trying to get their emu's to work at a good speed =(

from what i can gather, even by just giving the second cpu its own RAM or something like that, could have significantly increased the 2X's capabilities and such? or did i understand wrong?

The GP2X's ARM920T CPU is not really significantly less powerful than the PSP's R4000, you can't really do a clock-for-clock comparison like that. Last I checked, ARM9 processors were generally faster than MIPS ones at the same clockrate. At any rate, most GP2X ARM920Ts make it to 266 MHz+, mine personally goes to 312 MHz or so with stability and the speed is incredible.

I have to be honest here though. As big of a fanboi that I am of the GP2X I have to admit the PSPs strengths. The main one is the GPU on the PSP is quite a bit more useful than that second core on the GP2X. This is why you can have full speed SNES with sound AND transparencies on the PSP and not the GP2X.

The PSP's CPU does not have a significant advantage to aid SNES overclocking. The GPU's ability to aid in drawing transparencies is the only major one. Other shortcomings of the existing GP2X SNES emulator (SquidgeSNES) can be ironed out with further development. Things like faulty sound and glitchy sprites are no fault of the hardware, it's just dated and imperfect code. DrMDx has major sound emulaton problems and issues with complex scrolling (e.g. many parts of Ecco 2 and Gunstar Heroes' backgrounds) but these are faults of being based on old code. It's pretty much in the stages Genecyst for the PC was in many years ago; but running very fast is its merit and it does that well. But there is still room for improvement.

Consider that the ARM920T can be taken from 200 to ~300 MHz with nearly 0 impact on battery life-- it's a terrifically low-power processor. The R4000 in the PSP runs at 222 MHz because at 333 MHz there is an enormous battery hit. MIPS processors are a rather obtuse old architecture that drinks power like water and emits a good bit of heat, too. They're far from 'elegant'.

Now, GPH did not have a real choice in the ARM940T's configuration-- the GP2X, at is core, is just some support hardware around a MagicEyes MMSP2 System-on-a-Chip. It has an ARM920T, and an ARM940T in a non-SMP style configuration-- the 940T *has* its own memory, GPH attached a 32MB chip for the 920T and a 32MB chip shared by the 940T and some other support hardware e.g. the blitter and video hardware. However, the 940T internally has NO MMU (memory management unit) and therefore needs data spoon-fed to it by the 920T. Also, its relatively small cache (4k Data and 4k Instruction compared to the 920T's 16k caches) makes it tricky to fit a usable program into such a tiny space and let the 940T run with it.

The MMSP2 was designed with heavy multimedia focus and was meant in part to be used as a DVD player SoC, hence the 940T being configured for a video decoding assistance role working in concert with the MPEG4 decoding helper bits in the MMSP2.

 

[Aenea]

Also, its relatively small cache (4k Data and 4k Instruction compared to the 920T's 16k caches) makes it tricky to fit a usable program into such a tiny space and let the 940T run with it.

You should have seen what people did in 4K in the old days in pure assembly!! I think that is the exact reason why many games/apps/emus for the gp2x still don't use it's full potential, most of it is still done in C/C++. Wait till someone goes a bit further and optimizes a lot of code to asm...

Aenea

Edit: didn't notice the editor kept the older messages in there as well

 

[Epicenter]

Oh I know, it was ridiculous. Things like old demos for the C64 did a ton with barely any space. Hopefully some nice things will be done with this bit of space in the near future though; the 940T does have more benefit than most will give it credit for.

 

[jmetal88]

Get a Game.com and never look back.

You're... joking right?

Game.com is one of the worse handhelds EVER!

Hey, what better option is there for connecting to dial-up BBS's on the go? :lol:

I actually do have a Game.com with the internet cart and modem cable. I use it to connect to my local library's card catalog.

 

[Epicenter]

Game.com: The only system that used its display's ghosting as a feature to 'draw grayscales'..

 

[zektor]

Game.com: The only system that used its display's ghosting as a feature to 'draw grayscales'..

Now THAT my friend is innovation!

 

[DaveC]

Plus SNES emulation on the GP2X is getting very good

Is it? The last version I tried was pretty slow, needed max OC, had no transparencies, sprites were messed up, and had awful sound. It seemed very rough like it has a LONG way to go. Maybe It has improved a bit?

Characteristic DaveC post

Characteristic nickspoon post about DaveC post

Hey I just say it like I see it.