Impressions of the 1Ghz from a 256mb Owner

[NearTao]

So I've topped off over a week of using the 1ghz Pandora now... so I can give it a bit more of a road use comparison.


The extra speed and memory is really proving itself out to be insanely beneficial! We have a lot of emulators that aren't exactly optimized for the Pandora hardware and while they've run fine on the 256mb Pandora, some struggled especially with certain games. I personally love Final Fantasy 3 on the SNES (yeah I know 6). It is totally playable on the SNES emulator which for me has been great. I've been trying to get Final Fantasy 6 for the GBA working on my 256mb Pandora and with gpSP there were some pretty bad artifacts when rendering fx... or using VisualBoy Advance it was just too slow and while it was playable the speed was sporadic. So I had pretty much given up playing the GBA version of the game. I figured I wouldn't keep my hopes up... but would give it a try, and wow it is night and day better playing on the new 1ghz Pandora! I haven't gotten far enough into the game to see if there are any latent problems further into the game, but first impressions are that the 1ghz VBA can handle much more resource intensive games.


For fun in my spare time I play around with PyGame to do all kinds of nonsense experiments. I haven't tried to push the 1ghz Pandora terribly hard yet, but even with just some of the goofy code I have written I can already tell it can handle a lot more sprites. Wether this is a benefit of the SGX being faster or the CPU clocked higher I'm not sure yet... but I'll definitely keep playing around. I'd hate to give numbers here anyways because somebody would probably take whatever shoddy data points I'd give and twist it to mean something else.


I've been a huge fan of PSX emulation on the Pandora since the beginning, PCSX ReARMed r15 was already insanely smooth for most games on the 256mb Pandora. I've always been a huge Gran Turismo fan... and it always felt a tad sluggish to me on the 256mb Pandora. I decided to load it up again on the 1ghz Pandora and it just feels so much smoother. Sure it could be a placebo effect here, but I'm quite certain that it is better. I haven't gotten around to trying Tekken 3, which I want to try soon, but I am hoping that is that much more playable.


So given all this time... what has been the big game I've been playing? I actually just got hooked on Mario's Picross for the Gameboy and have just 'beaten' the first set of hard levels and unlocked the Star levels. Did I need a 1ghz Pandora to play this? No, but it was great! The battery life is as good as the 256mb Pandora (better actually right now since my 256mb Pandora is a little beaten.


Anyway... I'll try and keep posting good news and fun things I've tried as I keep experimenting.

 

[NearTao]

A few more game updates on the 1ghz...


1) The Elder Scrolls: Arena is very playable in DosBox. I've set CPU Cycles to 9000 and it works very very well at lowest detail settings. I haven't tried to see how high of a CPU Cycles setting I can hit yet, but will probably check the forums to see what others have been using. The touchscreen isn't a good choice for this game, but remapping X/B buttons to L/R Mouse worked very well along with the nub.


2) Masters of Orion 2 is very playable in DosBox as well. Again I've set CPU Cycles to 9000 and have been very happy with the performance playing an old save game that had quite a bit going on. The biggest issue I had here was that trying to play this game at 640x480 on the screen it was a little hard to see everything that you needed since they crammed so much detail into the game, but it does play and you can definitely do this on the go. I'm going to play around with it a bit more and see if there are any tweaks to make it that much more playable.


3) Been really digging back into the MAME4ALL and FBA collection. I think for me the happiest moment was being able to load NBA Jam Tournament Edition with all of the settings maxed. In particular I had to overclock my 256mb Pandora to 1ghz, and knock down the audio quality to 11khz just to get it to play at all and it would still skip from time to time. At 1.2ghz I've been able to push the settings back up to 44.1khz and NBA Jam screams.


Finally I've had a bit better luck with a handful of PSX games that wouldn't load properly. Specifically I had been having an issue playing Saga Frontier on the 256mb Pandora. Now I cannot explain it, but for some reason PCSX is playing it fine on the 1ghz, but I have a black screen on the 256mb version. Driver problem, did I update the software and not realize it? I don't know... but definitely happy.


For those of you who are on the fence to upgrade... I can't say enough how much I loved the 256mb Pandora, but this is a great upgrade. If you're not wishing to push the envelope then I guess it'd be a hard sell. For those of you who want to play that much more in DosBox, or want to have the best MAME/PCSX/VBA experience you can get it's definitely showing itself to me to be worth it.

 

[sswam]

Just received my 1Ghz Pandora, and I'm very happy except for ...

touch screen

If I press very lightly then increase the pressure at the same point, the cursor moves maybe up to 50 pixels or even more towards the corners / edges (away from center) depending on pressure. It's difficult to click without dragging. I have a 256MB CC Pandora and a 600Mhz Rebirth Pandora, neither has this problem. The screen casing on 1Ghz is not popped out.


I'd really like to fix this, and I'd like to know if it is a common problem with these screens, a fixable issue, or a fault with my screen. I wish it would be a software / driver bug! Or maybe screen casing is touching the touchscreen? screws too tight? IDK


My Pandora arrived without major blemishes and the wifi is okay (slow as expected, but reliable even with power save enabled). Projected battery life seems very good. It feels more sturdy than the older models, and the hinge is more resistive (for now anyway). I like the silver colour.


Performance is good, a big improvement for Aquaria and N64 games. It seems to do 1.25GHz happily which is good.


So yeah, all very good except for the touchscreen.

 

[NearTao]

I haven't found a good solution for the touch screen.  I recall reading a while back that some forum members were swapping out their CC screens to the 1ghz, but I could be wrong.

If anybody finds a fix though I'd love to hear it still

 

[NoeleyC]

I had an original CC 256 model and a 1 gig, a few months ago I took advantage of the upgrade offer to 1 gig from my original model, but I opted to keep my original screen in it, as it was brighter and I found that touchscreen more responsive. With the screen that was on my 1 gig model (not the upgrade). I found the screen a little sticky (if that makes sense?) under the stylus and you had to push harder to make a definite impact on the screen. Like others I had the same issues with Kami Retro as well on that screen, but it plays much better on my upgraded model

 

[bismuthdrummer]

I'd really like to fix this, and I'd like to know if it is a common problem with these screens, a fixable issue, or a fault with my screen. I wish it would be a software / driver bug! Or maybe screen casing is touching the touchscreen? screws too tight? IDK

Seems to absolutely be the fault of the screen. The newer screens are less sensitive to touch and less bright. Probably the touch sensitivity is the worse of the two issues. Doesn't seem to be fixable as the screen has been out of manufacture. Certainly it's not a dealbreaker, but it's also difficult to ignore the difference for those who have owned older units.

I swapped my CC Pandora's screen with my 1 GHz, and I completely recommend doing that if the newer screen bothers you. Then you've got the Pandora Ultimate because it's the best of both worlds.

 

[zedrok]

i plan to buy a 1g pandora (got a rebirth right now). did anybody know if that screen-problem have been fixed now?

 

[mcobit]

The screens never were broken. It is a hardwarething. The newer screens seem to be less touch-sensitive.


If you have a Rebirth Pandora you could just do it like suggested and swap the screens while upgrading so you got the old screen in the new unit and vice versa if you plan on keeping both units. Or if you want to upgrade, the screens could be swapped anyway.


I'd say, that you should get one and try if it is ok for you or not.

 

[zedrok]

thanks mcobit

 

[kingoddball]

What screen problem?

I got one of the first 150 1GHZ models and I have no screen issue (mostly).

Not as sensitive as the N900 but good nevertheless.

 

[Asiyura]

What screen problem?

I got one of the first 150 1GHZ models and I have no screen issue (mostly).

[…]

Same here… it's pretty sensitive imo