Is The Pandora Actually Powerful At All?

[mazza558]

It's been touted as the "most powerful handheld in the world", but I'm beginning to doubt this. Maybe it's just the lack of emulation power that it has (N64 is very hard to emulate on it) that has made me think twice, but it doesn't seem any more powerful than a current-gen PDA (600mhz cpu), and bulkier too.

I've seen the specs, but perhaps its power's been hyped up too much. It doesn't seem like a current PC in my pocket, but more like a 8 year-old PC.

Can anyone reassure me that this thing is actually quite powerful?

 

[anexanhume]

How do you know how hard N64 is to emulate on it, you've been trying? No one has attempted it yet, so we don't know.

The Cortex A8 is a much more advanced architecture than what all the current PDA's and phones out there are using. Look up Dhrystone MIPS and start comparing those numbers if you just have to compare something.

Of course it won't work like a modern PC, just like a netbook isn't as good as a laptop isn't as good as a desktop.

 

[mazza558]

It's been mentioned multiple times around the forums that N64 emulation would be very difficult to do, and would take a long time to get to a playable state, if at all.

 

[Nobax]

Lolwut ?

Did you even had a glimpse at the (youtube) movies of the Pandora.

UNOPTIMISED the Pandora is about two/three times as fast as a PSP with emulators.
It runs Ubuntu 7.04 fluent, and the comparison with a 600mhz PDA is just nonsense. The Cortex is way more powerfull then a ARM11, let alone the lower end ARM's.

And all this is combined with about 8.5 - 10hr battery life, in a package near the size of a Nintendo DS.

 

[anexanhume]

It's been mentioned multiple times around the forums that N64 emulation would be very difficult to do, and would take a long time to get to a playable state, if at all.

Yeah, and the guy who said he would do it, Zod, when asked was confident playable speeds would be achievable... he just doesn't have the time.

How difficult it will be are only postulations by coders and non-coders alike. We won't really know until someone gets their hands dirty with it.

drkIzel (sp?) has said he will port nullDC as well. If he pursues that to an end, we'll really see how powerful it is.

edit: referring to Sir Nobax's comment, they ran FF7 on the PSX emulator at almost 200 FPS when overclocked WITHOUT the GPU.

 

[Nobax]

Just for the record, a 600Mhz ARM11 core can get about 750 MIPS.
A Cortex-A8 gets 2MIPS/Mhz. Since it will be overclockable to 900mhz (IIRC) it will get about 1800 MIPS.

Pretty damn fast if u'd tell me, since thats just plain 'brute force'. The Pandora has also a DSP and SGX ("videocard") for additional, specialized power.

 

[Kayday]

It's been mentioned multiple times around the forums that N64 emulation would be very difficult to do, and would take a long time to get to a playable state, if at all.

Difficult to do doesn't mean the Pandora isn't powerful enough to emulate it though.

 

[CronoTriggerfan]

How about you reassure yourself by reading over the specs? Seriously, this is just ridiculous.

 

[plopperz]

Troll?

 

[jellmoo]

I could be wrong, but I believe that the claim of being "most powerful handheld" is in reference to other handheld gaming devices, such as the DS or PSP.

Also, there are many ways of describing and comparing power of such a unit. Comparing Pandora to a PDA is like comparing apples to some sort of other fruit that requires peeling.

Maybe it isn't as power of a device as you need. That's cool. If that's the case purchase a netbook for a similar amount. But remember, power isn't everything. Design, for one, is important. Portability is important. Community support is important. Battery life, oh lord battery life is important.

Pandora isn't strictly about power. It's a lot more than that.

 

[mazza558]

How about you reassure yourself by reading over the specs? Seriously, this is just ridiculous.

I already have. I guess it's because there's hardly any performance videos out there. Sure, we have emulation of very old consoles, but we haven't really seen any current-day stuff running yet. There's a video of Ubuntu 7.04 running pretty fast, which is fair enough.

QUOTE
Troll?


I'm just covering all bases for a possible preorder.

 

[Nobax]

QUOTE
Sure, we have emulation of very old consoles, but we haven't seen any current-day stuff running yet.

No shit Sherlock. (no offense, it just sounds funny everytime I say that phrase)

The Pandora isn't even out yet, and the MK0's are still without control's.
How/Why the hell would you be able to showcase a 'techdemo' when the primary functions of the device aren't ready yet.

 

[plopperz]

I already have. I guess it's because there's hardly any performance videos out there. Sure, we have emulation of very old consoles, but we haven't seen any current-day stuff running yet. There's a video of Ubuntu 7.04 running pretty fast, but is that all the evidence there is?

Current stuff cannot be emulated (well not decently), and most of the more advanced software is closed-source. Meaning it would need to be written for the Pandora, and there hasn't been enough time/people to write that kind of thing.

 

[Kyo]

you saw unoptimized PS1 emulation, isn't that proof enough?

Also, this topic is ridiculous, and so am I for replying to it

 

[Mutilator]

like the others said this is more powerful than any other handheld and the OMAP is a lot faster than the current phone/pda arm processors

if your unsure dont buy one till u get more official news on the pandora or till after the consumers have the pandora to play with

 

[tazg]

(600mhz cpu),
don't judge based on hz, we're dealing with a whole different type of cpu... even among regular desktop cpus (x86) there is a huge difference between a modern 2.4 ghz cpu and a 2.4 ghz celeron, for example

QUOTE
and bulkier too
so? normally this would indicate that there is more power inside (although in this case I think it's mostly because of the battery, the actual components are still pretty thin)

QUOTE
]we have emulation of very old consoles, but we haven't really seen any current-day stuff running yet
yeah... you understand what emulation is though, right? You can't expect a high end desktop to emulate a PS3 very well, either.

 

[oblivioner]

In the beginning of the PSP scene, to talk about cps2, n64 or ps1 emulators were laughable, and there they are, cps2 and ps1 are flawless, n64 is reasonably playable. I believe that Pandora will have at least 30 fps with frameskip and low quality sound on most n64 games, but that's my opinion.

 

[craigix]

If there is a better SOC than the OMAP3 currently on the market in a similar price range I'd like to know what it is.

The Pandora is at the absolute cutting edge of technology in terms of power, battery life, GPU, Screen, Controls, price etc. etc.

 

[elinscheid]

Back when the Tapwave Zodiac came out, some of the coders at this forum made emulators for the Zod that were quite impressive. Then once I cracked my PSP I was able to play even more impressive emulators. Combine that with what people have been able to do with the GP2X, I'm certain we will see some amazing programs on the Pandora. I don't expect everything to be 100% at launch, but a year or so down the road I expect to be very happy with my purchase. There are no false promises, I'm judging based on the passed experience.

 

[mazza558]

Thanks for everyone's input. I'm a bit more confident of its capabilities now.