Pandora's Rival: Acer


Prometheus said:
That said, what I would find interesting is an open home-console that isn't just an x86 box in a console-like shell, doesn't use a big hard drive or whatever, and has some sort of limits deliberately imposed on it. I say this because it's often appeared that a degree of limits seems to foster a degree of creativity with how the hardware is worked with, or so it seems. I'm just thinking back to the sorts of tricks you used to see with the C64 and its brethren (and even the NES, such as how some of Codemasters' games for that system used undocumented hardware behaviour) and so on, here, really. :p
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Well, not to mention, every time a mysterious new project attempts to create a midway point between console and PC, they usually err more on the side of PC, making an overpriced, underpowered hunk of junk, and the project gets scrapped (I'm looking at you, Indreama).
 
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icurafu said:
Anyway, the EeePC is more powerful than the pandora will be. I think it's got a better chance.
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It has a faster x86 CPU, but with no 3D acceleration and no game controls, it isn't much of a gaming console. I'm not sure what you think it has a better chance of doing.
 
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The GMA900 at 200MHz will outperform the SGX. They are different form factors that use completely different levels of power. (Yes, the Eee PC had 3D acceleration (it's not using the geode lx(OLPC for instance)))

I'm saying that if a playable semi-efficient DS emulator came out, it would play better on the Eee PC. It'll will even use the x86 optimisations it is bound to have. Unless someone does a lot of work for the Pandora, that is.
 
icurafu said:
I'm saying that if a playable semi-efficient DS emulator came out, it would play better on the Eee PC. It'll will even use the x86 optimisations it is bound to have. Unless someone does a lot of work for the Pandora, that is.
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DS uses ARM too, so maybe virtualization can help in the emulation. I think there was a DS emulator for GP32 or GP2X trying that.
 
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timofonic said:
icurafu said:
I'm saying that if a playable semi-efficient DS emulator came out, it would play better on the Eee PC. It'll will even use the x86 optimisations it is bound to have. Unless someone does a lot of work for the Pandora, that is.
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DS uses ARM too, so maybe virtualization can help in the emulation. I think there was a DS emulator for GP32 or GP2X trying that.


Nope. There was a GBA emu that tried it on GP32, and a proof of concept emu on GP2x, but there are limitations with the approach on ARM9, not that I'm sure what they were not being a coder.

A DS emu done in any way whatsoever on either the 2x or the 32 would be unplayably slow, if it were even possible.
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icurafu said:
The GMA900 at 200MHz will outperform the SGX. They are different form factors that use completely different levels of power. (Yes, the Eee PC had 3D acceleration (it's not using the geode lx(OLPC for instance)))

I'm saying that if a playable semi-efficient DS emulator came out, it would play better on the Eee PC. It'll will even use the x86 optimisations it is bound to have. Unless someone does a lot of work for the Pandora, that is.
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The big noise at this point is Intel expecting EEE type PC's costing from $200-$250 and up using the Atom processor and Poulsborough (?) chipset. These devices should be coming out this summer and should shake up the low end market.

Atom will likely run from 1.4 to 2.0GHz, although less efficient clock for clock than dotham, and have a PowerVR SGX part embedded in the chipset. Not as power efficient as OMAP, but still only a few watts to run cpu & chipset.

You're saying this powerVR will be slower than the current EEE's intel accelerator?
 
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Intel will NOT use the SGX chipset with the ASUS Eee2 PC, or it's own classmate. It will use a 2x1.86 Centrino Nano where each core performs nearly as well as the 900Mhz Celeron in the current Eee PC. Speedstep technology will be stripped out to save costs. instead of the SGX chip, intel will use the GMA 950. The GPU is probably at 133MHz which will perform less in most applications than GMA 900 at 200MHz.

The Centrino nano with the single core and SGX graphics will mostly be MIDs but will suit some lightweight UMPCs. However, I understand that WinXP drivers for SGX do not exist now and may not later. Therefore, Vista with a max of 1GB of memeory (including the aparture) will be a nightmare deivce. So I'm fairly sure this will only suceed in MIDs that use good future MID OSs such as Ubuntu mobile.
 
icurafu said:
It will use a 2x1.86 Centrino Nano where each core performs nearly as well as the 900Mhz Celeron in the current Eee PC.
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I'm sure you know this already, but I think it's worthy of note nonetheless (even if just for casual observers :p): The Celeron in the EeePC may well be a 900MHz one, but it actually runs at 630MHz.
 
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... but every geeks restored the clocking back to 900 mhz anyway.

It's pretty neat the way asus did it on the default xandros, you can install a second kernel, and boot on the 900mhz kernel while AC powered, and 630 otherwise.
 
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