may88
Well-Known Member
The Pandora must go on! If the spec improves then that is not a bad thing. Good luck to anyone that gets one.
Preparing for Germany (2011-08-26)
- Thread starter EvilDragon
- Start date
Um... what?
Did you mean "sacred"?
Stradian
Member
- Joined
- Dec 6, 2010
- Messages
- 303
My mistake. I did mean sacred. I can really be terrible at English at times.
White Demon
Sandy Wich's Boy
All this talk about the Pandora being a mini computer and therefore should be able to be upgraded as a computer can be is all fine and well, but I remember all the talk about 'The Craiginator' back on the GP32X boards when it was being designed, and I remember Craig saying he wanted to design 'the ultimate gaming device'. That sounds a hell of a lot like a console to me. The fact that it has a keyboard and runs an open system would not change this.
Also, the Pandora is not like a computer in terms of upgradability. Whenever I upgrade my PC, even if a need a new motherboard and RAM pretty much every time I move to a newer CPU, I am able to take my HDDs, DVD drives and even graphics card to the newer machine instead of having to buy a new one each time. Can this be done with the Pandora? No, as it was designed like a console. Oh sure, maybe, I could send it back to Craig/ED/whoever who can swap out the old board for a newer one, but I can buy all the parts to upgrade my computer myself (I wouldn't even think of doing it with the Pandora with all the other stuff inside), I don't have to post it off to someone else to do so.
To make a sort of comparison, if Sony were to come out tomorrow and say 'we can't get the current CPU and GPU for the PS3 and so are 'upgrading' it to a newer version which will be better for newer users, but don't worry, current PS3 owners, you'll still be able to play new games, they'll just run slower', how do you think current owners would react? Oh and before every one shoots me down for comparing OP to a multi-million dollar company in a completely different market, the analogy would be exactly the same as what ED is currently speculating on doing here.
I'm not saying that technology shouldn't evolve, but when dealing with an un-upgrable device like this, and dealing with a lot of people who ordered the same device as others did, with the same specs, irrelevant of whether they already have theirs or not, these sort of upgrades should be left for the real Pandora 2, not Pandora mk2.
Also, the Pandora is not like a computer in terms of upgradability. Whenever I upgrade my PC, even if a need a new motherboard and RAM pretty much every time I move to a newer CPU, I am able to take my HDDs, DVD drives and even graphics card to the newer machine instead of having to buy a new one each time. Can this be done with the Pandora? No, as it was designed like a console. Oh sure, maybe, I could send it back to Craig/ED/whoever who can swap out the old board for a newer one, but I can buy all the parts to upgrade my computer myself (I wouldn't even think of doing it with the Pandora with all the other stuff inside), I don't have to post it off to someone else to do so.
To make a sort of comparison, if Sony were to come out tomorrow and say 'we can't get the current CPU and GPU for the PS3 and so are 'upgrading' it to a newer version which will be better for newer users, but don't worry, current PS3 owners, you'll still be able to play new games, they'll just run slower', how do you think current owners would react? Oh and before every one shoots me down for comparing OP to a multi-million dollar company in a completely different market, the analogy would be exactly the same as what ED is currently speculating on doing here.
I'm not saying that technology shouldn't evolve, but when dealing with an un-upgrable device like this, and dealing with a lot of people who ordered the same device as others did, with the same specs, irrelevant of whether they already have theirs or not, these sort of upgrades should be left for the real Pandora 2, not Pandora mk2.
I'm very excited about the prospect of a new CPU in the OpenPandora, and I'm sure I'm not alone. One of my friends and I both canceled our pre-orders due to the delays in shipping and felt now that technology was a little more dated. By buffing up the system stats a little, I have a feeling both of us (or at least I know I would be) would be preordering assuming the price doesn't jump up that much.
I've been lurking for awhile, but felt this bit of news was definitely worth replying on
I've been lurking for awhile, but felt this bit of news was definitely worth replying on
That's when you upgrade the specs, give it a slightly upgraded name....something like the nintendo DSi...re-market it as a new device with backwards compatability.
The main difference here is that some of us are still waiting almost 3 years for a preorder.
WizardStan
Mega GP Mania
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Sorry to burst your bubble, but you have a lot to catch up on. The idea was nixed on account of they still have thousands of the current processors on hand. Nothing's going to happen with a new CPU until at least the end of batch 2.I've been lurking for awhile, but felt this bit of news was definitely worth replying on
SavageMind
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It will be interesting to see the benchmark between the two. :blink:
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SavageMind
Member
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ahhh ok. :blink: Maybe.
Gekko90
Still Fresh
Well as i understand the productbrief specs good enough they are almost the same.
Cortex A8 vs Cortex A8
and the real deal would be done with the other chips that are integrated like the videocard and so
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Exophase
Nothing good will ever come of Exophase.
Contrary to what ED said the GPU is the same too. But it's clocked much higher (200MHz vs 110MHz), probably on a different clock domain altogether. Unlike with the CPU you can't really overclock the GPU so this would be the most definitive difference between the two.
You can see all the differences here: http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/OMAP35x_To_AM37x_Hardware_Migration_Guide
In addition to increasing the max clock speed on the CPU they doubled the L1 cache.. but another interesting detail is that it's using a much newer version of the Cortex-A8 which means less errata. This may effect performance if different decisions are made in the kernel configuration, although in Pandora's case they'd probably want to just release one kernel.
notaz
Certified Guru
The errata workarounds are usually not applied if newer core is detected. I think the options are there so you can disable them at your own risk.
It would be possible to benchmark the beagleboard-xm against the original beagleboard, if someone wanted to buy one of each.
Exophase
Nothing good will ever come of Exophase.
Oh I didn't know they're run-time like that. That's pretty cool.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but you have a lot to catch up on. The idea was nixed on account of they still have thousands of the current processors on hand. Nothing's going to happen with a new CPU until at least the end of batch 2.I've been lurking for awhile, but felt this bit of news was definitely worth replying on
Yeah, i know that already...but maybe within a year they'll have the newer consoles up, and I'll probably order it then.
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