Psp Vs Gp2x?

[Retroid]

SNES emulation is better on the PSP from what I've seen (got both a PSP and a GP2X recently) and the NG & CPS2 emus run flawlessly on the PSP but frameskip on my :gp2x

/Le sigh

On the other hand, the GP2X has an *excellent* version of MAME which I can underclock to 66MHz for a lot fo my favourite games to save battery life! h34r:

Horses for courses.

Although it is a pity that the hardware resizing on the GP2X lacks bilinear :rolleyes:

 

[OMars]

freddy: the psp has a sleep function. you press the pause button ingame, hit the off switch on the psp and it goes to sleep mode. you can later resume exactly where you left off. it's a great feature which the gp2x is lacking.

drains battery tho ~~

It doesn't waste that much life.

Also, when it is in "fit 4:3" mode, the game window is still large and the emulation looks perfect. The only problem the psp has is non-dedicated developers, except for a few though (exophase, that's you, etc). I know of plenty of homebrew games and emus written by programmers that said, "..it'll just take a week or so to add sound..", and crap like that. For battery life issues, you can just get a higher capacity battery. There are lots of those on "www.dealextreme.com".

But that is just my experience, and I have returned my psp for a refund because I broke its UMD laser. Now I'm stuck deciding if I should go with the psp again or the gp2x (which would be hard to get fixed or sent back if it is defective in any way). Another thing that I am having trouble with is the price issue. Standard PSP packs are now officially cheaper than standard GP2x packs ($169.99 + tax for the psp in stores versus ~$169.99 + shipping on playasia, but they are sold out) , but the prices for their memory cards are very different. For example, at newegg.com, you can get either a 2GB memory stick duo or a 4GB SD card for around the same price. Just as well, on one hand the psp has a larger screen, commercial games, and wi-fi, and on the other hand the gp2x has better arcade, video compatibility, and a constantly updated list of emus and homebrew games.

That is my current dilemma. What do the guys here on the forum who've owned both of them recommend I get this time over?

 

[TelcoLou]

freddy: the psp has a sleep function. you press the pause button ingame, hit the off switch on the psp and it goes to sleep mode. you can later resume exactly where you left off. it's a great feature which the gp2x is lacking.

Save states are a great "sleep mode" substitute

 

[OMars]

freddy: the psp has a sleep function. you press the pause button ingame, hit the off switch on the psp and it goes to sleep mode. you can later resume exactly where you left off. it's a great feature which the gp2x is lacking.

Save states are a great "sleep mode" substitute

Wow, you made me and him look like idiots. :blink:

EDIT: I take that back, he was talking about commercial games, you can't have savestates in those.

 

[imhotep]

on one hand the psp has a larger screen, commercial games, and wi-fi, and on the other hand the gp2x has better arcade, video compatibility, and a constantly updated list of emus and homebrew games.

That is my current dilemma. What do the guys here on the forum who've owned both of them recommend I get this time over?

I think you have a very good handle on the differences between the units. Only you can answer which one would serve your needs better.

Other advantages of GP2X are: screen is closer to native resolution of retro systems (sharper visuals as no need to rescale in most cases), TV-Out, Sega CD emulation and great community.

P.S How bad is video compatibility on a PSP? Is it codec issues or problems with video that is too high in resolution?

 

[DaveC]

SnesPSP_TYL, updated within the last two weeks, is the best SNES emulator on the PSP. In my original review, I speculated that newer releases of SnesPSP_TYL would outperform SquidgeSNES.

*Wrong!* Much to my amazement!

SnesPSP_TYL: Frameskip 0, CPU 333MHz (Max speed w/out OC but > default speed), 22KHz stereo, 1:1 aspect ratio, no smoothing. ActR: 30-38 FPS!! VoH: 33-45 FPS!!

SquidgeSNES: Frameskip Auto, CPU 250MHz (Max speed w/out OC but > default speed), 16KHz stereo, default aspect ratio. ActR: 58-60 FPS!! VoH: 48-60 FPS!!

I don't pretend to understand how the performance shakes out this way; it almost contradicts the laws of physics (250MHz > 333MHz???). Feel free to perform your own experiments and share the results!

Well you are comparing one running SNES with 22 KHz and the other running only 16Khz sound. Obviously increasing sample rate uses more CPU time. Then you have the PSP set to FS0 which requires it to render every frame, whereas you let the GP2X skip frames. Then the PSP is rendering transparencies and rasters which is a CPU hog. SquidgeSNES was not rendering transparencies right? how about rasters?

You really have to have all settings the same to make a fair comparison. There is nothing here that defies the laws of physics.

Also, when it is in "fit 4:3" mode, the game window is still large and the emulation looks perfect.

Not really. If you maintain aspect, the scaled image on the PSP screen is very close to the *same* size as the image on the GP2X running many things like Megadrive Neo-Geo etc. Plus when you use "fit mode" on the PSP the aspect is correct but it looks fuzzy due to the filtering. Most things on the GP2X can be displayed at 1:1 and looks much sharper than PSP, and that is before the PSP ghosting kicks in. The new software horizontal scaling on the Gp2X looks nicer than the PSP scaling too. That is because it is only averaging the columns it needs (in one direction) and doesn't stretch and then filter everything like the PSP emus do. Now the PSP hardware could do this type of scaling too but since it has to be done in both directions to fill the screen they just filter everything. It is much easier to call a hardware feature than to write your own algorythm. The end result is that PSP emus look fuzzier than GP2X ones.

...the PSP has better PSX emulation (performence wise) but the compatibility of the 2X's PSX emulator is much higher.

Seriously. That is not true and to compare PSX emulation between the two is ridiculous. They are not even close. The PSX emu on PSP is a playable fullspeed with sound emu. The GP2X one is a choppy mess even with sound off. This will stay this way due to hardware architecture.

 

[OMars]

on one hand the psp has a larger screen, commercial games, and wi-fi, and on the other hand the gp2x has better arcade, video compatibility, and a constantly updated list of emus and homebrew games.

That is my current dilemma. What do the guys here on the forum who've owned both of them recommend I get this time over?

I think you have a very good handle on the differences between the units. Only you can answer which one would serve your needs better.

Other advantages of GP2X are: screen is closer to native resolution of retro systems (sharper visuals as no need to rescale in most cases), TV-Out, Sega CD emulation and great community.

P.S How bad is video compatibility on a PSP? Is it codec issues or problems with video that is too high in resolution?

Well, I've only owned a psp, so I'm not sure just how much better the gp2x is at SNES or Genesis emulation, which would be the most important systems to me.

P.S. I think that the video problems include both of those issues. I know for sure that you can't run most codecs without conversion, but I'm not sure if it scales videos down.

 

[DaveC]

Well, I've only owned a psp, so I'm not sure just how much better the gp2x is at SNES or Genesis emulation, which would be the most important systems to me.

P.S. I think that the video problems include both of those issues. I know for sure that you can't run most codecs without conversion, but I'm not sure if it scales videos down.

Genesis is better on the GP2X. Not only is the code better and runs SegaCD but it looks sharper because you can run it at 1:1 and it fills the screen and doesn't ghost.

SNES is good on both.

 

[imhotep]

DaveC knows what he is talking about. He has a reputation for being brutally honest too.

 

[Vollgasasi]

i tried both, the snes emu for psp and for gp2x and i think the one for the gp2x is a lot faster. i tried snes TYL for psp and it couldn't manage to get playable frame rate in mario kart at framskip 1, whereas the gp2x is full speed at fs1.

as for the psx emulator, yea the psp is basically a -playstation- portable, it's full speed, great compability(close to perfection) and has great sound. the gp2x's psx emu is still lacking in all areas (which is just normal as it's a homebrew project and still under development)

and telcolou i meant sleep mode even for commercial games and videos etc... but you already know you sarcastic little bastard (just kidding)

 

[sehs33]

Regarding compatibility, I don't own a PSP, but a friend of mine does, he was the one who informed of the not fully compatible issue, and I remember reading it also some where else, now as far as I know, the only games that don't boot on the 2X's PSX emu are those who need memory card support (ones the check the memory card when they boot) and that can be fixed, else, I dont remember any game that didn't check the memory card at first and broke.
@jimid2: If it boots with no noticeable graphical errors, it is compatible, even if it plays at 1 fps, that is what I ment by compatible.
I might be not the best person to judge PSX on the PSP because I don't own one, so don't get pissed off PSP fans

 

[vampire8bit]

I know this is psp vs gp2x topic and don't want to change it or start a DS vs gp2x thread, but hasn't the DS currently got the best snes emulation of the three gaming handhelds with the snemulds?

I've never tried it I'm only going on what I've been reading on the forums but the latest version of snemulds is excellent, perhaps someone can compare it with the best snes emulators on the psp and gp2x.

 

[Exophase]

I know this is psp vs gp2x topic and don't want to change it or start a DS vs gp2x thread, but hasn't the DS currently got the best snes emulation of the three gaming handhelds with the snemulds?

I've never tried it I'm only going on what I've been reading on the forums but the latest version of snemulds is excellent, perhaps someone can compare it with the best snes emulators on the psp and gp2x.

SNES emulators for Nintendo DS suffer from resolution chopping and impossible to fix graphical glitches (due to incompatabilities between the 2D hardware of both platforms)

Of course on the other hand they did manage to get the graphical rendering for "free", circumventing the major problem that causes ports of SNES9x to have speed issues.

There's absolutely no reason why SNES emulators shouldn't be as fast or faster on PSP than they are on GP2X. Since Squidge says that SquidgeSNES is 100% C (and it uses SDL, doesn't it?) someone should be able to port it over to PSP without much issue.

The thing is, for a lot of the circumstances where SquidgeSNES will work well, I imagine the pure hardware accelerated rendered for SNES9x TYL will too, or at least it perhaps should, if it doesn't.

 

[DaveC]

There's absolutely no reason why SNES emulators shouldn't be as fast or faster on PSP than they are on GP2X. Since Squidge says that SquidgeSNES is 100% C (and it uses SDL, doesn't it?) someone should be able to port it over to PSP without much issue.

I think the CPU core and sound are ASM on SquidgeSNES.

In theory SNES *could* be fullspeed w/sound on both systems given enough time and work optimising. The problem is the work involved would be daunting as the renderer would have to be re-written from scratch in ASM. Probably won't happen.

 

[triksR4rabits]

the gp2x community is what separates the platform from the psp. The coders that tend to work on the 2x are phenomenal; they really work to squeeze out all available power from the processor.

If your looking for pure emulation, particularly pre-playstation, go with a 2x. Seems that snes, genesis, and everything but playstation, GBA, and CPS2 are handled deftly on the 2x (though I've heard that gba and cps2 are rapidly catching up to the psp).

What separates the psp from the 2x lies in the allure of commercial games (some of which are very good... and very free if your a pirate) and WIFI, which is an awesome addition. I can listen to internet radio on my psp, as well as surf the web, which is great. I will say this about the psp though- the screen sucks, FAR too much ghosting, but it doesn't interfere with gameplay (just a bit oogly on the eyes).

lastly- genesis sucks on psp, which is very surprising; honest to god, dr.md on the gp32 plays far better. just goes to show you that horsepower isn't everything...

 

[craigix]

How about: Land Rover vs. Ferrari (just for a change)

 

[DaveC]

everything but playstation, GBA, and CPS2 are handled deftly on the 2x (though I've heard that gba and cps2 are rapidly catching up to the psp).

CPS2 seems fine to me on the GP2X, especially with the correct MMU hack file in place. Plays most stuff fullspeed with sound no OC, and the image is sharper, what more can you do?

 

[triksR4rabits]

wow thats awesome! didn't know the emu had advanced that much

 

[nubie]

Just to piss people off I am not reading this thread right away and just posting (hey, it is 1:30 in the morning here, and I own both systems).

They both suck, and for nearly the same reason, NO KEYBOARD. GP because of crap support, and PSP for no support.

The PSP has a useless Metal optical drive that makes the unit very very heavy. The GP isn't designed very well or built very well, in case many of you don't know the stick is a cheapo off-the-shelf that isn't meant for a game system, and no it wasn't changed in the MK2, I have had 4 GP2X's and I should know, oh yeah, I also repaired a 5th.

Um N64 and PSX Emulation, the PSP wins, hands down, no contest. Same with Wifi, takes the ultimate cake.

Screen is pure crap, blurry. Mario on the N64 has a red hat, the hat smears heavily into just about any background color, the PSP just has a cut-rate screen. The GP2X MK2 screen is a bit better, but the MK1 screen blows it away, it is viewable from much more natural angles and has better contrast.

The GP2X, is great if you understand Linux, ARM, or programming, or just like Genesis/MegaDrive or SNES emulation.

IF the USB debacle is ever sorted out it will have a much bigger edge, keyboard support has kept me off the console for 4+ months now, well the crappy stick and no USB joypad support has helped.

TV-Out, the GP wins hands-down. Unfortunately we have no access or documents on the handling of the TV-Out, so it always looks like crap, unless we happen to have a perfectly encoded Divx to play on it, right, you can get a Divx player for $43 at Wal-Mart.

My perfect hand-held?? Well, ASUS just announced a kick-ass $200 7" laptop that will apparently have some sort of Intel chipset, VGA and 3 USB built into the sides, and I think it is set to weigh very very little and have Wifi built-in. Oh yeah, it will be running Linux with some sort of MS Office compatible suite pre-installed in its 1GB flash memory, and a killer 512MB of RAM. I of course am shooting for the $300 10" version. I hope the media is CF cards, because the 4GB cards are only $35, swap an OS anyone?? (XP lite, 98 Lite, Sabayon, Ubuntu and even a Dos distro sound nice to me , I can have a card for every OS)

Sorry, I just need all that functionality, Who wants my PSP and GP2X, all accessories I have included? (soft cases, chargers, batteries, memsticks/cards)

 

[Orkie]

Sorry, I just need all that functionality, Who wants my PSP and GP2X, all accessories I have included? (soft cases, chargers, batteries, memsticks/cards)

I'll have them if you want to give them away for free .