Pyra or...


J

jabz

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I'm thinking... the only reason why I use my Pandora for is gaming/emulators nothing more, nothing less. So upgrading to the Pyra I will be looking for better performance from emulators and more native ports? due to the increase in performance and I like the form factor.

If I consider instead getting the GDP WIN, what are the state of the emulators on x86 for such a system, on par, better than the ones for Pandora? I take it not much can be done to optimise native games but x86 emulators can be optimised for the WIN? Although the WIN is getting in the maybe too big category and issues with keyboard/gaming layout.

Lets not talk about cost as that is not a factor for me, the non negotiable criteria for me is must have physical keyboard and gaming controls.
 
Hard to say on performance, many x86 emulators are not really optimized because they can take advantage of an abundance of horsepower that a current desktop computers have, they typically focus on accuracy of emulation or special filters and such over performance. While it may have some advantages in GPU, The Intel Atom isn't that much more powerful than the OMAP5 performance wise.

Personally if you see the Pandora/Pyra as only a gaming/emulation device there may cheaper devices out there, I see the biggest advantage in Native Linux programs, application/productivity work.

Also another advantage I see is the Pyra will be an upgradable device, the GPD WIN will be a glued together device, with little serviceability or support. EvilDragon has supported Pandora repairs well after warrantees are over with, I can't say the same about a device from China.
 
Read my post with a saltshaker next to you.

On x86 Windows, you'll be getting the best N64 emulator known to mankind (in my opinion) in Project64, which has no (to my knowledge) Linux or ARM port. Sound is fiddly, but I've had an easier time playing with Project64 than Mupen64. Maybe it's just me.

Unfortunately, you'll be trading that for a less-optimized PCSX, which may result in either more unstable behavior, more power consumption, worse performance due to more power being required, or a combination of two or three. Same could probably be said for Dreamcast emulation, but Reicast has gotten MUCH better on all fronts over time.

PPSSPP doesn't work that great on x86 either (in my experience). Gods Eater isn't that much better on my HP Touchsmart than it is on my Galaxy S5. You may have some compatibility differences, but don't count on that being a good thing unless you're looking for very specific games. If you are trying to get specific in this regard, however, then it's a wonder why you wouldn't just get a PSP instead (unless you REALLY want that keyboard and better controls).

Btw, you'll be able to get GameCube/Wii emulation running natively on the WIN...but that's as far as you're gonna get. Every frame on SSBM would be invincibility. You could do the same on the Pyra via Exagear, but you'd probably take a performance hit of about 1 frame. So...1 less frame than you'd get on the WIN.

Other than that, I couldn't tell you any significant differences regarding emulation itself. Maybe some of the emulators expect more power than the WIN can provide (especially the 3D ones). Maybe not. The WIN would serve nicely as an emulation machine. The Pyra would as well, with added longevity and connectivity (with optional 4G modem).
 
There are very few emulators on the x86 platform that take the ZSNES "make it as fast as possible to run even on a 286 if possible" approach. The WIN may have slightly more horsepower but the ARM emulators will be far more optimized. For me the only game that the WIN could run that I couldn't run on or if an emulator find an equivalent on the Pyra is Xcom and that would just barely run on the WIN.
 
Well, there are plenty of examples of tablets with similar HW (to the WIN) running emu's on Youtube for you to check.

It also has the PS2 emulation benefit, although only some games will run ok. But it does have that.
 
Emulation wise, I see SSF (the most accurate and best Saturn emulator) as the only real advantage for the Win/x86 camp.
 
As most mentioned, emulators should pretty much be the same, some systems run better on x86, some on ARM.

However, optimization could be an issue.
The Win has more perf/W, so it should use less battery for the same tasks.
But depending on how much the emulator (or game) is optimized, it might still need more power as it needs more performance.

That's something no one can possibly tell right now.
You can find videos of PS2 emulators running simple games nearly fullspeed on x86 tablets - but no one mentions the power consumption.
If the emulator sucks the battery dry in an hour, is it usable?

That's something that needs to be tested on both systems.
I will have a GPD Win at the Gamescom in August, so I can check battery consumption there.
 
The Pyra has more of a community of people who make the emulators and games, whereas the win has more support for your average game. Then again the average game does not fit the power envelope, nor the form factor.

Speaking of which, the pyra runs the same form factor, whereas the win is a change of dimensions and will require bigger hands comparably. That i think would be the biggest change, seeing as you are happy with what the pandora has to offer.

Both will quality-wise be a set up, gauging by the componentry used.

If cost is not an issue I'd go with what materialises first, and maybe both if the win turns out to be good. For me personally the spying hw and software kills it.

So get on the pyra preorder, and I guess you have to wait for hardware in hand to tell anything about the win, since they keep their production rather closed.
 
jabz said:
Although the WIN is getting in the maybe too big category and issues with keyboard/gaming layout.

Lets not talk about cost as that is not a factor for me, the non negotiable criteria for me is must have physical keyboard and gaming controls.
Click to expand...

Two points: (a) let's call it "build quality", not only the keyboard, but also the whole unit; (b) price is not a factor.

Based on (a), I would stay with Pyra because I trust German and Made in Germany. I'm not saying everything Made in China are poor quality, however, most of them are not as good as Made in Germany.

Based on (b), if cost is not a factor, maybe you could purchase both of them (Pyra and GPD Win), then conduct a detailed review, it will be very helpful for people who have similar question to refer.
 
notagain.jpg
 
TheOldOne said:
There are very few emulators on the x86 platform that take the ZSNES "make it as fast as possible to run even on a 286 if possible" approach. The WIN may have slightly more horsepower but the ARM emulators will be far more optimized. For me the only game that the WIN could run that I couldn't run on or if an emulator find an equivalent on the Pyra is Xcom and that would just barely run on the WIN.
Click to expand...

I don't think there are really that many emulators where this is true, or where it matters. I don't think you'll find more ARM optimized emulators for Saturn, N64, PSP, PS2 or Gamecube/Wii. In fact, all of Dolphin's ARM efforts will contribute nothing to Pyra because it requires AArch64 and OpenGL ES 3.0.

You could dig up emulators for NES, SNES, Genesis, Gameboy, GBA, PC-Engine and so on that were optimized for ARM platforms like GP2X a long time ago, and most of which never got as optimized emulators for x86. But at this point it doesn't really gain you very much.

The only cases I can think of where it really makes a difference is PS1 and DS, and if there's a port of DraStic available on GPD Win it'll be less efficient than an ARM (and Linux) version but nothing extremely dramatic. The difference in CPU power would more than eclipse this.
 
Exophase said:
The only cases I can think of where it really makes a difference is PS1 and DS, and if there's a port of DraStic available on GPD Win it'll be less efficient than an ARM (and Linux) version but nothing extremely dramatic. The difference in CPU power would more than eclipse this.
Click to expand...

Yes and no. Even if the CPU has no problems running less optimized code, it will need more power than running optimized code.
The next question would be whether it matters, because the perf/W is better on the more recent SoCs.
So with less optimization it may or may not need more battery :)
 
Last but not least, there's hand-optimized code and there's automagically target-optimized compiler output. The last one is quite an issue on x86, especially with 32bit - the Athlon64's 64bit extension kinda defined the first new common base since the Pentium Pro. Using a x86 CPU always means that hardly anyone will offer binaries that were actually compiled specifically for the used CPU, instead everyone will just tell you to use what's already available on the internet, which is code that is often targeting 15-20 years old CPU architectures.
 
EvilDragon said:
Yes and no. Even if the CPU has no problems running less optimized code, it will need more power than running optimized code.
The next question would be whether it matters, because the perf/W is better on the more recent SoCs.
So with less optimization it may or may not need more battery :)
Click to expand...

In the case of DraStic I expect both the differences in CPU power and perf/W to more than eclipse this.

For the other emulators, if the difference is between 3% and 6% CPU time it doesn't really matter. This will be true for a lot of the emulators I listed, and I'm skeptical that we'll even see people maintain high quality ports of them. Even on Pandora we didn't see a lot of them get ported.

Letalis Sonus said:
Last but not least, there's hand-optimized code and there's automagically target-optimized compiler output. The last one is quite an issue on x86, especially with 32bit - the Athlon64's 64bit extension kinda defined the first new common base since the Pentium Pro. Using a x86 CPU always means that hardly anyone will offer binaries that were actually compiled specifically for the used CPU, instead everyone will just tell you to use what's already available on the internet, which is code that is often targeting 15-20 years old CPU architectures.
Click to expand...

There isn't really that much benefit to be had in the compiler targeting decent OoO x86 processors.
 
Letalis Sonus said:
What about SSE? As far as I understood AMD64 having SSE2 guaranteed was quite a big deal.
Click to expand...

It's a big deal for floating point stuff, which doesn't apply that much to emulator code. It's also a big deal for stuff that actually auto-vectorizes well, but I'd say that in general emulator code vectorizes poorly. A lot of care has to be given to even make parts of emulators vector-friendly, and even then compilers don't do that good of a job.

I'd also say that most of the best emulators for any given platform today have builds with reasonably recent archs targeted, or are open source and can be easily rebuilt to. Ones that were not updated for a long time but are still worth using mostly fall under the category of emulating platforms that are low end enough to where it isn't much of an issue.

And if you're looking at emulators that were well optimized for GP2X in comparison that's a lot of hand optimized assembly that was targeting ARMv4.
 
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