Register Report On Gp2x's New Processor ;)


Heres my take on it. What gp2x.co.uk is doing is pretty much insuring there product to reach a certain speed. Which is 275 in this case. However the article is clearly hinting that it has some kind of major change such as a new processer or some hardware mod that makes it that fast. I understand that this is going to bring buisness to them but how much of it is misleading the consumer. I at first thought it meant it had a more powerful processor. Though even after learning about it I still went with the 275 version as it was only a little more anyway I figured better safe then sorry. Form a marketing stand point it is a great move as it has seemed to bring sales up. But If I were craig id make it clear before someone who didnt do there research won't take it the wrong way. cause in all fairness it is confusing when on one page it says 200mhz another it says 240mhz and yet another 275 mhz. As others have said before it is true that processors are tested and binned all the time(example: celeron's are pentium 4's with lower clock speeds and lower L2 cache) But unless it is tested under the conditions that are needed in order to rate a processor then you are in no position to change the processor spec. Even to add to this it said that both processors were clocked at 275mhz. Well as we all know thats completely wrong and correct me if im wrong I believe that the video decoding processor is not overclocked and is not utilized by any of the emulators or programs anyway. except for a select few. So to sum this up I think that the article should be revised so that this is made clear and more importantly on the buy page ogf the gpx2.co.uk website so that this is again clarified so that people understand what there buying and one last thing I believe that people would buy it anyway if thats of any surprise to anyone as theres nothing wrong with buying one clocked to 275mhz. It gives the buyer peace of mind to know what he/she is getting.

Although represented in a brain-bleedingly large paragraph, this pretty much sums up how I feel about the issue, and I'm sure many others feel about it, based on previuos post in this thread.
 
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I always used DrMD at 200Mhz, and now Picodrive at 180Mhz with the sound handled by the second core. I never had to overclock DrMD/Picodrive to obtain full speed with sound.
Play some games that actually work the MD hardware near to its limits. Ecco 2, Gunstar Heroes and Vectorman tend to run below 46 FPS at 200 MHz, and below 30 FPS with higher-accuracy audio. In some levels like Globe Holder in Ecco 2, the framerate plummets another 15 FPS. This is with DrMDx, mind you. If PicoDrive runs every game at full speed at 180 MHz, cool. But I've never seen it.

I run it at 250-260Mhz, with sound, and get it going fairly well most of the times. Some choppiness does occur, but is negligeable, at least to me.
So you SUPPORT my point then? That overclocking is essential, that is. If it's still sort of choppy at 250-260 MHz, then obviously you're agreeing with me, whether you meant to or not. Bear in mind that lots of machines don't run acceptably above the 230-240 MHz range, so they're going to be shit out of luck on NeoGeo emulation.

Are you sure? Well, 60fps or not, it does not diaply any lag obvious to me, and is a hell of a lot of fun to play. I haven't played Doom yet.
Yes, HydraLancer plays it all the damn time and he was quite vocally aggravated that it can't run without overclocking. I'll vouch for doom. Roughly 40 FPS with default CPU clock, and 60 FPS when you get past about 250 MHz.

I play it at 240-250Mhz and it runs great, it's a lot of fun to play. Sure, it has minor slowdowns when there are a lot of ogres on the screen, but again, nothing to make it any less fun.
Well, this is an opinion thing. I've played it at >60FPS on my PCs since about 1997, so I don't consider 8-10 FPS at 240-250 MHz to be acceptable or playable. At 280 MHz+ it's OK, but most users cannot achieve that sort of speed and the site claims QUAKE as a big reason to buy the system. :p It's about as good a reason as 15 FPS PSX emuilation.

Please consider homebrew games, not just emulators :)
I mentioned emulators mostly because that's what most people buy the GP2X for, not homebrew. And maybe on the side they want to play some videos or music. Let's face it, the majority of buyers got the machine because they heard they could play their collection of ROMs on it, not for homebrew...
 
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3 or 4? Haha. Not quite. Let me rattle off the tasks I normally use (well, used)..
NES emulation-- not full speed without a small overclock. Some games need a large overclock because the emulator is highly unoptimized (I'm looking at you, armadillo).
MD Emulation, needed a 240 MHz overclock for full speed on most games, 280 MHz+ with half-accurate sound in DrMDx. PicoDrive may be faster, I haven't used it yet.
NeoGeo emulation, very very choppy below 280 MHz.
MAME emulation, of the games I played (M68000 based like Aero Fighters), laggy til 266 MHz+.
SNES emulation, pretty much unplayable in all but Mario World, until 266 MHz+.
Wolfenstein 3D cannot achieve 60 FPS except with a 250 MHz+ clock ... same for Doom.
Quake doesn't run well until 280 MHz+.
Amiga emulation is pretty much slow no matter what.
PSX Emulation is always slow but to get even close to playable you need some huge overclocking.

That's a pretty substantial list. It's definitely not '3 or 4' out of 'hundreds'..

Epicenter, I can verify that most of that list is not accurate. I play nearly everything at 200MHz and most of that stuff is fullspeed (excepting some of the obvious ones like some SNES titles, PSX, etc) , the most I've ever tried to overclock my unit is 240 and that's only for a couple things.

Also, both processors use the same clock, so your earlier comment about the 940T not being overclockable is incorrect.
 
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Okay, I'll just say this for browsers deciding whether to buy a GP2X ro not -- Epicentres last post is full of several out and out lies.

This is going to be a little bit OT, but I'm new, so please don't hurt me ;-)

In essence: I'm a browser deciding whether to buy a GP2X or not. And the stuff I see at this board (not just this topic) really cools down my original enthusiasm. I see dozens of contradicting opinions, the majority of problems being annoying hardware stuff and clock speed & overclocking hassles vs. framerate, a rather important issue to consider when buying a portable console. Are there any comprehensive benchmarks? I read this review but it doesn't seem comprehensive in terms of hard numeric data as to how the games people mention all the time run. I find it rather over-enthusiastic...

Moreover, someone mentioned quake1 running at an "acceptable 15 fps" - now that's a laugh, since when is 15 fps acceptable? I ran quake1 on my pentium 100MHz PC with full speed (320x240), how come a piece of hardware over twice as fast renders the game frames twice as slow? Unlike most consumers, I am ready to experiment (that's why I'm interested in the gp2x in the first place). But on the other hand, like most consumers, I don't care if a game starts and shows several frames and dies - I care if it's fully playable and fun.

Now, for my partly off-topic question:
What's the truth about games playability and overclocking - will the unit I buy (say 275mhz) cope with most popular emulated games or will I be left with a couple of simple homebrew applications and several undemanding emulated games?
 
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I don't see anyone using the phrase "acceptable 15fps" only that if it's not run at >240 then you get some slowdown in the busier scenes.

Quake is hard - it's mostly floating point (so needs an FPU) and is 3D, which is slow to start with without hardware support - that's why Quake wouldn't run on a DX4-100 (unless you call 9fps 'running') but would on a P100 (at 20fps ish, needed a voodoo card for full speed) - the DX4-100 had no FPU.

Have you seen the youtube videos of the gp2x running emulated games? It runs them just fine. Heck, even with mame you've got 1000+ games right there... 'popular' is too subjective to know what you mean - for me that would be pacman, ghosts and goblins, sonic,...
 
Do a search on Youtube and you will find hundreds of videos showing the GP2X in action.

At 275mhz, which is what my unit can run at, the only things that are not fullspeed are:

* A very few SNES games, primarily SuperFX chip titles.
* A handful of Amiga games--need more testing with the FAME/C core to be exact, but most things run very fast at 275mhz.
* A tiny fraction of the most advanced MAME games supported, although recent releases have cut this to a negligible level.
* Playstation emulation and DOSBox, neither of which was ever expected to run fullspeed. (note: haven't tried VBA, but that is likely in this category)

Everything else runs fullspeed: Genesis, NES, Atari ST, PC Engine, ScummVM, Neo Geo, c64, Spectrum, Neo Geo Pocket, Gameboy, etc.

Regarding NeoGeo, to give you an idea, I can play Waku Waku 7 and SNK vs Capcom at fullspeed with sound. And Quake, I don't know what the frame rate it is, but it seems fullspeed to me, as others have stated on this thread.

You should be aware that Epicentre has a personal/professional grudge against gp2x.co.uk because negotiations with them to publish his game broke down, thus you will hear a smattering of bitter misinformation from him mixed in with his otherwise-knowledgable posts.

edit: Warzywo, that review you linked to may come off as "over enthusiastic" becuase it's written by the main UK distributor of the handheld :)
 
I don't see anyone using the phrase "acceptable 15fps" only that if it's not run at >240 then you get some slowdown in the busier scenes.

About the 15 fps - click here

I recognize your point about the FPU as valid, I haven't thought of that.

Have you seen the youtube videos of the gp2x running emulated games? It runs them just fine. Heck, even with mame you've got 1000+ games right there... 'popular' is too subjective to know what you mean - for me that would be pacman, ghosts and goblins, sonic,...

Yes I have as a matter of fact. On those videos I usually see "someone playing games" (more or less - youtube video quality is crap and I can't make much of it). I know that running tons of games is possible, I'd like to hear from you guys whether they're actually playable. As for the 1000+ games running with mame - that's exactly my question. Will they run smoothly (like 80%), or just 10?

For instance, just in this thread Epicentre and gaterooze share different points of view and as an observer I have trouble determining who's closer to the truth.

BTW how much shorter is battery life of the 275MHz units compared to the 200MHz ones?
 
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Here are a couple of good ones to watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bQ6tjtRYGE...ted&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKduKZEj6VU...ted&search=

re: MAME on the latest version, from what I've played, it would be at least 90-95% that run fullspeed at 275mhz with the right settings, possibly an even greater percentage. Heck, at 200mhz I'd say about 70% will run fullspeed. Anyone with more detailed findings?
 
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Most Megadrive (Genesis) games run on DrMD fullspeed at 200MHz. I have yet to try PicoDrive, but apparently it's very good. The Gameboy emulator, of course, runs perfectly at 180MHz. PSX won't run fullspeed no matter how much you overclock. I have played Quake at 200MHz and it is playable, despite what anyone says about frame rates - it's just some people here are picky (not looking at anyone in particular, not even Epicenter). PC-Engine (HU6280) runs very well, even at 200MHz in some games.

I don't really play emulated games that much, and the only emulators I use regularly are DrMD and Gnuboy2X - there are a great many amazing homebrew games out there, and you're missing out if you don't give them a shot.
 
On PicoDrive, I can play Ecco 2 using the 16-bit accurate renderer and 44kHz sound with my processors clocked at only 200MHz at 60fps. Nuff said about Genesis emulation :)
 
I don't see anyone using the phrase "acceptable 15fps" only that if it's not run at >240 then you get some slowdown in the busier scenes.

About the 15 fps - click here

I recognize your point about the FPU as valid, I haven't thought of that.

Have you seen the youtube videos of the gp2x running emulated games? It runs them just fine. Heck, even with mame you've got 1000+ games right there... 'popular' is too subjective to know what you mean - for me that would be pacman, ghosts and goblins, sonic,...

Yes I have as a matter of fact. On those videos I usually see "someone playing games" (more or less - youtube video quality is crap and I can't make much of it). I know that running tons of games is possible, I'd like to hear from you guys whether they're actually playable. As for the 1000+ games running with mame - that's exactly my question. Will they run smoothly (like 80%), or just 10?

For instance, just in this thread Epicentre and gaterooze share different points of view and as an observer I have trouble determining who's closer to the truth.

BTW how much shorter is battery life of the 275MHz units compared to the 200MHz ones?

I use mostly emulators and most run very well at even the standard 200 MHz. I mostly run at that speed. Even NeoGeo runs well at that speed if you set the sound to 11025 KHz. There are many times tricks like that to balance speed depending on how finicky you are.

I wouldn't base too much on Epicenter though. He is a framerate whore that when a emu or game drops below 60 FPS decides that it is not good enough. Drop to 50-59 FPS and it is unuseable. Yet he doesn't mind, if on a different portable, you have to scale the game screen down by removing 1/4 of the pixels leaving you with garbled graphics, go figure. I guess it depends on what is important to you.

The emus that are still rough are Amiga, SNES (due to lack of transparency, some games are slow), PSX (will never be near fullspeed), GBA (pretty much unplayable).

Anything that is 3D based that needed a 3D GPU (Quake, PSX, etc) will also be slow. If 3D is mostly what you want then a PSP may be for you.

Other than those things I would say you would be fine.
 
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I use mostly emulators and most run very well at even the standard 200 MHz. I mostly run at that speed. Even NeoGeo runs well at that speed if you set the sound to 11025 KHz. There are many times tricks like that to balance speed depending on how finicky you are.

What's the tradeoff speed vs. battery? Why not run at 250 or 275 all the time?
 
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I think if people just turned off the FPS number they'd be a lot happier, I don't usually notice when frameskip 1 kicks in for a split second.
 
I think if people just turned off the FPS number they'd be a lot happier, I don't usually notice when frameskip 1 kicks in for a split second.

Agreed.

I don't know why people are so desperate to get their beloved 60fps.

According to here

Framerate

Defines how many pictures eg. frames one second of video or audio contains, normally used acronym for framerate is fps - frames per second. Human eye can't see picture changes after the framerate is more than ~24fps.

In American TV system NTSC the framerate is appx. 29.97fps and in European PAL system the framerate is 25fps.
 
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I think if people just turned off the FPS number they'd be a lot happier, I don't usually notice when frameskip 1 kicks in for a split second.
It's true that most people can't tell, and I usually can't either, so I generally run with Fskip Auto and let it jump from 0 to 1, with me none the wiser. But in some games, the framerate would go into <30 territory, where it's extremely noticeable. Casually playing most games you wouldn't be able to tell, but my favorites all tax the emulated system far more than your average game does. One might say "NES is fullspeed in GPFCE!" but, that's not true. It's less than 50 FPS in most games more stressful than the original SMB, and if you run a game that lagged the NES like a beast like Kirby or Armadillo, the framerate falls through the floor, sometimes into the 20s. (Not the best example since what GPFCE needs isn't a higher clockrate, it's an ASM CPU core. That's why it's so appallingly slow for an NES emulator...)
 
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When I'm introducing the GP2x to a developer or something... I tend to use the following reference somewhere in the middle of the email...



Software for the GP2X comes in the way of emulators, freeware and homebrew. I could list a few examples here, but it would be better if I list a bunch of links that will give you the necessary information.

http://craig.gp2x.de/review/GP2XReview.html

This is the famous Craig review. It’s not really a review because it was written by someone who sells the devices for a living. However, he has been a member of the open source handheld console community for even longer then I have, so he is very passionate about the topic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gp2x

Where would be without Wikipedia?

http://www.gp2x.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,23,1216
http://www.gp2x.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,23,1217
http://www.gp2x.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,23,1219
http://www.gp2x.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,23,1218

These are movies showing the GP2X reviewed on GIGA, a popular German gaming show. Sorry, no subtitles.

http://www.lik-sang.com/news.php?artc=3708

A translated version of the original promotional review by Korean review site minivan.

Here are a few demonstrations from youtube.com…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_NrTS_ut74 – GP2X advertisement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rka-jZgL9W0 – GP2X system overview

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb1fUB0FTz4 – GP2X demonstration

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X8K34WYEB8 – NeoGeo - King of Fighters 96.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEGhUiGakBI – Arcade emulator.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnVT4m0M6Eg – Megadrive emulator.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3C0K0FBHmY – Super Nintendo Entertainment System emulator.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n58Jc7YtMk – Nintendo Entertainment System emulator.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jITaknk35wg – Sony Playstation emulation in early days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JupUsNB5ax4 – NEC TurboGrafx 16 emulator.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2smBH1SZYJc – Tilematch (Zookeeper clone)





(yeah, should get rid of the lik-sang link)
 
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