Sega Saturn

[kingoddball]

Dreamcast speeds have zero reflection on Saturn. The Dreamcast is an easier design compared to the Saturn (Yes, it's higher spec'd, but internals are easier).

Saturn has so much proprietary stuff going on and just so much extra work is involved in emulation. You need high end PC's to run Saturn Emu at full speed. Dreamcast runs at (half'ish - all depends on game) 10-20fps speed on Pandora now!

 

[Prometheus]

I think wipeout2000 *may* be referring to a Dreamcast port of Yabause, not to a Dreamcast emulator.

 

[wipeout2000]

Dreamcast speeds have zero reflection on Saturn. The Dreamcast is an easier design compared to the Saturn (Yes, it's higher spec'd, but internals are easier).

Saturn has so much proprietary stuff going on and just so much extra work is involved in emulation. You need high end PC's to run Saturn Emu at full speed. Dreamcast runs at (half'ish - all depends on game) 10-20fps speed on Pandora now!

I was referring to the Yabause emulator for the Dreamcast...

 

[Exophase]

Yabause is still actively being worked on, so hopefully if someone works on the Pandora version and if the yabause team continues to speed up their emulator, we might have something that is playable. Also I heard that the Dreamcast version runs certain games at up to 15-20 fps so there might be hope yet.

With all due respect, an emulator will usually run at least something much more easily than most. For instance, the requisite Bust a Move port that shows up every generation and uses almost no CPU time and only very lightly taxes the graphics and sound hardware. Point being, when people want to rally hopes behind an emulator they'll sometimes overlook this variability and highlight the very best speeds. It's best to see how the games you want to play run first, before forming expectations.

 

[ari64]

That sounds like a problem by itself, since Pandora is 600MHz and Wii is a little under 750MHz (of course, we're talking about CPU speed here, right?)

The biggest bottlenecks that I've run into on the OMAP3530 are the small L1 cache and the branch misprediction penalty. The CPU in the Wii has a larger L1 cache, and PowerPC generally does early branch resolution rather than statistical branch prediction, which can be better for interpretive emulators. (Last I checked, they were not using a dynamic recompiler.)

 

[MrRockchip]

Yabause is a very advanced, open-source, cross-platform Saturn emulator.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yabause
It was already ported to PSP, and performance is quite good for 2D games and even some 3D games!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0P7O0NYqHQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGj3CocoTPw
PSP has a weak CPU, just 333MHz. Pandora is way more powerful, so the performance will be even greater!

Check the following thread:

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/57602-yabause-port-request/page__st__15

 

[Exophase]

Those videos are fake, MrRockchip. They're not videos of the Yabause PSP port.

 

[amf66]

There is also a Wii port of Yabause. I'm going to try it out today and see how well it works. If the Wii can run Yabause wouldn't this mean that the Pandora has at least a chance of doing so as well?

 

[Exophase]

There is also a Wii port of Yabause. I'm going to try it out today and see how well it works. If the Wii can run Yabause wouldn't this mean that the Pandora has at least a chance of doing so as well?

Of course both can "run" it, even PSP and Dreamcast can. Yabause is relatively easy to port and doesn't require more memory than what the machine has. Being able to get something to execute at all on another platform is rarely an especially interesting achievement.

The question is, how will it perform? With an identical code-base and at standard clock speeds a program running on Pandora won't perform as well as if it were running on Wii, and Yabause on Wii isn't anywhere near sustaining full speed.

 

[amf66]

I see what you mean. I just tried running Dragon Force on my Wii and although it ran and the graphics looked rendered correctly it was painfully slow. It seems that getting Yabause to run anywhere close to 30 FPS would require a lot of work and optimizations if it's possible at all.

 

[anexanhume]

If we're lucky a dual or quad core A9 will run on a yabuse port, but not without optimization I imagine.

 

[Exophase]

Is Yabause even multithreaded?

 

[anexanhume]

Actually a good question. I would hope so given the complex saturn architecture. I naively assumed so.

 

[Phawx]

@exophase

Are you still working on that secret project?

 

[Exophase]

@Exophase

Are you still working on that secret project?

I haven't deleted it at least ;p

 

[Phawx]

@Exophase

Are you still working on that secret project?

I haven't deleted it at least ;p

CLUES! Ha! You slipped. I am well aware of what you're working on now.

 

[Exophase]

Okay.

 

[DaveC]

What ever happened to Temper? Is that scrapped or will it make an appearance some day in some form (even just a straight Wiz port would be better than nothing)?

 

[Exophase]

What ever happened to Temper? Is that scrapped or will it make an appearance some day in some form (even just a straight Wiz port would be better than nothing)?

Latter is more likely than former..