Should I Buy The Gp2x?
- Thread starter pablohdez3
- Start date
christo930
Well-Known Member
Make sure you invest in a good charger, or a slow charger. THe best chargers charge each battery individually. Charging batteries in pairs can lead to batteries with different charge levels and that can ruin your rechargeable batteries through venting. I use a radioshack 1 hour charger and a slow charger which I put the batteries in for a couple hours after the 1 hour charger, or just overnight in the slow charger if I have the time, the slow charger really makes a difference, maybe as high as 15-20%. Also, the rechargeable batteries won't perform to their best until they have been charged/discharged at least 5-10 times. I've never seen a rechargeable battery that doesn't have a break-in period. So don't be disappointed at first, give them a few cycles before you rely on a certain amount of time.pablohdez3 said:
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paulobecker
Member
christo930 said:
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Dunny
Exophase Approved® Forum Troll
It's all pretty subjective really, isn't it?
I bought my '2x on the strength of friends reviews, on the strength of Craig's site, and decided to take a chance.
To be honest, I wish I'd never bothered.
It's a handheld Megadrive, all in all. As I said above, it's subjective - none of the emulated games that I want to play work. I'd like R-Type Delta (PSX) but there's no chance in hell (I'm an experienced emulator author, so that doesn't surprise me). GBA games have serious flaws in the gamma correction, and besides - none of the games I want to play run at all well (if at all).
Amiga emulation isn't bad, but I can't play for more than a couple of hours on my 2700mah batteries at the required overclock level, at which time I have to turn the damned thing off to change batteries. Can't just plug it in and keep going.
GB/GBC emulation - likewise, pretty much unusable, but this time it's if you've got a large collection of ROMs. No source code means that nobody can fix it, either.
SNES - Not bad, but again, none of the games I want to play run very well at all, and there's huge frameskip on most of them.
Homebrew on the whole is pretty much standard stuff, nothing particularly revolutionary in there. That's fine - people don't get paid to code for this, so it's not surprising. You might find stuff you love (as a lot of people have) but I personally have not. ScummVM isn't bad though. The usual suspects are all here - Doom, Duke3d, Quake (almost playable speed too) etc.
For listening to MP3s, the F100 I have is a joke. Aside from the poor battery life, you've got random switching of left/right channels to contend with too. This seems to be at a lower level hardware/firmware-wise, as no players currently seem to be able to avoid it.
For e-books, the battery life again means that long reading sessions are impossible.
That's enough of the negative.
Positive stuff?
The community. This place is full of helpful folk, who love their machine with a passion.
As I mentioned - handheld megadrive. God, I love that emulator. All my old faves at full speed, crystal clear sound and all on possibly the best screen to grace a handheld ever. This machine really is the dog's bollocks in this respect. If only the DS had that size screen - playing megadrive games on the DS isn't quite the same thing (though it's very good on the DS, what with finally having sound at last!).
Handheld Amiga. Battery issues aside, this is just lovely. Although the 2x isn't anything like fast enough, the emulation manages to remain playable. I loved my miggy, and seeing the old stuff running in my palm is joyful.
Speccy emulation (my main choice of emulator) is not well-served on the 2x. In fact, it's absymal. Avoid. ZXDS is better, and there's no reason on earth that should have happened. The 2x should have been better for Speccy stuff - and instead, it's dire. It's slow, the AY emulation is crap (unforgiveable), and it's unresponsive. Ah well, eh?
Doom is excellent, as is Duke3D. I sould play those for hours, were it not for the lack of battery life.
And finally there's MAME. This one is a real achievement, even though the games I want are either not emulated, or run too slow (Outrun, I'm looking at you here). But the vast array of games available that you can play is almost overwhelming - and I've not played PC-MAME since I got the 2x.
All this probably sounds a bit negative to be honest, and I hope it reflects what I feel about my own 2x. It turned out to be so much less than I was hoping for, and what I hoped for is not unreasonable (apart from the PSX stuff). GPH seriously dropped the ball with this machine.
I'm waiting for Pandora with baited breath - although it looks like crap, it's an exciting project, and I have a couple of hundred notes set aside for one when it has been out for a few months. It's a clamshell (huge plus), it's got a keyboard (albeit a rather crap one, it's a keyboard nonetheless), it has vastly improved processing power. It's what the 2x should have been, and I'll be junking both my current 2x and my DS when it arrives. Who knows, I may even take up learning ARM development again, if I'm sufficiently tempted.
Don't get one if you're at all worried about that any of my experiences may affect you. Wait for the Pandora. If it helps, I still take my 2x to work every day. I do love it, especially for the stuff it does well. But it does so much more so very badly.
However, it's only one man's opinion - as I said (again), it's all subjective.
D.
I bought my '2x on the strength of friends reviews, on the strength of Craig's site, and decided to take a chance.
To be honest, I wish I'd never bothered.
It's a handheld Megadrive, all in all. As I said above, it's subjective - none of the emulated games that I want to play work. I'd like R-Type Delta (PSX) but there's no chance in hell (I'm an experienced emulator author, so that doesn't surprise me). GBA games have serious flaws in the gamma correction, and besides - none of the games I want to play run at all well (if at all).
Amiga emulation isn't bad, but I can't play for more than a couple of hours on my 2700mah batteries at the required overclock level, at which time I have to turn the damned thing off to change batteries. Can't just plug it in and keep going.
GB/GBC emulation - likewise, pretty much unusable, but this time it's if you've got a large collection of ROMs. No source code means that nobody can fix it, either.
SNES - Not bad, but again, none of the games I want to play run very well at all, and there's huge frameskip on most of them.
Homebrew on the whole is pretty much standard stuff, nothing particularly revolutionary in there. That's fine - people don't get paid to code for this, so it's not surprising. You might find stuff you love (as a lot of people have) but I personally have not. ScummVM isn't bad though. The usual suspects are all here - Doom, Duke3d, Quake (almost playable speed too) etc.
For listening to MP3s, the F100 I have is a joke. Aside from the poor battery life, you've got random switching of left/right channels to contend with too. This seems to be at a lower level hardware/firmware-wise, as no players currently seem to be able to avoid it.
For e-books, the battery life again means that long reading sessions are impossible.
That's enough of the negative.
Positive stuff?
The community. This place is full of helpful folk, who love their machine with a passion.
As I mentioned - handheld megadrive. God, I love that emulator. All my old faves at full speed, crystal clear sound and all on possibly the best screen to grace a handheld ever. This machine really is the dog's bollocks in this respect. If only the DS had that size screen - playing megadrive games on the DS isn't quite the same thing (though it's very good on the DS, what with finally having sound at last!).
Handheld Amiga. Battery issues aside, this is just lovely. Although the 2x isn't anything like fast enough, the emulation manages to remain playable. I loved my miggy, and seeing the old stuff running in my palm is joyful.
Speccy emulation (my main choice of emulator) is not well-served on the 2x. In fact, it's absymal. Avoid. ZXDS is better, and there's no reason on earth that should have happened. The 2x should have been better for Speccy stuff - and instead, it's dire. It's slow, the AY emulation is crap (unforgiveable), and it's unresponsive. Ah well, eh?
Doom is excellent, as is Duke3D. I sould play those for hours, were it not for the lack of battery life.
And finally there's MAME. This one is a real achievement, even though the games I want are either not emulated, or run too slow (Outrun, I'm looking at you here). But the vast array of games available that you can play is almost overwhelming - and I've not played PC-MAME since I got the 2x.
All this probably sounds a bit negative to be honest, and I hope it reflects what I feel about my own 2x. It turned out to be so much less than I was hoping for, and what I hoped for is not unreasonable (apart from the PSX stuff). GPH seriously dropped the ball with this machine.
I'm waiting for Pandora with baited breath - although it looks like crap, it's an exciting project, and I have a couple of hundred notes set aside for one when it has been out for a few months. It's a clamshell (huge plus), it's got a keyboard (albeit a rather crap one, it's a keyboard nonetheless), it has vastly improved processing power. It's what the 2x should have been, and I'll be junking both my current 2x and my DS when it arrives. Who knows, I may even take up learning ARM development again, if I'm sufficiently tempted.
Don't get one if you're at all worried about that any of my experiences may affect you. Wait for the Pandora. If it helps, I still take my 2x to work every day. I do love it, especially for the stuff it does well. But it does so much more so very badly.
However, it's only one man's opinion - as I said (again), it's all subjective.
D.
need4speed
Member
I brought mine just for playing sega megadrive games on It and openbor. If you want one then go for It 
