Should I Get A Gp2x?

[Delsabre]

ive had my GP32 for some time and i have been following the development of the GP2X scene...

i would like some opinions on why i should get a GP2X. im having a hard time convincing myself to get one becuase:

GP2X has less battery life than the GP32.

GP2X emulates only on par with GP32 (for now) in spite of being much more powerful.

GP2X runs linux. (dont get me wrong linux is great but i dont want any OS slowing down my system. GP32 didnt have an OS and it did just fine. )

GP2X has weird screen issues. wtf is with the lcd tweaker? why? its an LCD damnit there shouldnt be anything to tweak.

GP2X has hardware in it that i dont want (tvout). its a pet peeve of mine to buy something im not going to use thats bundled with something else.

GP2X has crippled hardware. wtf is with the dual cpu? why would they design it that way?


there are a couple reasons i want one but theyre not enough:

GP2X uses SD cards (yay 2GB!)

GP2X is new and shiny h34r:


anything i dont know? i want some opinions

 

[daclassicgamingmaster]

GP2X has hardware in it that i dont want (tvout).

!!! :huh:

 

[bhess]

I'd say get one. First, the GP2X dosen't have screen issues anymore, I believe that was only on the MK1's, but that was fixed on the MK2, but the MK2's screen does not have as good a viewing angle. Also, the 2X' does not emulate just at GP32 levels. Can GP32 run SNES nearly fullspeed? For me, the battery life is fine as long at you have an extra pair in your bag or whatever. I'm not sure about this, but I don't think the Linux OS slows it down very much. Also, in reply to your (yay 2GB!), there are 4gb sd cards.

 

[J201605]

umm okay gp32 doesn't have fullspeed neogeo, a few good gba emulators coming out, a decent psx emulator and close to fullspeed snes

Linux doesn't slow down programs

Lcd tweaker makes a good screen better depending on what you want to use it for

Tv out is an excellent feature and with the commercial bob coming you may find it useful

Dual CPU may seem useless now but it is becoming more and more useful and is probably cheaper or easier to implement then a single faster cpu

you should buy it

 

[Goemon4]

imo the gp2x is alot better than my 32, then again with only some 16mb smc's i nver got much out of my 2x (emulation wise) but ican say the 2x has alot more emulators being worked on so given a bit of time it willdefinatly out do the 32 (even tho it practly has)... for battery life, i find it just fine, it lasts long and with some good rechargables i dont find any problems with it... and as for linux, hey its linux it has its downs (its boot time, which is quick but if you like the pracly instant boot of the 32 it may be anoying) but has alot of ups (as far as developing goes) cause you can port tons of stuff because of it and in now way slows anything down... the lcd tweaker does nothing (well nothing ive noticed) so you can ignore that (it isnt like it drasticly effects the 2x) its probably the most usless feature of the 2x... and it has tv out, but you dont have to use it, there arent any tv out only games so you dont have to use it (if you want to just get the adaptor, its cheap) even tho i dont see why you wouldnt want to use it...and dual cpu's, i cant explain it that wel but put it like this, the 32 was fast with 1 cpu, think how fast the 2x is with 2... i can definatly say the 2x is my second favorite handheld ever (second to my zodiac) and it completely lives up and beats the 32 imo (the firmware thing is kinda anoying cause you do lose some support for some minor games) but all is well cause just about all the emus/games/interpriters work fine.... i just say get one, its great! and plus, any handheld with an almost perfect neo geo emulator is well worth the 200 for it!


(wow i wrote alot... )

 

[slaanesh]

GP2X has less battery life than the GP32.

Correct.

GP2X emulates only on par with GP32 (for now) in spite of being much more powerful.

Incorrect. The speedier CPU and the much larger amount of RAM means that high spec machines/systems can be emulated. Neo Geo is one notable inclusion. Large MAME games is another.

GP2X runs linux. (dont get me wrong linux is great but i dont want any OS slowing down my system. GP32 didnt have an OS and it did just fine. )

Corect. It does slow it down, a bit. Startup time is about 10 seconds. But it's worth it for ease of code portability.

GP2X has weird screen issues. wtf is with the lcd tweaker? why? its an LCD damnit there shouldnt be anything to tweak.

Correct. I don't know what the LCD tweaker does on my MKII either. More important is Gamma correction which seems to considerably improve viewing angle.

GP2X has hardware in it that i dont want (tvout). its a pet peeve of mine to buy something im not going to use thats bundled with something else.

Incorrect. It's part of the main chip. You'd still need the special TV out cable anyway if you want to do this. Which you don't. So you aren't really buying anything extra.

GP2X has crippled hardware. wtf is with the dual cpu? why would they design it that way?

Sort of. The dual CPU thing is not really crippled - it's by design. Poor design maybe, but it was probably cheaper doing it this way. In most cases, I'd have to agree that a single beefy CPU would have been better. But this may have sucked even more battery juice again.
Reading from the SD card is also a bit slow as Epicenter has already stated. You can't do a DMA-style read. You need the CPU so things basically slow down if you are running code and trying to read from the SD at the same time.

there are a couple reasons i want one but theyre not enough:
GP2X uses SD cards (yay 2GB!)

Correct. This is a very BIG yay IMHO. I hate those GP32 SMCs.

GP2X is new and shiny h34r:

Sort of. New, yes. Shiny? In places. Lots of matt too.

anything i dont know? i want some opinions

Like most people you'll either hate or love the stick. I'm starting to get used to it. Though I have DaveC's N-Gage pad upgrade in mind.

Firmware upgrades can be frightning. Who want's to brick their GP2X? As long as you get v2.0+ or better it's okay. The v1.0 -> v2.0 was a bit of a bugger.

Viewing angle of the screen. I find that despite the screen being quite nice, the viewing angle is not very good. Gamma correction fixes this to a degree.

Battery life is short - thogh you've already mentioned this. I'm doing some testing at the moment but I've found that my best Duracell 2650mAh only give 3hr 45mins @ 250Mhz. Should be substantially more at lower clockspeeds.

It's not bad for viewing movies. File format compatibility is a bit limited. The text view is okay. As is the music and picture view. All basic, but nice little extras. Mind you, you can upgrade all these to homebrew versions.

I don't think you'd regret buying one - especially if you like the GP32. The GP2X is more of the same. A good version 2.0.

 

[Parkydr]

If you're happy with your GP32 and can't think of any reason to buy one, why bother - it's not compulsory.

I love my GP2X - I wanted it for development and as entertainment on my journey to work.

Keep your money for something you really want.

 

[messiah]

GP2X has 64mb ram, that is 8 times bigger than old gp32. It has dual cpu, although its tricky to use both cpus, look at picodrive - and remember that gp32 is on the market for some time and gp2x is starting.

Linux may be holding things down, but as someone mention it, it is worth in terms of compatibility. There are also ways to kick linux from the gp2x, someone mention it too.

So - 3 most important pros for GP2X:

1. 64mb RAM
2. 2x200mhz (240mhz) CPU with all those blitter etcshit embedded on it by Magiceyes
3. SD cards - wanna to play around with bunch of expensive 128mb max SMC cards? Buy one big SD and you'll be fine.

 

[yodaofborg]

I couldn't imagine being limited to 128mb, I have more megadrive roms than you could fit in 128mb! Also movies on the go (good quality, and length) is a great bonus, I mean, I know the gp32 could be a movie player, but you would either need to reduce the movie to god aweful quality, or chop it up and spread it across multipul cards.

I guess one of the main pulling points for me was the fact that it runs Linux, so I didn't see that as a down side. It will enable many GNU and Linux applications to be ported to gp2x, and also gives people like myself a solid, already well documented OS to code for, meaning faster development - of course, you can always not use Linux, and code directly for the hardware, but as some tests have shown, apart from boot time, Linux running doesn't slow things down by that much.

So all in all, I'd say the gp2x is much better than the gp32. More storage, more ram, more speed, in time == more applications possible.

 

[woogal]

GP2X runs linux. (dont get me wrong linux is great but i dont want any OS slowing down my system. GP32 didnt have an OS and it did just fine. )

If <insert favourite emulator here> was re-written to get rid of linux and use the hardware directly you'd barely notice any difference. That 'linux is slow' thing is just something that was thrown around before the GP2X was released, mainly by people that didn't have a clue what they were talking about but just enjoyed a good moan. Oh, and the GP32 had an OS - it was called GPOS.

 

[gaterooze]

Salient reasons to "upgrade":

* As mentioned, SD cards. SMCs were about the only thing I didn't like on the GP32.
* A bunch of new homebrew to try out, including many games and apps that aren't on the GP32. Note there are also a handful of GP32 games not yet on the GP2X (LACUNA!!!).
* Quake.
* Amiga emulation.
* Neo Geo emulation.
* Much improved emulation of SNES and MAME. Slighter improvements to ScummVM, Lynx, PC Engine and others.
* Two extra face buttons, making emulation of SNES and others better.
* I would have said TV Out, but you don't want to use that. No matter, just don't buy the TV Out cable and it won't bother you
* The scene is current & thriving, so you get to see new releases more often.

edit: I forgot about video playing, which is fantastic (although I don't use it often).

 

[senquack]

I just bought a GP2X after debating for a long time. I was scared off by the first revisions and held off. When the MKII came out recently, I went ahead and bought one, believe me it's fantastic.

For battery life, I'm actually impressed.. I get around 4-5 hours runtime off some high-quality 2700mah Maha batteries. I love that this handheld takes AA and not a lithium battery like other more popular ones. Sure, it's not as long-lasting as the GP32 but at the same time you can just carry more AA's with you. Good AA rechargables are dirt-cheap.

As for Linux slowing things down: no way. It uses Linux 2.4, which is a lean, mean memory-allocating machine with very very little overhead. Do you realize how cool it is to be able to telnet it, run your program, look at C printf's for debugging on the terminal while your program runs on the GP2X's screen? I can log in via telnet, run my little script with mounts my development folder on my PC over USB networking, and run test versions of my programs without ever writing to flash. Very, very handy. Additionally, you can run a remote debugger right on the GP2X and visually control it on your PC. I never did GP32 development, but I can't see myself enjoying coding as much on anything else. When you create a game for a GP2X, it is silly-easy to simultaneously port it to Windows (using Cygwin DLLs) and Linux simultaneously and release for all platforms at the same time.

The screen is fantastic: crisp and clear on this MKII with no problems, blurring, stripes or dead pixels whatsoever.

The controls stick is just fine on the MKII. It isn't necessarily the best for fighting games (A d-pad would be better) but really it's pretty easy to hit the directions you want.

MY GRIPES:

• As said before SD reads are broken in the Linux kernel, or in hardware, which means CPU usage goes to 100% reading off the card. Absolutely retarded, but dammit there's always something with a device no matter how cool it is. It doesn't seem to affect things too much, and with 64MB RAM and a well-designed program you can work with it.
  
• The battery contacts are flat tabs and not springs. Springs would be more durable.
  
• The built-in music player doesn't have good volume control - there's only 10 levels and it's either too loud or too soft. I haven't looked into other alternatives yet, but it's probably just bad software.
  
• The USB connection for writing/reading SD storage is unreliable. It works best on my USB1.0 laptop. They should have fixed this but I'm guessing it's another Magic Eyes screwup. I am guessing running it off a USB1.0 hub would help on other computers. For telnet/USB networking usage, it's just fine, even running games over a SMB mount for testing. Copying big batches over the GP2X's USB connection to the SD card (using any method) often leads to freezing of the network connection (though the GP2X remains running).

That's about it. All in all, I find it very easy to look past the above list of gripes. I've been waiting a long time for a device this cool.

 

[Sofox]

Do you realize how cool it is to be able to telnet it, run your program, look at C printf's for debugging on the terminal while your program runs on the GP2X's screen? I can log in via telnet, run my little script with mounts my development folder on my PC over USB networking, and run test versions of my programs without ever writing to flash. Very, very handy. Additionally, you can run a remote debugger right on the GP2X and visually control it on your PC.

Wait, so you can essentially hook the GP2x up to your computer with the USB cable, and with a few keystrokes, instantly test your programs on the GP2x?
Is there a tutorial or easy way of doing this? (And which OSs could you do this on?)

 

[ninja_sauce]

the only thing i dont like about the screen is being able to see my reflection in at at 7:50 in the morning on my way to work.

it's pretty scary.

other than that i love the gp2x. it's an incredible little machine and i would recommend it to anyone that enjoys retro gaming.

 

[lubidog]

I dunno, make a poll...

 

[Gruntfuggly]

I thought I would use my GP32 for some things even after I got my GP2X, but I haven't taken it out of the box since. There is loads more usable stuff on the GP2X than the GP32 - consider MAME for example.

It also looks much more serious - the GP32 always looked more like a kids toy to me, although it was slightly more comfortable to hold.

 

[chaos engineer]

I thought I would use my GP32 for some things even after I got my GP2X, but I haven't taken it out of the box since. There is loads more usable stuff on the GP2X than the GP32 - consider MAME for example.

It also looks much more serious - the GP32 always looked more like a kids toy to me, although it was slightly more comfortable to hold.

the gp32 design is unique wheras the gp2x desing is really boring

I still use the the gp32 for fast mame (mainly ghosts'n goblins and choplifter), pc engine (devils crush), megadrive (sensible soccer, chaos engine, shadow of the beast I und II) and gameboy (race drivin, micro machines, mario tennis) action. Faster to launch and better battery life.

 

[BradN]

There's a lot of reports of bad or marginal USB cables shipped with the units - if you have problems, try to borrow a cable from a digital camera or something like that and see if it works better.

 

[warzywo]

It's not bad for viewing movies. File format compatibility is a bit limited. The text view is okay. As is the music and picture view. All basic, but nice little extras. Mind you, you can upgrade all these to homebrew versions.

What exactly do you mean by "limited format compatibility"? Where could I find a comprehensive list?

 

[LordFu]

It plays DivX and Xvid with either mp3 or ogg audio. Resolutions up to 720*? are supported, but movies play best when encoded to 320*240.