SoC Poll - What's most important for you?

[Screeny]

Actually, it kind of does. If you try to tell people this stuff will work because it is the same (or similar) chipset, and then it doesn't because we either don't run Windows, or can't run it, then all that information is doing is giving people false expectations so that they will vote your way.

Nope. It's the same with every chipset. Maybe it will run or it won't. But I think that there are much more options to use our device if there is a x86 architecture build-in. I don't like ARM because it's not as good supported as CPUs in my notebook, server or whatever device I'm using. x86 is able to run *nix, Windows, OSX. So basically it will run every OS if you are able to get the drivers to work. That's what  I want: A device which is able to run everything without hacks like QEMU. 

I think it's much easier to convert a x86 device into a ARM device (with some kind of emulation) than the way around. If we want to get more power and more functions out of our pandora we should use a "new level". A portable handheld with x86 architecture which supports Debian and (maybe if we hack it ... but I'm sure that this is no problem) Windows / OSX. That would be much nicer than a device just with OSs for ARM. (And yeah: It's still my opinion ... no need to agree if you don't want to.)

The Pyra should stop the "nerd'n'geek" image that the pandora gets. We should produce a product with much more ablity to be mainsteam.

 

[ghostpatch]

@ ED: screen is 8 inch not 4,3! + its running standard Windows. And since when is a running time of 6 to 10 hours bad? When gaming on my Nexus 7 (Snapdragon S4 Pro; 7 inch screen) I'm getting about 6 hours which I don't think is bad at all. Pyra will "only" have 5inch compared to Nexus 7 and Venue 8.

Yeha, and I'm not sure if it was necessary to ask everyone what they are thinking about X or Y in terms of SoC. If ED had simply said "oh, I've chosen OMAP5, and that's it, and it's going to go in production soon and too late to change anything", well I'm pretty sure everyone would have more or less accepted it and shut up. Instead of that, we've been wasting one week in garbage threads discussing the pros and cons of ARM vs x86, and split the community in two, and potentially put notaz's role in jeopardy. Sometimes open discussions are NOT productive, seriously guys. So much waste of energy going on.

Would you make the same statements if x86 were leading? Different views are not an evil thing. I learned about some new interesting stuff in the course of our discussions.

I'm sure it will turn out to be an ARM SoC but I want to make sure x86 wasn't chosen claiming false reasons. A lot of statements seem to imply x86 is inferior which I and some others can't agree with. It's not true anymore. Its quite competitive and both arcitecturers have their pros and cons

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

Told you.  This gonna be another "SoC:  Back and Forth"  thread  :lol:

 

[EvilDragon]

@ ED: screen is 8 inch not 4! + its running standard Windows. And since when is a running time of 6 to 10 hours bad? When gaming on my Nexus 7 (Snapdragon S4 Pro; 7 inch screen) I'm getting about 6 hours which I don't think is bad at all. Pyra will "only" have 5inch compared to Nexus 7 and Venue 8.

I'm getting 11 - 12 hours playing SNES on my Pandora, 6 to 10 hours for simple tasks with a higher capacity battery is not that good.

The screen probably is not that big deal.

The Pyra uses a 5" FullHD screen whereas the Pandora one uses a 4,3" 800x480 one, but the power usage is nearly identical (technology has advanced).

So yes, the 8" screen will probably use a bit more, but probably not that much.

Running standard Windows could be the cause here, yes.

 

[Screeny]

So yes, the 8" screen will probably use a bit more, but probably not that much.

Don't think so. The screen is the part with the highest power consumption. (Directly before WiFi/WLAN)

 

[EvilDragon]

So yes, the 8" screen will probably use a bit more, but probably not that much.

 Don't think so. The screen is the part with the highest power consumption. (Directly before WiFi/WLAN)

Yes, same for the Pyra and Pandora.

But I'm not sure that the 8" screen does need a lot more than the old 4,3" Pandora screen (as the new 5" Full HD screen with faster refresh time doesn't need more).

 

[God Ginrai]

The Pyra should stop the "nerd'n'geek" image that the pandora gets. We should produce a product with much more ablity to be mainsteam.

Honestly, the minute that the Pyra ceases to be a homebrew handheld is the minute I choose not to buy one. I got a GP2X for homebrew and emulation, and enjoyed both equally. I then continued onto the Pandora and enjoyed them both in much the same way. Sure, I use the computer aspects of the Pandora and enjoy them, however, that is not my main purpose for the device. If we go x86 and do what you're suggesting, this device will lose its magic and be just another Razer Edge/nVidia Shield, except made by a company with a lot less resources and a much smaller name.

-God Ginrai

 

[Screeny]

The Pyra should stop the "nerd'n'geek" image that the pandora gets. We should produce a product with much more ablity to be mainsteam.

Honestly, the minute that the Pyra ceases to be a homebrew handheld is the minute I choose not to buy one. I got a GP2X for homebrew and emulation, and enjoyed both equally. I then continued onto the Pandora and enjoyed them both in much the same way. Sure, I use the computer aspects of the Pandora and enjoy them, however, that is not my main purpose for the device. If we go x86 and do what you're suggesting, this device will lose its magic and be just another Razer Edge/nVidia Shield, except made by a company with a lot less resources and a much smaller name.

-God Ginrai

And - hopefully - a better community. Homebrew is possible with x86 too. If we create an open system we will get devs automatically. I don't talk about using of Windows. Just Debian with x86 would be nice.

The main purpose for a 500€ device should be homebrew only? That sounds like a joke ... I don't want a niche device anymore.

 

[EvilDragon]

And - hopefully - a better community. Homebrew is possible with x86 too. If we create an open system we will get devs automatically. I don't talk about using of Windows. Just Debian with x86 would be nice.

The main purpose for a 500€ device should be homebrew only? That sounds like a joke ... I don't want a niche device anymore.

The community is one of the best I've ever seen.

You will not get more devs automatically - why should you?

The desktop version of Debian runs out of the box including most programs (which will be the same when using the ARM Debian Repo, btw.), and for a dev optimizing a game specifically for one system there's no real difference if he compiles it with an ARM or x86 compiler.

The real difference would be closed source games here, not OpenSource games.

 

[commander-beef]

The real difference would be closed source games here, not OpenSource games.

Yeah. Why asking indie devs to port a game to Pyra [ARM], if we could go into Indie Dev Garden by switching to x86.

 

[TrashyMG]

^ where is the fun in that..

 

[ghostpatch]

Honestly, the minute that the Pyra ceases to be a homebrew handheld is the minute I choose not to buy one. I got a GP2X for homebrew and emulation, and enjoyed both equally. I then continued onto the Pandora and enjoyed them both in much the same way. Sure, I use the computer aspects of the Pandora and enjoy them, however, that is not my main purpose for the device. If we go x86 and do what you're suggesting, this device will lose its magic and be just another Razer Edge/nVidia Shield, except made by a company with a lot less resources and a much smaller name. -God Ginrai

It's statements like this that made me turn completly in fovour of x86 for this discussion. At first I was actually pretty open about the architecture.

So basically a x86 based device can't become a cool homebrew handheld? Nvidia Shield is ARM and its not even meant to be open or to be a homebrew console. So where is the logical reasoning?

You know what. I get a Pyra no matter what SoC will be used in the end! 

 

[Natsu]

Notaz does not like x86. Notaz has publically stated that he will leave if Pyra goes x86.

Would he leave if there are two options?

4) Most important doesn't = others not important. It does n't reflect the individual 2nd and 3rd, but it does reflect the community 1st to 3rd importance.

So for example when 90% of community chose 1-2-3 order and the rest 10% 3-1-2 you will see in general ranking 1-3 which would mean that question 2 should get lowest attention but 90% of people don't agree with this.

I see your point, but let's focus on the 1st for now or is there still a problem? :lol:

2.0 GHz, 6 hours battery life

Like people said, while having the Pandora at 10 hours? I would at least want


something close to that.

Yeha, and I'm not sure if it was necessary to ask everyone what they are thinking about X or Y in terms of SoC. If ED had simply said "oh, I've chosen OMAP5, and that's it, and it's going to go in production soon and too late to change anything", well I'm pretty sure everyone would have more or less accepted it and shut up. Instead of that, we've been wasting one week in garbage threads discussing the pros and cons of ARM vs x86, and split the community in two, and potentially put notaz's role in jeopardy.


Sometimes open discussions are NOT productive, seriously guys.


So much waste of energy going on.

The fact that this happen, that does not seem to be the case. This is a community. Him doing that would pretty much say


he doesn't care about it. A better device may come from all this.


The fact he is doing this despite his time constraint,makes you pretty appreciative about him and the whole project.

 

[commander-beef]

^ where is the fun in that..

Create problem [Pandora ARM = No Indie Dev's], and propose a solution [Pyra x86 = Homebrew / Indie Heaven]. ED You're brillant 

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

Where's hailrazer?

 

[Screeny]

The real difference would be closed source games here, not OpenSource games.

And that is a problem?  

OpenSource is great but not necessary. People who love OpenSource will create OpenSource games without a dependency of architecture.

Edit:

If we choose x86 as main architecture there is another plus: Most devs are programming with a x86 system, aren't they? So there is no need to create a new abstract level (→ cross compile)... devs can create programs without getting a Pyra and they can test their programs directly on their dev machines. 

 

[CrazyIvan]

The real difference would be closed source games here, not OpenSource games.

 
And that's exactly what you could mean by 'keep the Pandora optimizations we already have' because psx and n64 will run fine on atom or a modern a15 with the same optimizations as x86 version. Don't know about NDS emulator(s) though. Other real 'optimizations' are hardware-specific ones so they won't carry over to pyra. 

So basically only closed source ARM games remain as worthwhile 'optimizations' .

 

[TrashyMG]

I personally like ARM, And it may sound odd to some people, but the handheld aspects of the Pandora wasn't really my draw.. I was an ARM enthusiast and tried several ARM based dev boards before even hearing about the Pandora, so I found out about the Pandora when looking up some information about my BeagleBoard, this was back when things were starting up production wise for the Pandora.. I came here because of the active community which I wasn't finding elsewhere. It was friendly and people where happy to answer my dumb questions.. This community was an amazing resource of information for me. So I picked up a Pandora or three and stuck around.  So It's most likely why I'll not pick up a Pyra if it's X86 only.. It doesn't interest me.  Now I'm not a typical user, so I don't expect others who just want a gaming/UMPC device to understand my reasoning.

 

[EvilDragon]

The real difference would be closed source games here, not OpenSource games.

And that's exactly what you could mean by 'keep the Pandora optimizations we already have' because psx and n64 will run fine on atom or a modern a15 with the same optimizations as x86 version. Don't know about NDS emulator(s) though. Other real 'optimizations' are hardware-specific ones so they won't carry over to pyra.


So basically only closed source ARM games remain as worthwhile 'optimizations' .

No, NEON is not available on x86.

The real difference would be closed source games here, not OpenSource games.

And that is a problem?

Nope. But is it a problem Pandora optimzed stuff will run on the Pyra?


It's the same argument, discussed till death in the other thread.


ARM has advantages and disadvantages and x86 has advantages and disadvantages.


I also mentioned the pros and cons here, still most people seem to prefer ARM right now.


Is that a problem?


No. It's a choice.


It might not be your favourite choice, but where's the point repeating the same arguments from the other thread over and over again.


Hoping the ones who voted for ARM would switch over to x86?


The voting is not yet over, we don't know what the results will be, but you should accept that other people might not want x86.

 

[Michoko]

This discussion calls to mind that quote from the guy who invented the car


"If I'd asked what the people wanted they would've said 'faster horses".

Nice one! However, in my mind this quote could also translate into «Forget old mindsets, do something different»