GP32 Speed Of Geepee32

[petervullings]

Hi all,

I do not own a GP32 yet, but I have just compiled my first GP32 fxe using good ol' Mr Mirko's latest SDK and the development kit from bobintrees (thanks guys - great work).

I have compiled 'example.sprites' and am running it using the latest GeePee32, which is a transparent sprite of Ode floating over the top of Garfield. My system at the moment is win2k, 750MHz, AMD Duron something rather.

My question is:
On my system (in geepee32) the frame rate goes between 9.98 and 6.68 in this example. Is this normal? Has anyone run this fxe on a real GP? What is the framerate on the real GP?

I'd love to know because then I can tell if my code is going to run fast enough on the real GP, and whether I have to optimise etc.

TIA
Peter

 

[Vimacs]

geepee emulates a 40mhz gp32, and it isnt fullspeed at slower pcs, so youre far slower than a real gp

 

[Tobriand]

Just after I ordered a GP32, I tried running SMS32 (the SMS/GG emu of the day, and in some ways - sonic water effects, essentially - better than fSMS32 even now) on GeePee32. People had always said the emu was fullspeed. Needless to say it wasn't on Geepee - probably about 1/4 of the speed it should have been - and I then went through a long stage of thinking I'd made a massive mistake.

Of course, on the actual GP, it was easily full speed.

GeePee32 is good for testing the effectiveness of code, but if its a representation of speed you want, give it a miss. Unless you're writing at 40MHz, possibly.

 

[woogal]

I noticed something strange on geepee the other day. I was testing an app that uses spiv's real time clock code and on geepee it runs at approx twice the speed (this is nothing to do with the clock speed as the RTC is supposed to run at 1/64th sec at any clock speed). This was with the older linux version of geepee, so I don't know if this still happens in the latest version.

 

[generalnmx]

Just after I ordered a GP32, I tried running SMS32 (the SMS/GG emu of the day, and in some ways - sonic water effects, essentially - better than fSMS32 even now) on GeePee32. People had always said the emu was fullspeed. Needless to say it wasn't on Geepee - probably about 1/4 of the speed it should have been - and I then went through a long stage of thinking I'd made a massive mistake.

Of course, on the actual GP, it was easily full speed.

GeePee32 is good for testing the effectiveness of code, but if its a representation of speed you want, give it a miss. Unless you're writing at 40MHz, possibly.

​

Who's been saying GeePee32 is full speed? I've always said it runs far slower then the real speed on hardware.

Basically, if you're wondering about what your FPS is going to be like on hardware, I say a guestimate of double what it is on GeePee32 is OK.

 

[petervullings]

Has anyone got some actual frame rate values for me?
You can find the file here:
http://www.pea.co.nz/gp32/sprite.fxe

Would be great if I could have values from:
1) GeePee32 running on Linux (system specs too if poss)
2) GeePee32 running on high spec windows (2GHz +)
3) Actual GP32

TIA

 

[fheusel]

I've tried this example with

a) my 1,8Ghz PC running WinXP --> 9fps
B) my GP32 --> 46fps

Fabian

 

[pea]

a) my 1,8Ghz PC running WinXP --> 9fps
B) my GP32 --> 46fps

​

Thanks Fabian,

I think it's safe to say then that geepee32 running on my 750MHz machine is running full-speed, because its the same as your 1.8GHz!
Wow! 46fps - That's an impressive speed on the GP!

The sprite example sets the processor to 133MHz

gp_setCpuspeed(133);

, and it runs at 46fps on the GP32. Using this to back calculate, geepee32 must run at about (133/46*9) = 26 MHz

Conclusion:
GeePee32 emulates at about 26MHz
At least in this 'sprites.fxe' example

 

[generalnmx]

a) my 1,8Ghz PC running WinXP --> 9fps
B) my GP32 --> 46fps

​

Thanks Fabian,

I think it's safe to say then that geepee32 running on my 750MHz machine is running full-speed, because its the same as your 1.8GHz!
Wow! 46fps - That's an impressive speed on the GP!

The sprite example sets the processor to 133MHz

gp_setCpuspeed(133);

, and it runs at 46fps on the GP32. Using this to back calculate, geepee32 must run at about (133/46*9) = 26 MHz

Conclusion:
GeePee32 emulates at about 26MHz
At least in this 'sprites.fxe' example

​

Think of it as a multiplier (estimate, of course) instead of MHz speed, since increasing or decreasing the CPU Speed in your program WILL affect program speed in GeePee32.

 

[RomHacker316]

Just after I ordered a GP32, I tried running SMS32 (the SMS/GG emu of the day, and in some ways - sonic water effects, essentially - better than fSMS32 even now) on GeePee32. People had always said the emu was fullspeed. Needless to say it wasn't on Geepee - probably about 1/4 of the speed it should have been - and I then went through a long stage of thinking I'd made a massive mistake.

Of course, on the actual GP, it was easily full speed.

GeePee32 is good for testing the effectiveness of code, but if its a representation of speed you want, give it a miss. Unless you're writing at 40MHz, possibly.

​

Who's been saying GeePee32 is full speed? I've always said it runs far slower then the real speed on hardware.

Basically, if you're wondering about what your FPS is going to be like on hardware, I say a guestimate of double what it is on GeePee32 is OK.

​

I believe he is talking about the SMS emulator and not geepee32. He is saying that on a GP32 the emu is fullspeed. But not in geepee32.

 

[generalnmx]

Just after I ordered a GP32, I tried running SMS32 (the SMS/GG emu of the day, and in some ways - sonic water effects, essentially - better than fSMS32 even now) on GeePee32. People had always said the emu was fullspeed. Needless to say it wasn't on Geepee - probably about 1/4 of the speed it should have been - and I then went through a long stage of thinking I'd made a massive mistake.

Of course, on the actual GP, it was easily full speed.

GeePee32 is good for testing the effectiveness of code, but if its a representation of speed you want, give it a miss. Unless you're writing at 40MHz, possibly.

​

Who's been saying GeePee32 is full speed? I've always said it runs far slower then the real speed on hardware.

Basically, if you're wondering about what your FPS is going to be like on hardware, I say a guestimate of double what it is on GeePee32 is OK.

​

I believe he is talking about the SMS emulator and not geepee32. He is saying that on a GP32 the emu is fullspeed. But not in geepee32.

​

Ah, you're probably right. I must have missed that, my mistake.

 

[pea]

Huh? what's SMS?

What I mean about the speeds is as generalnmx says:

The sprites.fxe example running on my PC, in geepee32 runs at 9 fps
The sprites.fxe example running on a real GP runs at 46 fps
The code in the sprites.fxe example sets the clock speed to 133MHz

Therefore, geepee32 running on my computer is running at a simulated speed of about 26MHz.

Or, for a better example (thanks generalnmx) just multiply the CPU speed that the .fxe runs at by 0.2 (or divide by 5) to get the speed that it will run at on the PC (geepee32). So geepee32 runs about 5 times slower than a real GP.

So an .fxe running at 133MHz on a real GP will run at about 26MHz on geepee32

I'll do some further testing with different clock speeds...

 

[pea]

Update:

I just did a test by changng the cpu speed of the sprites example to 66MHz

gp_setCpuspeed(66);

And recompiling. The resulting .fxe runs at exactly the same speed (9 fps) on geepee32, so either:
( a ) geepee32 doesn't support gp_setCpuspeed
( b ) the hardware limitations make it so that geepee32 has hit maximum so that it can't even begin to reach 66MHz simulated speed.

I think ( a ) because fheusal could also only get 9fps, and his system is almost 3 times as fast as mine (750MHz compared to 1.8 GHz).

 

[woogal]

Update:

I just did a test by changng the cpu speed of the sprites example to 66MHz

gp_setCpuspeed(66);

And recompiling. The resulting .fxe runs at exactly the same speed (9 fps) on geepee32, so either:
( a ) geepee32 doesn't support gp_setCpuspeed
( b ) the hardware limitations make it so that geepee32 has hit maximum so that it can't even begin to reach 66MHz simulated speed.

I think ( a ) because fheusal could also only get 9fps, and his system is almost 3 times as fast as mine (750MHz compared to 1.8 GHz).

​

Vimacs has already said that geepee only emulates a 40mhz gp32. Also, your calculations can probably only be applied to your one fxe as you are forgetting about the other clocks (the gp32 has 3 clocks - processor, memory, and timers). It is impossible to try and calculate the possible slowdown for geepee for all apps, because as I said earlier the timers in my app cause it to actually run much faster on geepee.