The Archos Gamepad.

[Nognir]

This one's coming out soon enough (I hope) with a very attractive pricetag.


Source


Seems like a much better deal than S-E's Xperia Play... What do you think?

 

[ekianjo]

That's a damn ugly design, though.


And the fact that it's so thin does not give good hope regarding the battery life...

 

[SNESFAN]

Might have a big name but the specs point to cheap chineese android handheld... might be cool

 

[Ian J]

Not exactly pocket sized.


Then again not many portable gaming devices are now.

 

[gunrock]

Looks good. Hopefully you won't have to buy extra bits of system software to run all the games you want. Archos used to charge extra for MP4 playback, OGG playback, FLAC playback, Web browser etc. as system software upgrade packs.

 

[kuru]

Not bad. I like Archos tablets since they were the only ones having a built in kickstand, I have given them my money twice already.


IIRC Archos only ever charged for the codecs they had to pay for themselves.

 

[Nognir]

My guess is that there might be some MediaTek cpu inside to keep the cost low. It's been said to include Play Store as well.


What I'm kinda worried about is the build quality.

 

[sebt3]

Archos started building media tablet way before the tablet hype. They know their s**t and used to build high quality devices. I wouldnt worry much about that.


On the other hand, not a real d-pad and a weak cpu/gpu combo make me wonder if nexus 7 + icp2 wouldnt be a better deal ?

 

[gadgetoid]

In my experience, when Archos branch away from their mainstay of tablets, things start to go horribly wrong. They must be faltering, though, as they seem to be embarking on increasingly desperate attempts to stay relevant.


Remember the Archos TV+?... didn't think so... ha!

 

[Ian J]

I'd just stick with a tablet and a controller is that's what you want, at least that way you can get the controller that suits you best.

 

[Exophase]

On the other hand, not a real d-pad and a weak cpu/gpu combo make me wonder if nexus 7 + icp2 wouldnt be a better deal ?

I don't think the CPU/GPU looks that weak. Tegra 3 has a couple more CPU cores that are hardly useful for anything, and a Mali-400 MP4 can easily hold its own vs the GeForce ULP on Tegra 3.


Archos has demonstrated decent design sense in the past but nothing that shows that they know how to do gaming controls, hopefully this isn't too bad.. I want to believe that they'll realize a dpad shouldn't work this way and that these are just early renders..


Don't know why so many are saying to use a tablet + controller, as if that's really the same. You have to put the tablet somewhere while you hold the controller (not to mention bring the controller with you); I'd much rather hold the tablet while playing. But it remains to be seen if this is too large to be comfortable, especially for people with small hands like myself.

 

[sebt3]

I don't think the CPU/GPU looks that weak. Tegra 3 has a couple more CPU cores that are hardly useful for anything, and a Mali-400 MP4 can easily hold its own vs the GeForce ULP on Tegra 3.

So the tegra3 isnt the holy graal for my shader experiment ? ()


So in your opinion, would that Mali GPU have the requiered file rate for this experiment ?

 

[Exophase]

I don't know what this clocks at, but Mali-400MP4 is the GPU in both Samsung Galaxy S2 and S3 (latter must have a much higher clock speed). Here are a few benchmark results:


http://www.anandtech...droid-devices/2


Mali-400's biggest weakness is triangle throughput, because it only has one vertex shading/triangle setup unit regardless of the core count, so MP4 and MP1 have the same capabilities here. And that's why the benches show it's capped at around ~7-10MTri/sec where the others get a lot higher. But most real world stuff doesn't push polygon count so hard, which if you think about it makes sense - they have to support a wide variety of hardware, and while you can scale things like resolution and fragment shader effects scaling geometry w/o tessellation (which none of the current mobile hardware supports) means doing totally different models. Hence why you see the bottleneck doesn't materialize even in the real scene benchmarks here.


On the other hand, with its four cores it has a fair amount of texturing and fragment shading power. The fragment shaders are only FP16 though. So yes, it would probably do better in your experiment.


No question, either would be much much faster than the old 110MHz SGX530 you tested that shader with.


Archos is probably using Rockchip RK3066. They've used Rockchip a lot in the past and this fits the specifications. Apparently that runs the GPU at 266MHz.

 

[sebt3]

Thanks man, you just saved me 200$


I wouldnt have guessed these results from my previous reading.


My experiment draw 2 tri, have a cap at 5M tri shouldnt be a problem


/me is looking for a good Mali-400MP4 gaming device now

 

[hosant]

Archos is probably using Rockchip RK3066. They've used Rockchip a lot in the past and this fits the specifications. Apparently that runs the GPU at 266MHz.

I was hopping for Exynos 5250.


How does this compares to the 4212?

 

[Nognir]

According to wikipedia it's as powerful as the SoC in Galaxy S2:

RK3066

These high performance mobile processor is a Dual Core Cortex A9 processor similar to the Samsung Exynos 4 Dual Core chips. In therm of performance, the RK3066 is between the Samsung Exynos 4210 and the Samsung Exynos 4212.


Specifications:

• 40 nm.
  
• Dual core Cortex A9 processor, clocked at up to 1.6 GHz.
  
• Quad core Mali 400, clocked at 250 MHz. (Support 1080p Video Decoding)
  
• DDR, DDR2, DDR3 support. (up to 2GB)
  
• HDMI 1.4 Interface
  
• 2-channels TFT LCD Interface with 5 layers and 3D Display (1920x1080 Maximum Display Size)
  
• USB 2.0 Interface
  
• SD/MMC Interface
  

 

[Exophase]

I was hopping for Exynos 5250.

In a cheap gaming tablet coming out in October? You dream big my friend

How does this compares to the 4212?

Here's some more info..


http://tabreview.ru/content/pdf_docs/RK3066_datasheet_brief.pdf


It's pretty similar but there's only 512KB of L2 cache (vs 1MB). Not as hobbled as that old Amlogic chip with 128KB but still enough to make a difference. There's also no indication on L2 and main memory latency.. Samsung is often ahead of others like TI, so who knows how this company is doing. It also appears the RK3066 only has a single memory channel (like Tegra 3), don't know how high it can clock.. so it probably has a lot less memory bandwidth than Exynos 4212.


All in all I'd expect it to tend to be a little slower.

 

[2bit]

Looks WAY to much like a PSP to take down Sony and Nintendo and that Fruit Company . The article didn't mention the Fruit Company but they are probably the greatest threat to dedicated handhelds .

 

[Exophase]

Looks WAY to much like a PSP to take down Sony and Nintendo and that Fruit Company . The article didn't mention the Fruit Company but they are probably the greatest threat to dedicated handhelds .

I'm amazed that a poster on the Pandora boards would automatically think that it's Archos's intention to take down Sony, Nintendo, or "that Fruit Company." Archos makes Android tablets. They have for years. Making one with gaming controls, to be more useful for games on Android, isn't a big disruption to their current model or a vie for market dominance.

 

[2bit]

Looks WAY to much like a PSP to take down Sony and Nintendo and that Fruit Company . The article didn't mention the Fruit Company but they are probably the greatest threat to dedicated handhelds .

I'm amazed that a poster on the Pandora boards would automatically think that it's Archos's intention to take down Sony, Nintendo, or "that Fruit Company." Archos makes Android tablets. They have for years. Making one with gaming controls, to be more useful for games on Android, isn't a big disruption to their current model or a vie for market dominance.

If you read the link in Nognir's Post it says that's what they're going for .