The Future Gp32 Replacement?

[Charge]

I realise that a lot of topics on these boards have been about the Gp64 and other future handhelds that could have the potential for homebrew development like the GP32 currently does.

Well, at E3 a new contender came to view, the VIA EVE. Specs from vias site:

System:
· 533 MHz Eden-N Processor
· 133MHz Bus
· SSE and MMX instruction Set support
· 128MB DDR266 SDRAM
· High-Performance 64-bit DDR SDRAM Controller
· 20GB Hard Drive - Data transfer rates of up to 133 MB/s


Graphics:
· VIA CN400 Digital Media Chipset - Integrates S3 Graphics UniChrome Pro Graphics Core
· 200Mhz Graphics Engine Clock
· 128-bit 3D Graphics Engine o Pixel rate up to 200 million pixels per second, 2 textures each
o Triangle rate up to 4.5 million triangles per second
o Microsoft DirectX 7.0, 8.0, and 9.0 compatible
o Microsoft DirectX Texture Compression (DXTC, S3TC)
o OpenGL™ Support
o Z-bias, LOD-bias, Polygon Offset, Edge Anti-aliasing and Alpha Blending
o Specular Lighting
MPEG2 & MPEG4 Hardware decoding

Audio:
· VIA Vinyl Six-channel Audio
· Full Immerzio™ Gaming support
o EAX® 1.0, EAX® 2.0
o DirectSound3D®
o I3DL2™
o A3D® 1.0


LCD Display
The Eve Mobile Gaming Console integrates a 4", 640x480 TFT LCD screen. In supporting up to 640x480 resolutions, the Eve Console can easily play all PC games natively.


Hard Drive
The Eve Console includes a single 1.8" 20GB hard drive for storing the OS and the game data. This is sufficient to store a large library of games and digital media content. This is transferred to the system either via wireless LAN or by USB2.0 pass-through to a PC.


Batteries
Prismatic Lithium-Ion batteries are the current favorite choice for the console. Two packs of batteries are provided so that the batteries can be hot-swapped for continuous, uninterrupted play.


Port List
The ports that are user-accessible on the Eve Console include:
· Power jack (DC barrel type)
· 2x USB 2..0 jacks (Type A host style)
· 1x Compact FLASH type II slot
· 2x battery slots (as specified as handgrips)
· 1x smartcard card slot (15mm x 1mm slot)
· 2x 1/8” stereo jack for headphones out & microphone in
· 1x 1/8” stereo jack for composite video out
· 802.11b wireless LAN

Button List
· D-pad (WASD)
· L/R triggers
· Cluster of 4 action buttons
· Line of 6 auxiliary function buttons

* Please note: The specification provided above is for the initial reference design and may be subject to change.

 

[c0ncept]

* Please note: The specification provided above is for the initial reference design and may be subject to change.

hmmm... <_<

 

[Charge]

* Please note: The specification provided above is for the initial reference design and may be subject to change.

hmmm... <_<

yeah, but that may just mean increase the specs. here are some FAQs on the subject too:

http://www.ministrymobile.com/MoMAweb-eve.html

ps : 100th post finally!! and I've only been here for almost a year <_<

 

[sebastian_insua]

holy crap that sounds good, but it could be pretty expensive....

i think i would buy it if there was homebrew for it (regardless of the price)
however it runs windows xp so it may be greatly slowed down by that (although psx emulation may be possible wiht it)...

it looks a little clunky though... :lol:

 

[sam fisher]

That will cost a good £500!!!!

 

[Charge]

That will cost a good £500!!!!

Personally I can see it being the same price as a PSP. £500 is a bit of a high guess in my opinion, it isn't as powerful as the XBox, and that is about £130ish now.

Imagine the number of emus you could get to run on this thing though! Winuae, the capcom emus, MAME, your PC game catalogue, a GP32 emu... Lots of potential

 

[Josquius]

Microsoft makes a large loss on xbox sales though, they make their money through games sales. For a console like the GP32 your profit has to come from the hardware sales.

 

[Charge]

Microsoft makes a large loss on xbox sales though, they make their money through games sales. For a console like the GP32 your profit has to come from the hardware sales.

I was thinking this too, until I read a document on the buisness plan for this machine.

it is available here:
http://www.via.com.tw/en/VInternet/GameDwellerWhitepaper.pdf

but to sum it up you have to buy an extra sim card (described like a freelauncher type thing) to run any x86 code on the machine - this will allow a homebrew scene.

All other software will be available to purchase online, and can be specifically coded to run only on your machine (like the GP32 stuff). The games can also be given an expirery date - so imagine very cheep "rent" games becoming available.

Thus they will be making money on software - not just the hardware.

 

[pip]

Personally I can see it being the same price as a PSP. £500 is a bit of a high guess in my opinion, it isn't as powerful as the XBox, and that is about £130ish now.

Ehm, since when was XBox a handheld? Laptops are more expensive than stationary computers performance-wise, whilst handheld devices are even more expensive.

I suspect a very poor battery life and a very large price. On top of that you will notice that even a p3 533Mhz with an S3 Graphics chip won't be able to run the GBA emulators very well. Having it run winxp is a very large performance hit.

 

[Charge]

Personally I can see it being the same price as a PSP. £500 is a bit of a high guess in my opinion, it isn't as powerful as the XBox, and that is about £130ish now.

Ehm, since when was XBox a handheld? Laptops are more expensive than stationary computers performance-wise, whilst handheld devices are even more expensive.

I suspect a very poor battery life and a very large price. On top of that you will notice that even a p3 533Mhz with an S3 Graphics chip won't be able to run the GBA emulators very well. Having it run winxp is a very large performance hit.

Due to money made off software and competition from Sony + Nintendo I'm expecting it to cost around £200 - £300, but obviously only time will tell... (this applies to performance as well).

Although I do remember running the amiga emu - WinUAE, SNES - opensnes9x and catalyst - Megadrive, PSEmu - PS1, and Quake 3 on my old Celeron 400 with its TNT2 graphics card. So maybe 533Mhz with DX9 compatability will run some good stuff too.

 

[bringoutthegimp]

wow.......................

 

[raven]

Imagine the number of emus you could get to run on this thing though! Winuae, the capcom emus, MAME, your PC game catalogue, a GP32 emu... Lots of potential

VIA is using these cpu's and graphics chipsets in their mini-itx motherboards already and I wouldn't get my hopes up when it comes up to gaming. A 1ghz VIA cpu (yes I have one) does not perform as good as a 350mhz Pentium 2 (one of my older pc's).

I have a 1ghz VIA Epia motherboard which runs XP and is excellent for office use and watching DVD's (because it doesn't use a lot of power, stays cool and doesn't need loud cooling) but it is not suited for gaming. Even heavier SNES games stutter on this machine.

 

[Charge]

Imagine the number of emus you could get to run on this thing though! Winuae, the capcom emus, MAME, your PC game catalogue, a GP32 emu... Lots of potential

VIA is using these cpu's and graphics chipsets in their mini-itx motherboards already and I wouldn't get my hopes up when it comes up to gaming. A 1ghz VIA cpu (yes I have one) does not perform as good as a 350mhz Pentium 2 (one of my older pc's).

I have a 1ghz VIA Epia motherboard which runs XP and is excellent for office use and watching DVD's (because it doesn't use a lot of power, stays cool and doesn't need loud cooling) but it is not suited for gaming. Even heavier SNES games stutter on this machine.

hmm... strange that you are finding the 1Ghz processor so slow. The reason why I was getting excited about this machine was that my friend has bought the same system that you have, to use as a car PC. I have used it and it seemed to run emulators with no problem at all... Even quake 3 seemed quite smooth and I'm pretty sure that its graphics card was not as good as the one coming in the VIA handheld. I'll have to ask him to run some tests for me cos he moved to Holland a few weeks ago.

If you are right though, it would seem that a 533Mhz version for the handheld may not be enough :unsure:

 

[khephren]

If you look at what winCE devices can now run (at 400mhz, often with woefull graphics processors) snes, genesis, amiga, PS1 etc, this could easily manage that. The specs are nice, but it does not seem very well thought out. They say you can play PC games, but then go on to say you will need a portable keyboard. If they expect people to run PC games titles, then a keyboard (or at least lots of buttons) are essential. And the device shown at E3 did not have a detachable contoller (as mentioned in the specs-maybe it's just proof of concept).

Like the gizmondo it seems to suffer from lots of power on a tiny screen. I squint at snes stuff on the gp at 320x240, what the hell would PC stuff at 640x480 look like on a 4" screen? (especially as they are meant for monitors).

But I like the idea, especialy if it is open source to any degree....

 

[sam fisher]

I hope seeing as none of the money gamepark get from gp32's means they are suddenly going to realise the gp64 with 1ghz, 512mb ram, graphics card etc etc etc

 

[Axeman]

Looks promising!

 

[Charge]

Ovreall, the beauty of the device in my opinion is the ability of it to play existing PC emus and PD games. Unfortunately with the GP32 we have to wait for excellent coders to convert titles, normally from the PC. Obviously there are a lot of good original games available only for the GP32 eg from Akuma no Houkon and others, but the number of original titles, emus, and PD game clones that will be available for this new handheld from launch will dwarf that of the GP32.

Please don't misunderstand me, I don't want to see the end of the GP32 scene and I'll probably keep my GP32 forever (I still have my amiga 500 + amiga CD32). However, I do like progress and, especially in the computer industry, nothing lasts forever.

 

[khephren]

I agree charge...the pics are weird though, it does not seem to fold:

http://www.i4u.com/article1551.html

and as it it is two sections at right angles that would be pretty weird.

 

[Charge]

I agree charge...the pics are weird though at it does not seem to fold:

http://www.i4u.com/article1551.html

and as it it is two sections at right angles that would be pretty weird.

yeah, it is a bad design. Hopefully this proof of concept will not be the same as the final version which they say will have detatchable controlers and screens.

 

[Dolfhin]

Looks promising!

Second that (I always wanted to say that )

It looks really good but WindowsXP is going to be a huge performace hit