What Is Possible On 256mb Ram?

[jakewastaken]

Is GIMP going to be (more) usable now?

Anything memory intensive will have more wiggle room I would imagine.

This is p awesome news

 

[psychodegu]

Dreamcast Samba de Amigo, is all i want!

Are you planning on walking down the street shacking maracas, stopping every once and a while to pose?

 

[neoromani]

It should be funny XD but i will play with the controller as same as i did in dreamcast, my favourite game by the way

 

[oblivioner]

Will Doom 3 mods work? I mean Doom 3 as a game wasn't that good, so other than the "It works! cool!" effect, there are some nice mods around that are much better than ID's game.

 

[mali]

Will Doom 3 mods work? I mean Doom 3 as a game wasn't that good, so other than the "It works! cool!" effect, there are some nice mods around that are much better than ID's game.

Who knows? Let's at least wait, till the source code is released

 

[kloplop321]

I see it this way
PSP Phat has 32MB of RAM
DS has 4 MB of RAM
Pandora will have 256MB of RAM
Pandora == DS*64 || Phat PSP*8
Pandora = $330
DS = $130
PSP = $170
$330 < $1360(PSP)
$330 < $8320(DS)

I see it as pretty well worth it

 

[Yod4z]

new PSP have 64Mo, no?

 

[Tor]

It seems to me that people are badly underestimating what you could already do with 128MB RAM.

Someone mentioned that it will [with 256MB] be viable to run KDE. Well, it was _already_ viable. 3.5 runs very well on the Nokia internet tablets (128MB), and 4.0 runs fine too - the problem there is the quality of kde4 itself, not RAM.

Someone said:
> Most of the original planning for the Pandora was based on 128MB memory. So, there was little to no multi application capability.

That is simply completely wrong. Multi application capability is already great with 128MB. As I wrote in a thread over at openpandora:

With a Nokia tablet 128MB RAM and no swap enabled, running maemo, I at this moment run 2 browser windows, email program, rss reader, lots of home window applets (weather, clock, gtalk contacts status), duke nukem 3d, and I could easily run more browser windows, the application manager, last.fm player etc. etc.

What 256MB gives you is the ability to run memory-extensive things as e.g. gimp, as someone asked about, and load more memory-intensive (iimages and the like) web pages at the same time. With 128MB you can run 10 browser windows at the same time, even 20, as long as there are no big pictures there.

What 256MB will also give is a smoother, faster experience, because the Linux kernel will always use all otherwise free memory as extra caching of "disk" (for us, flash/SD), which improves file access speed.

And you can do more of everything, but, again, the 128MB version was never a 'single-tasking' option.

 

[kloplop321]

new PSP have 64Mo, no?

yeah, but I have a phat, so I am using what I know best.

It seems to me that people are badly underestimating what you could already do with 128MB RAM.

Someone mentioned that it will [with 256MB] be viable to run KDE. Well, it was _already_ viable. 3.5 runs very well on the Nokia internet tablets (128MB), and 4.0 runs fine too - the problem there is the quality of kde4 itself, not RAM.

Someone said:
> Most of the original planning for the Pandora was based on 128MB memory. So, there was little to no multi application capability.

That is simply completely wrong. Multi application capability is already great with 128MB. As I wrote in a thread over at openpandora:

With a Nokia tablet 128MB RAM and no swap enabled, running maemo, I at this moment run 2 browser windows, email program, rss reader, lots of home window applets (weather, clock, gtalk contacts status), duke nukem 3d, and I could easily run more browser windows, the application manager, last.fm player etc. etc.

What 256MB gives you is the ability to run memory-extensive things as e.g. gimp, as someone asked about, and load more memory-intensive (iimages and the like) web pages at the same time. With 128MB you can run 10 browser windows at the same time, even 20, as long as there are no big pictures there.

What 256MB will also give is a smoother, faster experience, because the Linux kernel will always use all otherwise free memory as extra caching of "disk" (for us, flash/SD), which improves file access speed.

And you can do more of everything, but, again, the 128MB version was never a 'single-tasking' option.

I think we understand your concept. It is just even more hardcore for such a device now than before B)

 

[joa]

glad to see the dev's are using irc. Much better than msn which i once read was being used to discuss the pandora.

At least with irc you have logs that can be looked at.

 

[mali]

It will bring a notebook-like feel into usage. I've always hated, that I needed to close programs to free up memory on my other gadgets, to have a little gaming session in between.
Now, it is possible to play some levels of quake and then continue with the work I did before. The other apps can stay in the background, without having to be closed
Don't underestimate the benefits of so much RAM in a system with shared memory. No need to trim down textures in heavy games like Quake3 or perhaps Doom3 one day

 

[grydholt]

256MB would allow you to run more virtual containers using something like openvz http://community.livejournal.com/openvz/24651.html. I haven't really looked into openvz, but as I understand it, it provides containers similar to the ones found on Solaris. So several OS'es can be installed and operate in parallel to each other with full isolation.

Of course we need someone to finish the ARM-port of openvz, but at least the source code is available.

 

[cbp]

How much does RAM cost? and how easy is it to upgrade if even possible?

 

[mali]

How much does RAM cost? and how easy is it to upgrade if even possible?

The RAM isn't user-upgradable because it is stacked onto the SoC.

 

[Eversmile]

How much does RAM cost? and how easy is it to upgrade if even possible?

It's actually already upgraded. For free, for us! You'll get a news email and probably a blog post soon to confirm.

Proof: http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=45019

 

[cbp]

So, if we get the 256MB upgrade, I guess that the board is a newer version.

Do we get the enhanced video codecs from TI? cause they released it, for free, for some processors.

 

[mindlord]

So, if we get the 256MB upgrade, I guess that the board is a newer version.

Do we get the enhanced video codecs from TI? cause they released it, for free, for some processors.

No changes need be made the the actual Pandora circuit board. The RAM is attached directly to the OMAP3. The very reason why we as end users can't upgrade RAM ourselves, saves the Pandora team any effort in giving us the upgrade. They are just getting a slightly different chip from TI and it fits snugly into the already developed board. Nice huh? As for the enhanced video codecs... unless the OMAP3 falls into the "some processors" category, then no.

 

[cosurgi]

It's actually already upgraded. For free, for us! You'll get a news email and probably a blog post soon to confirm.

Proof: http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=45019

Yeah it's great news that it's upgraded. But I don't see anywhere that it is for free. Anybody could elaborate on that? (I'm willing to pay BTW, the dev team really deserves a nice profit margin here IMHO, I already bought 3 * dev support).

 

[-knowledge123]

It's actually already upgraded. For free, for us! You'll get a news email and probably a blog post soon to confirm.

Proof: http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=45019

Yeah it's great news that it's upgraded. But I don't see anywhere that it is for free. Anybody could elaborate on that? (I'm willing to pay BTW, the dev team really deserves a nice profit margin here IMHO, I already bought 3 * dev support).



QUOTE
I know the exchange rates are a mess at the moment, but we will try to make it whatever you paid last time you will pay this time and any slight mismatch we hope will be made up by the fact you have 256MB + 512MB (and that's coming out of our pocket).


http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showuser=116 then 'profile options' > 'find member's posts'

a little way down

 

[mali]

It's actually already upgraded. For free, for us! You'll get a news email and probably a blog post soon to confirm.

Proof: http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=45019

Yeah it's great news that it's upgraded. But I don't see anywhere that it is for free. Anybody could elaborate on that? (I'm willing to pay BTW, the dev team really deserves a nice profit margin here IMHO, I already bought 3 * dev support).

It's kinda confusing, I don't remember where exactly the post from Craig is. But I can 100% assure you, that it is for free
This board doesn't allow to search the posts of one Member, that's really a missing feature

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showuser=116 then 'profile options' > 'find member's posts'

a little way down


Thank you very much!