Why So Little Interest In The Wiz?

[Deed]

QUOTE

I can quite see why it may be delayed until Feb, as there's still a lot to do on the firmware/interface/apps. Saying that, it's still a lot of fun in its present state

So its really delayed until February ?

According to Play Asia yes

But I will ask GPH directly later on.

This would be really bad news

 

[Alex.]

I think it's fairly good news actually, it means that GPH are straightening out any hardware faults and ensuring that we'll get a quality firmware. The Wiz really is a whole class above the GP2X in terms of build quality, so it would be a shame if the base software wasn't up to par, or if it suffered from any silly problems that could have been spotted with a bit of extra testing.

 

[techFreak]

Yes. It's officially delayed. It must be.

 

[fishybawb]

That's a shame, but I guess it means I have more time to work on my Wiz-aimed lol stuff. Might even all be done for when people first get their devices now! Well, a couple of days after, I don't have a dev unit.

 

[nostromo]

Yes. It's officially delayed. It must be.

I am really disappointed :unsure:

 

[Mr 2X]

And instead if they've only closed the preorder for the first batch...?
Then maybe will February be the 2nd batch ?

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

I think it's fairly good news actually, it means that GPH are straightening out any hardware faults and ensuring that we'll get a quality firmware. The Wiz really is a whole class above the GP2X in terms of build quality, so it would be a shame if the base software wasn't up to par, or if it suffered from any silly problems that could have been spotted with a bit of extra testing.

You echo my sentiments exactly, I'm glad they are taking their time and listening to our feedback. I am certainly letting them know anything I find, and to be honest there's not a huge amount wrong. It feels to me like when I am developing an application or game and 99% of it is complete, it's just the little extras and polish left.

One thing I discovered today that I hadn't tested since the kernel update last week (And I remember Craigix asking about this) is that the screen brightness control in the settings menu now works and wow, full brightness is really nice It has 4 brightness levels and the lowest is quite dark, perfect for playing games in the dark. One thing I noticed is all the colours and contrast remains true no matter what the brightness level.

 

[geise69]

That's very nice to hear. Thank you so much for all the info you have given us...haha and GPH. You guys really are making this little machine better. If it is delayed it's still going to be a bummer, but it is for the better. Good not to rush things.

 

[Alex.]

Hey cool, looks like there's been a firmware update just 2 days ago! Did you have a chance to test it Fluffy, does it fix the occasional hangups?

By the way, do you think you could tell me for what phone model the charger you use is?

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

Hey cool, looks like there's been a firmware update just 2 days ago! Did you have a chance to test it Fluffy, does it fix the occasional hangups?

By the way, do you think you could tell me for what phone model the charger you use is?

So far I haven't had any hangups since the last Kernel update, so thumbs up there

The charger I use is for a Samsung E810 mobile phone, it's quite generic and the model of the charger is ST-099A9, but no idea what the make of the actual charger is. One thing I had to do was to slice away the little keying nodules on the charger plug with a modeling knife as it didn't fit 100%, but now it fits perfectly and the charger only cost £10

 

[christo930]

You can have whatever preferences you want, but saying that a DS, PSP, or Pandora aren't portables is taking things a little too far.

It only being however much better than a 290MHz GP2X isn't that worrying since most GP2X's can't reach 290MHz. And we don't know what the typical overclock for Wiz will be (I've heard something like 650MHz from someone, which is comparable to the standard 240MHz people get out of GP2X - that'll probably scale everything as it did on GP2X).

2x as powerful as a 290MHz GP2X is a fantasy, of course.

But not as big a one as the 3D being more powerful than PSP's. That is, unless it's much different than what is in MMSP2+.

It's almost twice the clockspeed AND has a 3d accelerator. Many dev's have stated that a full speed or near full speed psx emulator should be possible. Looking at the state of psx emulation on the gp2x, I'd have to say that full speed emulation of a psx would be at least twice as powerful. Clock speed isn't the only measure of the gaming power of a console. Furthermore, if you are going to compare an heavily overclocked unit to a official clocked unit, that's not very fair. If your going to use the absolute highest overclocking people have heard of, then assume the same percentage to the Wiz. And assuming the cpu in the Wiz is as powerful, clock for clock, then pure cpu power is nearly twice as powerful. Granted, that's probably a big assumption, but overall the system is more than twice as powerful as the gp2x. I wouldn't call it fantasy at all. One other thought, I don't know what percentage of gp2x's can hit 290 and be stable there, but I haven't heard of any until this thread.

Chris

 

[BaDToaD]

The Wiz is a nice looking little unit but it's what the GP2X should have been. I can remember us asking for something like this when the GP32 was still the king. The Pandora on the other hand is what we asked for this time around and just keeps getting better.

I will buy a Wiz if I have some spare cash lying around but I have already pre-ordered a Pandora.

I do like the idea of an OLED screen though

 

[christo930]

Oh crap, not again!

I agree that the Wiz is buried in the GP2X subforum (I blame GPH for calling it the "GP2X Wiz").

Frankly for the Pandora there is a ton of info from the dev team coming in (Craigix/ED/MWeston), even PCB pictures and video of actual pre-release units running software.

If GPH would let us in on the process and listen to the community the same would happen (If in fact there is a Wiz blog with PCB pictures and shots of a dev boards running demos Why the HELL haven't they been posted??).

So there is my $0.02

I agree that Wiz needs its own forum. (and believe it or not I am looking at the Wiz in a new light, I might actually use it more than the Pandora, as much as I want the Pand.)

Somebody on here has said that they know what chips are onboard the Wiz (buried in the "D-Pad to buttons" thread), so if we get those you can go to MagicEyes web-site and check out all the REAL specs to your hearts content.

I thought it was the Pollux chip? Here is the Archive.org backup of Jan 09 2008 (Google and Firefox won't let me on mesdigital.com because of malware) http://web.archive.org/web/20080109223358/...duct_pollux.asp

Feel free to correct me if I am wrong. Also USB and TV-Out are apparently there, although the TV doesn't really work yet, if we (the community) fix it then it should work.



To be fair, you have to remember the difference between Gamepark Holdings and The Pandora's company. One is designed by a community and while commercial, is still not a stringent as a Company like Gamepark who are looking to compete commercially with commercial software. In any event, I think they are living in fantasy world about competing commercially. I think they would be very successful if they can repeat the success of the gp2x and maybe even beat it a little. But they don't have to sell millions of units to be successful and turn a profit. I wish both success and I think the market will be big enough to support both units. I do think the Pandora is suffering from the kitchen sink syndrome, but wish it well nevertheless. I know that at $330, it's too expensive for me at the moment.

Chris

 

[nostromo]

Now that the WIZ is delayed, I was getting interested in the Pandora, but its not available anyway.... To be completely hones, pandora is a bit too big for what I want, and to be honest, with that keyboard, it looks more like a mini PC if anything.... might as well get an EEE PC.

So, I'm sticking to Wiz.

 

[CronoTriggerfan]

I'm kinda disappointed that I won't instantly have a new gadget to be slave to until February, but if GPH manages to make solid improvements then it's all good.

 

[Game_over]

Maybe we can get them to include wifi!!!!

err...maybe not.

But seriously, I can't help but to wonder which makes it out first, outside of what is projected. It would be nice to play around with one of the dev units so I can experiment with making optimized assets for it. It productive delays are always good if they constantly keeps us updated on what they are doing. Just keep in mind you can't keep the carrot at the end of the pole too long, the rabbit will eventually find some cabbage laying on the ground.

 

[Adventus]

QUOTE
And assuming the cpu in the Wiz is as powerful, clock for clock, then pure cpu power is nearly twice as powerful. Granted, that's probably a big assumption, but overall the system is more than twice as powerful as the gp2x. I wouldn't call it fantasy at all. One other thought, I don't know what percentage of gp2x's can hit 290 and be stable there, but I haven't heard of any until this thread.
The problem with your assumption is that many programs will probably be bandwidth limited. Even some GP2X programs are bandwidth limited at 250mhz. The Wiz has roughly the same memory bandwidth as the GP2X (DDR but half the bitrate) and it hasn't changed anything to conteract this factor (ie bigger caches). Unless the GPU has onboard memory (which i doubt) or a very efficent TBR approach it will probably be significantly limited by bandwidth aswell.

You also seem to be forgetting that the GP2X has dual 200mhz CPUs.

PS: My f200 is stable at 280mhz. Some of them are stable at ~300mhz. They probably average ~250mhz.

 

[Iorgy77]

I was actually planning to get a wiz to tide me over until the pandora arrived. But it looks like they will both be arriving around the same time so there is no point. If people port killer apps to the wiz then I may consider it after all. I don't mind the screen size at all. As long as the resolution is the same as the gp2x it will be fine. The gizmondo had the same res as the gp2x on a smaller screen and it never bothered me at all. I have good eyesight, a little too good in fact that the blurry mess of a psp screen gives me a headache.

 

[Exophase]

It's almost twice the clockspeed AND has a 3d accelerator. Many dev's have stated that a full speed or near full speed psx emulator should be possible. Looking at the state of psx emulation on the gp2x, I'd have to say that full speed emulation of a psx would be at least twice as powerful. Clock speed isn't the only measure of the gaming power of a console. Furthermore, if you are going to compare an heavily overclocked unit to a official clocked unit, that's not very fair. If your going to use the absolute highest overclocking people have heard of, then assume the same percentage to the Wiz. And assuming the cpu in the Wiz is as powerful, clock for clock, then pure cpu power is nearly twice as powerful. Granted, that's probably a big assumption, but overall the system is more than twice as powerful as the gp2x. I wouldn't call it fantasy at all. One other thought, I don't know what percentage of gp2x's can hit 290 and be stable there, but I haven't heard of any until this thread.

Chris

I'm not the one who compared the 290MHz GP2X to the Wiz, you were the one who made the claim that it'd be over 2x as powerful. So far there haven't been any benchmarks that have come up to show that it is even anywhere near 2x as powerful as a 200MHz GP2X. Still, it's not fair to assume the Wiz can overclock as high as the highest GP2X - we've seen GP2X's that can do that, we haven't seen or heard of a Wiz that can. ARM9 is an old CPU with a smaller pipeline than newer designs and Wiz is scaling it much higher than GP2X did. That is bound to give it less overall headroom, even on a smaller process.

Yes, clock speed isn't the only measure, so why does it seem that that is what you were using as criteria? Sure it has 3D acceleration, and that'll help offload for a few emulators, but that does require that people do actually take advantage of it. So we'll have to see a PS1 emulator written for OpenGL ES 1.1 in mind. Also bear in mind that as of now there are no drivers for said hardware anyway. And we don't know how fast the acceleration is, we just have an idea of its featureset.

But it isn't more than twice as powerful just because you say so. When it comes to programs that largely can't take advantage of the 3D hardware (like most emulators) it will never work out that way.

Conclusions with regard to PS1 emulation are not especially solid. It can probably be done better on GP2X than it is now, but expecting it to easily be perfect on Wiz is also wishful thinking. If you want a comparison, do a benchmark of psx4gp2x with a straight port of it and you'll see how it runs.

Even some GP2X programs are bandwidth limited at 250mhz.

I would go so far as to say that memory latency/bandwidth is a major limiting factor in a good deal of software on GP2X. For years desktop CPUs have had L2 (or even L3) cache to help compensate for this, but until recently handheld devices haven't, and the memory technology lags behind as well.

 

[DaveC]

So little interest?

Maybe because it won't be out until February 2009. Kind of a long way off.