Wiz Or Caanoo

[zRichi]

Bit torn between the two. So far

Not a fan of the LCD screen. Is the Wiz's screen a million times better?
Also apparentally the caanoo is slower than the Wiz :S

What is PSx emulation like on the Wiz? I've seached youtube but can only find vids a year old.

 

[CKeichel]

"Also apparentally the caanoo is slower than the Wiz :S "

Not true, fact is, the Ram in the Caanoo has a Cas Latency of 3, while the ram of the Wiz has a Cas Latency of 2. Both CPUs and Ram Chips clock at the same speed

Column Address Strobe (CAS) latency, or CL, is the delay time between the moment a memory controller tells the memory module to access a particular memory column on a RAM memory module, and the moment the data from given array location is available on the module's output pins. In general, the lower the CAS latency, the better.(taken from Wikipedia)

This difference is minimal and due to the fact, that the Caanoo has twice the ram of the Wiz, it is more likely, that memory hungry programs (like NeoGeo Emulators) have to access the SD-Card of the Wiz more often, which would make them slower. The Cas Latency is a performance factor, for sure, but it shouldn't be overestimated.

 

[ruffnutts]

I think the buttons on the Caanoo are nicer

 

[Jengo]

The caanoo will be able to handle more, just because of the larger ram amount.

 

[Exophase]

Not true, fact is, the Ram in the Caanoo has a Cas Latency of 3, while the ram of the Wiz has a Cas Latency of 2. Both CPUs and Ram Chips clock at the same speed

Column Address Strobe (CAS) latency, or CL, is the delay time between the moment a memory controller tells the memory module to access a particular memory column on a RAM memory module, and the moment the data from given array location is available on the module's output pins. In general, the lower the CAS latency, the better.(taken from Wikipedia)

This difference is minimal and due to the fact, that the Caanoo has twice the ram of the Wiz, it is more likely, that memory hungry programs (like NeoGeo Emulators) have to access the SD-Card of the Wiz more often, which would make them slower. The Cas Latency is a performance factor, for sure, but it shouldn't be overestimated.

You say it's not true that Caanoo is slower, but then you just say the difference is "minimal." CAS latency is a bigger deal than you think for a platform that only has 16KB/16KB L1 cache. On GPH platforms tweaking RAM timings has very often given a few percent increase, but that's not even with changing CL, which is the second most critical RAM timing parameter after bus clock speed. I have heard numbers from people testing showing that a program running in Caanoo can be over 10% slower, with all of the other clocks set the same.

Very few emulators actually need more ROM memory than Wiz could provide with 64MB, and for a lot of games (especially fighting games) the access patterns will be such that you don't get a lot of constant swapping.

 

[Hwrd]

Bit torn between the two. So far

Not a fan of the LCD screen. Is the Wiz's screen a million times better?
Also apparentally the caanoo is slower than the Wiz :S

What is PSx emulation like on the Wiz? I've seached youtube but can only find vids a year old.

I have both the WIZ and the CAANOO and am not a fan of the WIZ screen.

It seems splotchy or grainy or something...

 

[CKeichel]

Not true, fact is, the Ram in the Caanoo has a Cas Latency of 3, while the ram of the Wiz has a Cas Latency of 2. Both CPUs and Ram Chips clock at the same speed

Column Address Strobe (CAS) latency, or CL, is the delay time between the moment a memory controller tells the memory module to access a particular memory column on a RAM memory module, and the moment the data from given array location is available on the module's output pins. In general, the lower the CAS latency, the better.(taken from Wikipedia)

This difference is minimal and due to the fact, that the Caanoo has twice the ram of the Wiz, it is more likely, that memory hungry programs (like NeoGeo Emulators) have to access the SD-Card of the Wiz more often, which would make them slower. The Cas Latency is a performance factor, for sure, but it shouldn't be overestimated.

You say it's not true that Caanoo is slower, but then you just say the difference is "minimal." CAS latency is a bigger deal than you think for a platform that only has 16KB/16KB L1 cache. On GPH platforms tweaking RAM timings has very often given a few percent increase, but that's not even with changing CL, which is the second most critical RAM timing parameter after bus clock speed. I have heard numbers from people testing showing that a program running in Caanoo can be over 10% slower, with all of the other clocks set the same.

Very few emulators actually need more ROM memory than Wiz could provide with 64MB, and for a lot of games (especially fighting games) the access patterns will be such that you don't get a lot of constant swapping.

"I heard numbers" is not very exact, you should come up with a benchmark to proof your point, otherwise I would doubt the numbers, 10 percent seems much to high to me.

 

[Exophase]

I didn't hear 10% CKeichel, I heard benchmark results from which I derived 10%. I'm not disclosing who benchmarked what because I don't know if he's comfortable with me doing so, but it was for several emulators, so pretty representative of the kind of thing people will run on the platform. I don't intend to consider this as proof, those reading this post will have to decide for themselves whether they think I'm worth taking seriously or not.

Exactly why do you think 10% seems much too high?

 

[renejr902]

the caanoo lcd screen has a very little blur when fast moving compared to most lcd screen. The caanoo lcd screen is impressive. and im a fan of oled screen. advantage of wiz screen are color contrast and black and a little bit less blur when fast moving. very little difference

i prefer the d-pad over the stick, BUT STILL the screen is much bigger in the caanoo, it more fun to play. a lot more.

for me caanoo lcd vs wiz oled is a DRAW. each screen have his advantage that make it very interesting.

dont choose the handheld by the screen. the 2 screen rocks.

 

[CKeichel]

Exactly why do you think 10% seems much too high?

Because from all benchmarks I've done on various PCs, the the maximum advantage, I got from tweaking the Cas Latency was about 5% and this was only in some memory benchmarks. In real applications, the advantage was more like 2 or 3 percent.

 

[rsuryase]

Go for Wiz if you don't mind the small screen and form factor. D-pad is better than analog stick. Emulators are more mature. I have both Wiz and Caanoo. I don't like small screens and form factor.

 

[Popcorn Dave]

I'm not usually so shallow, but since the machines are so similar in terms of specs, I went for the Caanoo because it looks so much nicer. The Wiz is kind of ugly in comparison. Feels good in the hands as well, especially the XABY buttons. It's kind of frustrating waiting for emulators, but it's going faster than you might expect (really I'm just waiting for the Amiga one now, and for the GBA one to have sound of course).

 

[Thorax]

even with the emulators out no, there are more games playable than u could play through in one lifetime

 

[Exophase]

Because from all benchmarks I've done on various PCs, the the maximum advantage, I got from tweaking the Cas Latency was about 5% and this was only in some memory benchmarks. In real applications, the advantage was more like 2 or 3 percent.

I thought you might respond something like this. The PC has a ton of advantages that make CL less important:

- L2 cache, sometimes L3 cache, which decreases the reliance on external memory altogether
- Better bus architectures
- Latency hiding techniques like OoOE, prefetching, hyper-threading, etc etc
- Much better burst to latency ratio - usually on PCs you can burst at least a whole cache line, on Wiz you can only burst 32-bits, so the CL cost comes up much more regularly
- Unless you tested a decade ago your modifications were probably less substantial percentage wise as going from CL2 DDR to CL3 DDR

The fact that tweaking lower impacting memory parameters than CL (for the "fast RAM timings" settings) often does more than 2-3 percent just by itself on Wiz should be a major tipoff.

 

[blues2]

Bit torn between the two. So far

Not a fan of the LCD screen. Is the Wiz's screen a million times better?
Also apparentally the caanoo is slower than the Wiz :S

What is PSx emulation like on the Wiz? I've seached youtube but can only find vids a year old.

search psx4all on youtube if you want to see newer playstation emulator. i don't own a wiz but i have a caanoo and i'm hoping that it would do all the wiz does and more. i got a caanoo rather than a wiz because of it's larger screen, extra usb port, and less cramped buttons.

 

[CKeichel]

Because from all benchmarks I've done on various PCs, the the maximum advantage, I got from tweaking the Cas Latency was about 5% and this was only in some memory benchmarks. In real applications, the advantage was more like 2 or 3 percent.

I thought you might respond something like this. The PC has a ton of advantages that make CL less important:

- L2 cache, sometimes L3 cache, which decreases the reliance on external memory altogether
- Better bus architectures
- Latency hiding techniques like OoOE, prefetching, hyper-threading, etc etc
- Much better burst to latency ratio - usually on PCs you can burst at least a whole cache line, on Wiz you can only burst 32-bits, so the CL cost comes up much more regularly
- Unless you tested a decade ago your modifications were probably less substantial percentage wise as going from CL2 DDR to CL3 DDR

The fact that tweaking lower impacting memory parameters than CL (for the "fast RAM timings" settings) often does more than 2-3 percent just by itself on Wiz should be a major tipoff.

Your whole argumentation is based on the assumption, that the bottleneck in Wiz/Caanoo emulators is the CL, in many cases it may be the speed of the CPU and in other cases it may be the ammount of memory, e.g. not all NeoGeo games are Fighters, games like Metal Slug or Strikers Plus are constantly accessing different parts of the Rom data, I am sure, GnGeo is accessing the SD card more often with fewer Ram.

(And apart from that, I benchmarked my systems quite regulary for a decade now, I think my first PC with DDR-SDRam was around 2003, no prefetching, no L3 Cache, no hyperthreading, etc. on an Athlon 1000).

Fact remains, unless you can show benchmarks that proof such a difference in speed between Wiz and Caanoo, I doubt your numbers.

 

[Exophase]

Your whole argumentation is based on the assumption, that the bottleneck in Wiz/Caanoo emulators is the CL, in many cases it may be the speed of the CPU and in other cases it may be the ammount of memory, e.g. not all NeoGeo games are Fighters, games like Metal Slug or Strikers Plus are constantly accessing different parts of the Rom data, I am sure, GnGeo is accessing the SD card more often with fewer Ram.

(And apart from that, I benchmarked my systems quite regulary for a decade now, I think my first PC with DDR-SDRam was around 2003, no prefetching, no L3 Cache, no hyperthreading, etc. on an Athlon 1000).

Fact remains, unless you can show benchmarks that proof such a difference in speed between Wiz and Caanoo, I doubt your numbers.

No, my "whole argument" is based on someone else running benchmarks. YOUR argument is based on assumptions, one of them being that I'm making this up, I guess. Look, you can think what you want, but your Athlon 1000 has very very different memory characteristics from the ARM9 in Wiz. I listed a lot of things, but L2 cache is far more critical than L3 cache, and OoOE is more critical than prefetching. I didn't respond to you the way I did in order to justify the 10% claim I made, because for that you either think I'm lying or you don't. I responded that way because you don't even think it's possible.

It's not a correct mindset to look at this as having "bottlenecks" because for the most part, the latency portion of memory accesses and CPU instructions don't run in parallel. Of course, the proportions can be different, changing the amount that it's sensitive to, and it depends on the access patterns. I'm just saying that it was true for several emulators, I have no doubt you can make a program that doesn't care at all what the memory latency is, you can probably also make a program that runs at the same speed even if you disable L1 dcache.

You already mentioned NeoGeo not being able to load entire ROMs, I already responded to it, I'm not going to again. As far as I'm concerned these are corner cases at best. Since you're so eager to make the point maybe you should benchmark THAT for the two platforms.

And fine, since you're being so difficult about this I'll ask the person in question if I can post his results.

 

[Optimus]

Definitelly I prefer my Caanoo over my Wiz. Most of the things are such a good improvement. The bigger and nicer screen, analogue stick (I got used to it and it rocks!), volume slider, usb port, some improvements (memory, G-sensors, etc), overall design. It's a major win.

About the speed. Strange. And cool!
I tested my own released and unreleased stuff (demo effects, led blur, creep tea, 3d engine tests) compared to wiz, both at 533Mhz.
The Caanoo makes some 30% better in all of them.
E.g. try led blur, first screen with stars 100fps in Caanoo, 70fps in Wiz. It's about 30% difference all the way till the end.
Plasma was 172fps on Wiz, 250fps in Caanoo!

Then today I woke up and noticed: Plasma 220. First screen on Led blur 80. Darn! I just updated with the new 1.50 firmware. At least, it's still a bit faster than the Wiz.

I don't know, everyone says the Caanoo is slower but my tests shows an improvement even. Although it could be different with emulators, more complex code, more cache consuming stuff. I remember when I moved from GP2X to the Wiz and my tests were 2x-3x faster, but that didn't happened with the released emulators from other people. Strange.

I might release a small benchmark soon.

 

[Lordus]

Your whole argumentation is based on the assumption, that the bottleneck in Wiz/Caanoo emulators is the CL, in many cases it may be the speed of the CPU and in other cases it may be the ammount of memory, e.g. not all NeoGeo games are Fighters, games like Metal Slug or Strikers Plus are constantly accessing different parts of the Rom data, I am sure, GnGeo is accessing the SD card more often with fewer Ram.

(And apart from that, I benchmarked my systems quite regulary for a decade now, I think my first PC with DDR-SDRam was around 2003, no prefetching, no L3 Cache, no hyperthreading, etc. on an Athlon 1000).

Fact remains, unless you can show benchmarks that proof such a difference in speed between Wiz and Caanoo, I doubt your numbers.

No, my "whole argument" is based on someone else running benchmarks. YOUR argument is based on assumptions, one of them being that I'm making this up, I guess. Look, you can think what you want, but your Athlon 1000 has very very different memory characteristics from the ARM9 in Wiz. I listed a lot of things, but L2 cache is far more critical than L3 cache, and OoOE is more critical than prefetching. I didn't respond to you the way I did in order to justify the 10% claim I made, because for that you either think I'm lying or you don't. I responded that way because you don't even think it's possible.

It's not a correct mindset to look at this as having "bottlenecks" because for the most part, the latency portion of memory accesses and CPU instructions don't run in parallel. Of course, the proportions can be different, changing the amount that it's sensitive to, and it depends on the access patterns. I'm just saying that it was true for several emulators, I have no doubt you can make a program that doesn't care at all what the memory latency is, you can probably also make a program that runs at the same speed even if you disable L1 dcache.

You already mentioned NeoGeo not being able to load entire ROMs, I already responded to it, I'm not going to again. As far as I'm concerned these are corner cases at best. Since you're so eager to make the point maybe you should benchmark THAT for the two platforms.

And fine, since you're being so difficult about this I'll ask the person in question if I can post his results.

As you might be talking about me, yes i can confirm that.

I tested my own emulator, same build, pollux clock settings manually set to identical values on Caanoo and Wiz and benchmarked for top speed. The Caanoo was generally about 10% slower.
Timing was done with hardware timers in both cases.

Of course that doesn't mean that emulators or other software will generally run slower on the Caanoo, as there are a lot of factors, and the firmware settings for bus speed etc. also differ.
The fact that emulators dont need to rotate the screen on the Caanoo is a plus, for example, and will most likely make up for the slower RAM.

Just tested the newest Picodrive for fun on the latest firmwares on Wiz and Caanoo, with the exact same settings, tearing fix off, frame limiter off etc. and it also runs up to 10% faster on the Wiz.

 

[CKeichel]

As you might be talking about me, yes i can confirm that.

I tested my own emulator, same build, pollux clock settings manually set to identical values on Caanoo and Wiz and benchmarked for top speed. The Caanoo was generally about 10% slower.
Timing was done with hardware timers in both cases.

Of course that doesn't mean that emulators or other software will generally run slower on the Caanoo, as there are a lot of factors, and the firmware settings for bus speed etc. also differ.
The fact that emulators dont need to rotate the screen on the Caanoo is a plus, for example, and will most likely make up for the slower RAM.

Just tested the newest Picodrive for fun on the latest firmwares on Wiz and Caanoo, with the exact same settings, tearing fix off, frame limiter off etc. and it also runs up to 10% faster on the Wiz.

Thanks for the reply Lordus, this was, what I asked for, someone saying, I made these benchmarks and I can confirm the 10%. Interesting anyway. Just out of interest, which emulators did you test, you mention you own emulator and Picodrive, what is your emulator on the Caanoo?

I ask, because Exophase said:

I heard benchmark results from which I derived 10%. I'm not disclosing who benchmarked what because I don't know if he's comfortable with me doing so, but it was for several emulators, so pretty representative of the kind of thing people will run on the platform.

From that I got the impression somebody benched a variety of programs emulating different platforms on the Wiz and Caanoo.