Xgp Xgpmini Spec

[Anhaedra]

What I want is Quake 2/3, Unreal Tournament, Cube, Nexuiz, N64 and PSX emulators all accelerated.

Wait 3-4 years.

Why do you say that? I think the XGP can do it, if it can run Quake 3 and UT at 60fps, then it should be able to do everything else I said.

Well, it won't be able to. And how do you know that the XGP runs Q3 and UT at 60fps? Do you own a XGP, and can tell me that for a fact? No; no one does. Furthermore, Quake and UT are ports, PSX and N64 are emulators. Big difference in speed.

Like I said, wait 3-4 years, and you'll probably have a handheld that can handle PSX and N64 emulation at full speed.

No, of course I don't know for sure that it runs them at that speed, but I thought that Gamepark said that it does. Of course, they could mean at lower settings, but any 3D accelerator and FPU at all is going to greatly improve chances for playable N64 and PSX emulation. I was thinking the devs could take more of a Corn approach to N64 emulation, so that it is very fast on low end CPUs, but not very compatible. (unfortunate side effect to the way Corn is made)

 

[Captainbubby]

In your opinion, if I may ask, what does the XGP have over the GP2X?

Sorry about the late reply. One of the main reasons is OpenGL. I think the inclusion of OpenGL is a great feature, because there are several things that at this point were not able to be succesfully ported to the Gp2x due to needing OpenGL, Flash being the most prominent. The prospect of flash support is really exciting to me. (That is assuming that the XPG ends up catering to the homebrew/emu/dev community, which at first I thought they wouldn't. (The previous design and interviews related to the XGP, but it seems that Gamepark may have changed their mind.)

The lack of news from Gamepark regarding the XGP as of late has frustrated me, because I really want to know which direction they plan on taking the XGP, because If it's not going somewhere I (or the coders and devs more importantly) like, then I would like to buy a gp2x straight away.

 

[Dzz]

The lack of news from Gamepark regarding the XGP as of late has frustrated me, because I really want to know which direction they plan on taking the XGP, because If it's not going somewhere I (or the coders and devs more importantly) like, then I would like to buy a gp2x straight away.

They are going to be at E3 apparently so maybe more information will be available in the next week.

http://www.korea-e3.com/exhibitors/portable_game02.html seems to indicate that they really will be there.

I don't know if this cheesy movie is new or not:

http://www.korea-e3.com/img/movie/gamepark.mpg

 

[Vimacs]

new to me

 

[Captainbubby]

Me too! This is great stuff, thanks Dzz!

 

[awakenjsy]

A realiable source tells me( actually I am the realiable source *grins*) that after the e3 shows, gamepark will release new info. and their plans in the future( hopefully, price and launch dates). My source also mentioned that Quake III really runs on XGP.

 

[craigix]

God. That vapourware video....

I'm sure we will be the distributor and all but... oh dear.

I do hope they have more than just Quake running, it will look good and all, but they need a little more happening than just that.

 

[aapje89]

even if only runs Quake III at 60fps that would be so damn cool B)

 

[Radek]

even if only runs Quake III at 60fps that would be so damn cool B)

I think we might speculate with high degree of accuracy what 3D capabilities of XGP will have. It has 32 bits wide DDR data bus to the memory. The bandwidh should be twice as big as in GP2x (what is using SDRAM). So 800-1000MB/s.

It should (if 3D chipset is capable of it) be able to fill 40-50megapixels/s with texturing and z-buffering enabled at peak. So Q3 should run decently but I'm in a doubt that it will do it at 60fps.

 

[aapje89]

im hoping for 30+ fps, but 60 would be very cool .

little side question, is quake III the same as quake III arena?

 

[awakenjsy]

im hoping for 30+ fps, but 60 would be very cool .

little side question, is quake III the same as quake III arena?

I believe it is the same. I believe quakeIII's sub-title is quake III arena. However, the expansion sets, team arena and rocket arena are differ from each other.

 

[Vimacs]

when the use a slow tft you wouldnt notice much improvement over 20fps aynway.

 

[aapje89]

when the use a slow tft you wouldnt notice much improvement over 20fps aynway.

really? hmm thats stupid...

I bet my tft monitor isn't one of those

 

[FluffyPanda]

Most PC tft monitors are 60 hz, so over 60 fps shoudn't be noticable at all since your computer is presenting screens between refreshes.

Frankly, I'd be surprised if the tfts in the xgp/xgpmini are only 20 hz though.

 

[Talyz]

I don't think you'll notice any big difference wether it's running at 60fps or 30fps; it gets noticeable at somewhere around 20-30fps, I believe.

Correct me someone; I'm not a very active gamer any more...

 

[FluffyPanda]

For a TFT screen the refresh rate isn't really that important, though less than 30hz will probably be noticable.

With a crt the refresh is far more important as the pixels fade to black between refreshes and anything less than 70-ish hz is likely to give you a headache.

I find it kind of funny when people rave about getting 120fps in some shooter on their tft and insist that it makes a huge difference to their frag count.

 

[Talyz]

The refresh rate is important for lcd screens as well. The main reason games are best played on crts is that the refresh rate of standard lcd tft screens is too low (60-70Hz). It is not as noticeable as on crts, though...

 

[aapje89]

my tft is 75hz.

 

[FluffyPanda]

The refresh rate is important for lcd screens as well. The main reason games are best played on crts is that the refresh rate of standard lcd tft screens is too low (60-70Hz). It is not as noticeable as on crts, though...

It really doesn't matter on an lcd. The response time is far more important. A 25ms response time, for example, will often leave visible trails as the pixels are not changing colour quickly enough.

60hz is really more than enough on an lcd screen. Between refreshes the screen stays exactly the same, not fading to black like a crt. This means that you don't get a flicker like on crt and the eye can't even spot the difference between 50 and 60hz refresh without the flicker anyway. Any more than 60 is ok, but not noticably better (and therefore unimportant).

A good way to see the difference is to point a video camera at a crt. You'll not actually get a recording of the screen (unless the refreshrates of the two devices are perfectly in sync) but rather a flickery mess as the camera captures the blank bits between refreshes. Try the same with an LCD and you'll get a nice steady image. Your eye gets the same benefit.

 

[Radek]

I don't think you'll notice any big difference wether it's running at 60fps or 30fps; it gets noticeable at somewhere around 20-30fps, I believe.

Correct me someone; I'm not a very active gamer any more...

Ahh the 30fps vs 60fps debate.

It does make an difference especially that in computer games where you don't have inherit motion blur like in camera captured videos.

Then we have a frame aliasing phenomena when the frames redraw is synced to monitor refresh. If you monitor have 90Hz and game is doing 89Hz then you will get just 45Hz (it can be somewhat eased using triple buffering).

Then (again) we should clarify what we understand by "FPS"? An average value or a peak value, or minimal value as it's making big difference.

For most time benchmarks are giving you average value. It's imho misleading because even with 60fps marks you might get situations where you fps is dropping just to 10fps and in other is peaking up to 150fps (for an example).

From comfort point of view the most important is minimal fps. It's gets really bad if fps drops below 20fps especially in moments where you are in most action. Then you need fastest fps not slowest but games are usually coded in such way that will give you slowest.

For LCDs... the situation is very similiar to a CRT except theirs pixel change speed is slower. Long time ago there were CRT with very slow phospor as well so they were ghosting like a hell.

Ideally the fps should be at constant with monitor refresh and never drop below that constant.