Pocket HL2, Pocket Quake, pocket UT, Pocket Battlefield 1942... and wi freakin fi!!!

[OC Noob]

I think a much stronger trend, and a smarter strategy for M$, is their migration towards PDA-like smart phones. PDA sales as a percentage of the overall handheld market are basically nonexistant, and PDAs as a concept have not been as susccesful as you might think. Palm, the market leader, is basically a sinking ship that is scrambling to maintain a viable business model. This is why so many players (sony, toshiba, sharp, fujitsu, etc.) either never entered, or have recently exited, the US market for PDAs. Smart phone sales, on the other hand, are taking off like a rocket, and this is where the market is headed. 3D graphics accelerators on future smart phones is virtually guranteed.

I see little evidence that microsoft is going to position traditional PPCs with windows mobile as a platform for handheld gaming. If they want to sell a machine for gaming, it will look nothing like PPCs today, and run something very different than windows mobile. The nice new crop of high-end handhelds such as the X50V, hx4700, and Tungsten T5 are certainly not positioned towards gaming, they cost way too much. I read a while back that the crappy Zire (perhaps the Zire 21?) has sold more units than all other palms combined, ever, due to its low price point. Make no mistake, a shiny new PDA with a graphics accelerator that costs $500+ is being bought primarily by business users who care nothing about games. M$ would have to sell their hardware at a loss, something that only barely worked with the XBox, and they could easily follow the fate of Nokia and their disastrous NGage. It's a risky high-stakes business for sure!

I don't think he meant MS would sell PPCs. They are adding DX to the next OS so gaming is on their mind to some extent and they don't need to worry about losing money on hardware.

I doubt they will do much for PPC gamingconsidering they are still strugling to get Xbox/Xbox Next to where they want it, but they may dable a bit.

Easy ports might make the PPC an attractive option and considering the fact that tons of devices will be using PowerVR based 3d chips (like the 2700g) there should be no shortage of developers for PowerVR based devices. This is much bigger then PPCs.

1. Floating point is done by the 2700g not the PXA270. So you are correct but you forgot the gpu detail ;)

2. The second Media Chip is to be compared to the 2700g, not the CPU. You are refering how the CPU get's it's data, and compare it to how the so called Media Chip ( a GPU in reality ) handle's data.

3. The PSP has 2 R4000 Microporcessor's. One act's as a CPU, while the other one as a Media Chip. It doesent have 2 R4000 & 2 Graphics's accelerator's ... no no ... Compare one as a cpu, and the other one as a gpu. Same idear.

True, the PSP has 2.6 GB/sec embedded DRAM ( 2MB ). But this is where the shoe doesent fit. It still need's to get it's data from the main memory ( the 32 mb shared memory ). So, even if it's able to do 2.6GB/Sec internally, it still need's to grab data externaly. You pointed out that it's able to have 1.8GB of data on the card ... now that mean's it still need's to grab a lot of data all the time. A system is only as fast as it's slowest part.

[tsaimelv]

1. Floating point is done by the 2700g not the PXA270. So you are correct but you forgot the gpu detail

Um, no, I disagree with most of your points. Sorry :)

First of all, graphics accelerators are not instruction processors. The 2700G does not perform floating point operations in the same way that that the MIPS R4000 does with its VFPU. The 2700G can only perform relatively course-grained 2D and 3D graphics acceleration functions through API calls, it does not perform specific floating point operations like a traditional instruction processor does. Yet, the floating point operations ON THE CPU are what many games use, e.g. on PC games. In other words, even though a typical PC may contain a powerful graphics card, the floating point unit on a Pentium or Athlon is still used heavily, and the performance of some games are CPU bound. Graphics chip floating point != CPU floating point, and in many cases you cannot substitute one for the other.

2. The second Media Chip is to be compared to the 2700g, not the CPU. You are refering how the CPU get's it's data, and compare it to how the so called Media Chip ( a GPU in reality ) handle's data.

3. The PSP has 2 R4000 Microporcessor's. One act's as a CPU, while the other one as a Media Chip. It doesent have 2 R4000 & 2 Graphics's accelerator's ... no no ... Compare one as a cpu, and the other one as a gpu. Same idear.

The PSP *does* have two graphics accelerators, and they are *different* than the two R4000 processors. MIPS does not currently offer any sort of 2D or 3D graphics acceleration features as part of their instruction set (not really anyway). I know, I have written articles on embedded processor architectures and recently spoke to MIPS on their product plans.

These are the specifications of the *separate* graphics accelerators on the PSP:

PSP Graphics Core 1
3D Curved Surface + 3D Polygon
Compressed Texture
Hardware Clipping, Morphing, Bone(8)
Hardware Tessellator
Bezier, B-Spline(NURBS)
ex 4x4, 16x16, 64x64 sub-division

PSP Graphics Core 2
'Rendering Engine' + 'Surface Engine'
256bit Bus, 1-166 MHz @ 1.2V (**Changed to 512bit Bus in final version)
VRAM :2MB(eDRAM)
Bus Bandwidth :5.3GB/sec
Pixel Fill Rate :664 M pixels/sec
max 33 M polygon /sec(T&L)
24bit Full Color:RGBA

These ARE DEFINITELY NOT part of the two MIPS CPUs. Since when do CPUs have color space conversion and 512 bit memory buses =). Doesn't exist. It even includes hardware MPEG acceleration. These separate "graphics cores" are what puts the PSP ahead of the X50V's graphics. Remember, the PowerVR architecture of the 2700G is comparable to the sega dreamcast, whereas several analysts have claimed the PSP's graphics power to rival (or beat) the playstation 2. In fact, I have heard some developers say that what must be done in software on the playstation 2 can now be done in the graphics accelerators of the PSP. You don't get this kind of graphics performance from two relatively slow MIPS processors!!!

True, the PSP has 2.6 GB/sec embedded DRAM ( 2MB ). But this is where the shoe doesent fit. It still need's to get it's data from the main memory ( the 32 mb shared memory ). So, even if it's able to do 2.6GB/Sec internally, it still need's to grab data externaly. You pointed out that it's able to have 1.8GB of data on the card ... now that mean's it still need's to grab a lot of data all the time. A system is only as fast as it's slowest part.

It is simply untrue that a "system is only as fast as it's slowest part." If this were true, then a Pentium's performance would be bounded by hard drive access times, and L1 caches would be pointless. They don't put several megabytes of 2.6 GByte/sec memory in there just for the hell of it, it CAN and WILL be used! All processor-based systems must intelligently use the fastest part of its memory subsystem through prefetching. A CPU does not need all data immediately. In many cases it can be performing some work on data in its fastest memory (e.g. performing AI functions or graphics calculations in its FPU) while simultaneously prefetching the data it needs NEXT. This hides the latency of the slower second-level memories, whether it's slower DRAM or even the hard drive. But, it needs to have the data that it's currently working on in the fastest local memory possible. The PXA270 has fast local SRAM too, just far less of it (this mem is also used for LCD frame buffers in non-accelerated PDAs and phones). It's somewhat irrelevant how long it takes for the data to get into local memory. For example, a Pentium 4 can waste hundreds or thousands of cycles just waiting for cache lines to fill from external DDR SDRAM, but once its there, it flies.

Stated another way, imagine that all of the data a CPU needs to use to render the next scene (or play the next level etc.) fits into the local 2-8 megabytes of eDRAM. I bet this is the case for most games on the PSP. It can spend a comparatively long time loading this data into eDRAM, but then it has everything locally and can perform compute-intensive tasks FAR better than the PXA270 could, because the PXA270 is ALWAYS limited by its external memory access times. The PSP pays the access penalty once (or infrequently), whereas a PXA270 pays penalties continuously unless someone is really good at working around the smallish 256 kbytes of memory alongside the XScale core caches (about 64 kbytes).

About the 1.8GB UMD media that the PSP will use... The access times don't matter at all here! The PSP will be able to hold almost all the data it needs in faster local memory. It might take a while to load levels into memory, but once it's loaded it will be fine. The is no different than XBox, playstation 2, etc. with their relatively slow CDROM drives. And once again, 32 megabytes of local DRAM is plenty for most games, and the faster eDRAM is probably plenty for the most important and frequently-accessed data.

The bottom line is that there is virtually nothing that the PSP can't do better than the x50v, based on the specifications i've seen, and it's certainly the most powerful handheld 3D gaming platform that has ever been produced (correct me if I'm wrong).

Specs and data are nice to compare but from the looks of it it's currently:

X50v:


Sony PSP:


So I think it's fair to say that while the X50v games might look better (and possibly run smoother, when looking over Sony's history of 3D gaming technology on consoles [Sony's PS2]") the PSP will definitely be the better gaming machine (since that is after all it's primary function).

[Ranma13]

Really, then what do you call EA ... a small company?? They just released there first title for the x50v ( Madden 2005 ).

Atleasted get your specs right.

The PS1 has a 32-bit R3000A working at 34mhz. I added the cpu + gpu comparison vs the PSP to show the 2 differende architecture's.

And no emulator can emulate ps1 ... lol ... What do you call FPSEce then? People are running title's at full speed even with 400mhz cpu's ( and the emulator is speeding up with every release ) ...

And PS2 emulation, do a search, there is one out there, that already does it, and with lower specs.

Do not underestimate the power the 2700g hold's. There is a pdf on Intel's site, and you will be surpriced.

~Sigh~, this is the second time someone has read my post, erased some of the words from their mind and decided to make themself look like an idiot.

EA has a known history of making their games for every single platform out there, and to my knowledge, this is their FIRST FORAY into the PPC gaming market. Needless to say, this will NOT become a trend amongst other developers, merely EA testing the waters to see how many sales they can get.

I've also stated very clearly in my post that I did NOT know the true processing speed of the PS1, I was merely taking a guess. I tried to look for the info on Google but I didn't want to waste time so I just put in some value I seemed to have vaguely remembered off the top of my head.

I wrote:
"Your claim to the specs is null also, the PS1 had a 7.5 Mhz processor (I think) and a 625Mhz device can't emulate it at full speed. A PS2 runs at 200mhz but not even a top-of-the-line 3 Ghz computer can emulate it above 5 FPS."

Nowhere in my post did I deny the existence of either the PS1 or PS2 emulators available. I am well aware of the existence of FPSEce, but it does NOT run games at full speed. Even the best running games are a bit sluggish by comparison to the real console.

As for the PS2 emulator, I am well aware of that too. Did you even try it out? I can barely muster 1 FPS on the thing, which I have clearly stated in my earlier post. But of course, you left out all the words in my sentence and chose to focus on "can't emulate it" instead.

This will be my last post on the subject matter since I do not want to start a flame war, nor argue with an idiot. It's very apparent from your post that's replete with spelling errors that you are obviously not very well-educated, nor well-informed. Any further continuation of the topic by you merely proves my point.

P.S.

Their, not there, as in their company, not over there
At least, not atleasted
Titles, not title's, it's not possessive, it's plural
Surprised, not surpriced

And no, the argument that he's a foreigner and English is his second language is moot. English is my second language and I all my international friends can speak and write it way better than any local American can.

[tsaimelv]

Specs and data are nice to compare but from the looks of it it's currently:

So I think it's fair to say that while the X50v games might look better (and possibly run smoother, when looking over Sony's history of 3D gaming technology on consoles [Sony's PS2]") the PSP will definitely be the better gaming machine (since that is after all it's primary function).

Hmm well I might be the only one that thinks this, but based on those two screenshots, the PSP graphics look better to me (just a smaller screen):approve: .

[tsaimelv]

EA has a known history of making their games for every single platform out there, and to my knowledge, this is their FIRST FORAY into the PPC gaming market. Needless to say, this will NOT become a trend amongst other developers, merely EA testing the waters to see how many sales they can get.

I strongly agree with this... I can't imagine that there's any real profit potential for a company such as EA in the PPC/Palm world. There's just too few handheld units in people's hands compared to the highly lucrative handheld and console gaming platforms, and probably even fewer people willing to shell out $15-30 for games on this platform.

Another thing to consider... It would not surprise me at all if microsoft or someone else PAID electronic arts to produce this as a "starter game", giving them an incentive in case the sales are lackluster.

[tsaimelv]

It may sound strange, but it's the gps systems that have put ppc's on the map for most people. Nobody knew about ppc's, but the moment those litte ppc's started showing up for 399 - 499 euro's with gps & software, while any car gps's cost's double or more, people started to buy them around here.

I've always found it strange that there are a LOT of gps mapping programs for PPC in europe, but very few in the USA. Software companies are just starting to get the ball rolling with GPS maps and software for the USA, but it's far behind those available for europe.

On the other hand, car gps systems may cost 2-3x more, but they're far better than PPC GPS solutions. If you don't believe me, just step into a honda or BMW with an in-dash GPS, there's just no comparison in how much better they are. Bigger screens, integration with the car's controls, less distractions, entire USA map on the DVD (so no uploading of software), no cords to mess with, etc. etc. etc. That said, I'm still going to buy a bluetooth GPS receiver once my x50v arrives. :approve:

[tsaimelv]

And no, the argument that he's a foreigner and English is his second language is moot. English is my second language and I all my international friends can speak and write it way better than any local American can.

We all make mistakes =). But point taken, your written english is quite good despite it being your second language.

[MichaelX30]

PSP and Gameboy DS isn't released yet, which means there is no development, which means no emulators. Pocket PC launched without any game emulators so your claim is null.

Your claim to the specs is null also, the PS1 had a 7.5 Mhz processor (I think) and a 625Mhz device can't emulate it at full speed. A PS2 runs at 200mhz but not even a top-of-the-line 3 Ghz computer can emulate it above 5 FPS.

It's all about the developers and the quality of the software that they develop, NOT the hardware.

Major companies are NOT going to develop for something that belongs solely in the niche gaming market. Prime example, look at the GP32 and the Zodiac. Hardly any games available and none from big-name companies (the ports of Duke Nukem and Doom 2 on the Zodiac was done by a different company than Id and 3D Realms). You can expect better emulators to come out for these devices but definitely nothing from Square Enix, Capcom, Namco, etc...

The PS1 has a 33 MHz Processor, but processor speed really doesnt matter because the GBA is 16.7 MHz and I heard the X5 Advanced couldnt handle some of those games

[OC Noob]

I strongly agree with this... I can't imagine that there's any real profit potential for a company such as EA in the PPC/Palm world. There's just too few handheld units in people's hands compared to the highly lucrative handheld and console gaming platforms, and probably even fewer people willing to shell out $15-30 for games on this platform.

Another thing to consider... It would not surprise me at all if microsoft or someone else PAID electronic arts to produce this as a "starter game", giving them an incentive in case the sales are lackluster.

One thing to consider is that the PowerVR chip will be used in a host of devides and while the PPC gaming market is small the market penitration of the chip will be much greater. Its going to mean a lot of porting, but we aren't talking about 50 million dollar games (production cost I mean) so it will be easy to make a game for 10-15 different devices.

Heck, Sony developes for the PPC now and PPC gaming is very weak at this point. I can't see developers ignoring the market when its really about to take off and when so many devices will be using the PowerVR.


Once its available in $200-300 PPCs we will see a lot more people buying it for a multipurpose device with gaming in mind. Those screen shots up there are much more attractive to most gamers then NES quality games.

[Tala]

Some comments:

Yet, the floating point operations ON THE CPU are what many games use, e.g. on PC games.

The 2700g (in contrary to desktop GPUs) accepts fixed point data as input and converts them to floating point for further processing. It is mainly designed to work with a CPU without fp unit. T&L has to be done on the PXA270 though, using fixed point arithmetics (ie. WMMX).

The PXA270 has fast local SRAM too, just far less of it (this mem is also used for LCD frame buffers in non-accelerated PDAs and phones). It's somewhat irrelevant how long it takes for the data to get into local memory.

You compare apples with oranges here. The eDRAM in the PSP is exclusively used as screenbuffer, z-buffer and texture buffer. Its is very comparable to the memory exclusively used by the 2700G and not the memory the PXA270 has access to.

Stated another way, imagine that all of the data a CPU needs to use to render the next scene (or play the next level etc.) fits into the local 2-8 megabytes of eDRAM. I bet this is the case for most games on the PSP. It can spend a comparatively long time loading this data into eDRAM, but then it has everything locally and can perform compute-intensive tasks FAR better than the PXA270 could, because the PXA270 is ALWAYS limited by its external memory access times.

See above.
Now before you argue, that the eDRAM is still faster, you need to keep in mind, that the 2700G is a tile based (deferred) renderer, which is much more bandwidth efficient than traditional 3d hardware.
I also assume, that the PSP is plaqued by the same poor design choices made with the PS2. Out of the 2MB VRAM less than 1MB can be used for (uncompressed) textures, which makes constant swapping /streaming necessary. There is possibly no multi texturing support either (like PS2)
It seems to me, that similar to the PS2, the PSP is a brute force approach, where the pure numbers suggest a much better real live performance than it really has.

Still while looking at the numbers, the PSP seems to be about half as fast as the PS2 regarding fillrate and polygon throughput. The 2700G is comparable to a DC, possibly little slower.

Tala

I also assume, that the PSP is plaqued by the same poor design choices made with the PS2. Out of the 2MB VRAM less than 1MB can be used for (uncompressed) textures, which makes constant swapping /streaming necessary. There is possibly no multi texturing support either (like PS2)
It seems to me, that similar to the PS2, the PSP is a brute force approach, where the pure numbers suggest a much better real live performance than it really has.

You hit the nail on the head there. Looking at the NFSU actual gameplay footage at GameSpot you can tell the game experiences plenty of lag spikes and just doesn't seem to want to run very smoothly at all. The sad part is that the average gaming consumer will ignore this and continue to support Sony with no complaints and I fear if this continues console gaming may soon become something along the lines of "reality-quality" graphics at 1-10FPS.

[emulamer]

The 2700G is comparable to a DC, possibly little slower.

The 2700G at it's max clock, or the 2700G as it's clocked in the X50v?

[tsaimelv]

You hit the nail on the head there. Looking at the NFSU actual gameplay footage at GameSpot you can tell the game experiences plenty of lag spikes and just doesn't seem to want to run very smoothly at all.

I'm not sure I agree with this... The NFSU footage looks pretty smooth and playable to me! I do see a BIT of lag but it's hardly noticeable.