We have just received word that the long-awaited Pandora open source handheld UMPC/console has started shipping to the lucky users who pre-ordered one of the initial batch of 4,000. Excited owners have started to jump on the GP32X forums with unboxing photos and first impressions.
In development for what seems like an eternity but with recent signs of finally reaching the finish line, today marks a momentous occasion for the OpenPandora community and their achievement in completing the device. The unique ARM Cortex A8-powered unit is described as a full-featured pocket computer and games console by its developers. With a 4.3-inch WVGA resistive touch screen, the Pandora runs a full Linux desktop, browses the internet using Firefox, acts as a PMP, and of course is capable of playing a variety of games including those for Dreamcast, PlayStation, and Super NES emulators. I believe there are a few readers who have ordered the Pandora and been patiently waiting. We would love to hear whether you have also received your units and your first impressions.
[Engadget]
OMG! this is what UMPC’s would look like in the 90′s
Or a gaming/MID device.
I have to say that only some Hardcore-Developers got their Pandora ’cause they worked already hard for that device.
Real customers (like me) will get their Pandora in some weeks. Once the plastic factory in china pumps out the eagerly awaited plasticcases, the fun will begin (finally)
So Ur fun will finally start coz Pandora can act like a Desktop, Surf the web, Act as a PMP and run Emulators? I’ve been doing those for years W/O pandora.LOL
The emulator part can’t be done on any UMPC adequately especially PSX, N64, Dreamcast and even Nintendo DS emulation. The gaming aspect of this device coupled with with strong developer interest is the main selling point of this device.
You do not need an Emulator for a UMPC that has a Windows in it. All the games for all those consoles plus a better PS2/XboX have a PC CD ROM version.
Now You ask, “How can I play a CD ROM on a UMPC?It does not have an Optical drive?”
ALl You have to do is make an Image copy(iso)of the ROM. Then there are a lot of freeware out there that can give you a virual optical drive. All you have to do is mount the iso then game on!
@jethro_static
You are correct in saying that any umpc with the right apps can emulate games. But find me a umpc (not a netbook) with a sub 5 inch display that costs $330 and has 10 hrs + battery life and can emulate N64 very smoothly. Also find me one with dual analog sticks and a design specifically made for gaming. Good luck….you certainly will need it.
In fact find me any brand sub 5 inch screen umpc for $330 which has the cpu or gpu power of this. Again…good luck.
Personally I am fully in support of the pandora team and what they have done with this device. It’s great to see independent communities coming together and making what looks to be a very versatile portable gaming/internet and media device at a very nice price point. Fair enough the styling could be a little more up to date but it is a great achievement none the less.
Oh my…. what a comment.
Let me explain.
I DON’T own: Smartphone, DS, PSP, Musicplayer, PMP, Netbook..
So, Pandora will save me a lot of money AND space in my pockets.
Which device(s) do you use for all that stuff??
And NO: Gaming and emulating on Iphone/Smartphone doesn’t count (lack of buttons).
If your really into games, PSP will murder pandora’s gaming capabilities any day.
You can buy any kind of game controller(even wireless) and hook it up on 1 of the USB port.
I do not need to find a device less than $330 because I already have a UMPC and do not need to spend another $330 for it.
BTW, iPhone/iPod touch can emulate n64 very smooth either with thousands of other games too. It also has Arm A8.
Here’s the video card specs on GMA 950 which Samsung Q1 has. Definitely can handle PS1 Nes64 games with ease.
http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/gma950/index.htm
Whatchu say?
I’m happy for you. You can save monew with Pandora. But if we are talking about a game changer, Pandora is far from it.
1st, Companies spend a lot of time and money researching on how to make a device as easy to operate as posible(User friendly)That is why iPhone is for everybody.
On a linux box, If you wanna install a driver, You have to know about commands. Sudo, fdisk -x -v repair permissions etc etc. Nobody wants to deal with that and not everyone is familiar with that.
Pandora is a good device don’t get me wrong. But there is nothing new IMO.
Check this out. Can browse the web, Act like a desktop, Can emulater older consoles, have analog buttons, Can be a PMP and have a GPS and Most of all, It’s made in china. LOL.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhgSCAGmlkM
Well you’re wrong about PC versions for all those games. A lot of PSX, N64, Dreamcast, Nintendo DS, etc. games have never been released as a PC version. I have a PSP and I can play PSP, Gameboy, NES, SNES and Genesis games but I can’t play games from consoles mentioned earlier.
Excuse me?All games from older consoles was re-released as classic games. different volumes.
If there is a game that is not released in CD ROM however,Those ROM can be emulated under windows as well.
What is the cons of an emulator? There will never be a new game for it. It’s done. Over.
PSP on the otherhand releases a new game almost weekly. All the older games fall to classics games too. Different volumes.
All ROMs, All consoles, mean All of them(PS2/Xbox and older). Every games from PS2/XboX down can be emulated on a PC. Everything!
http://rom-gods.net/
How to use an emulator:
http://www.wikihow.com/Use-an-Emulator-and-Roms
All games? I don’t think so. You’re right in not being interested in this thing since mostly hardcore gamers and/or Linux users are the ones buying it so far. It’s not for you.
As was earlier said a lot of games were never re-released for the PC and all current UMPCs (Intel Atom based) do not have enough processing power to emulate them (ie. PSOne, N64, Dreamcast, etc).
PSX emulator for PSP
http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/05/playstation-games-for-psp-now-available-for-download/
PSP emulator for everything else
http://pspslimhacks.com/psp-emulators/
Hardcore gamers? Why would a hardcore gamer buy this while there will never have a new game for it? It will emulate the old game consoles. The obsolete game consoles. Maybe hardcore linux fan.
DOOM 3 on intel atom. See the related videos for other graphically intensed games on atom. A little tweak, It will destroy any emulator game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfPdx49uSf4
As was said earlier the Windows emulators will not run properly or at all on any UMPC with the Intel Atom and GMA 500 or GMA 950. The emulators were not written with slow PCs in mind. The developers for Pandora are working to make their emulators work properly on it.
That is not a PSX emulator. Sony just released ported PSX games for the PSP which needs to be bought through the PS3. Just looks like you’re Googling these things don’t really understand them.
Just give up. You’re embarrassing yourself. You don’t even understand what you’re linking to.
What are you talking about? The article is Dec. 2006.
I Mod PSP’s myself. So I exactly know what i’m talking about.
If PSone games are available with no emulator, Why do you need an emulator?
So running Doom 3, Quake,Half life on Atom with GMA 950/945 is not good enough?
PSX emulator for Atom Again. Yeah, I will search the 4 corners of the internet. Because it can be done and We are already doing it.
Final Fantasy 9:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbhTNvf0eqk
HAHAHA. The problem is, I cornered every it cant be done questions. And I on the other hand never got cornered.
And As for you, In order to look like they have a point, You ask me to give it up? LOL.You wish.
Yes, the big company pump millions into a device to make it as closed as possible so its tricky to crack it. See how Apple regularly takes down apps they don’t like? How Sony stripped down the PSP to a Download-only-device (PSPgo)? Also, Iphones (and similar Gadets) are for simple minds, its ok, just use it and youre fine.
Who said, that you have to install drivers on Pandora? (Most) drivers are already magically available in the linux-kernel. If you want to have many possibilities with a device, the device itself may be more complicated by nature. I dont like it when people say: “Look Iphone is easy and user friendly, Apple did it right!” – my opinion to this is: Touchscreen only and everything proprietary, so there aren’t many possibilities to fuck that up. Iphone is easy cause it has not many capabilities. You don’t need drivers because there are no ways to connect a printer to that Iphone. See what I mean?
The Devs put up a very nice system for installing applications on Pandora similar to those app-shops. Games and programs will be just one datafile. Save it on an SD-card and run, thats it.
Pandora will be really easy to handle but it will also be open for devs that WANT to hack around.
Don’t forget, there are already millions of (desktop)applications to use: Varios office-suites, media players (vlc ftw), linuxgames (some of them are quite good), browsers. The Pandora-community is coding and porting like hell so we have many games from launch. Commercial games will follow ’cause Pandora is a very good market, not as overflooded like the Appleshop and not restricted to developer licenses (Sony, Nintendo). Code your own game and sell it for Pandora – make good money, no stones in the way.
Referring to your china-UMPC you postet further down: Yeah, sluggish, slow, and WinCE, NO analog-buttons. Really not suited for gaming. IMHO not suited for everything else.
Dont get me wrong, many people like you tried to find similar gadgets to Pandora. All of them failed, their proposed devices have at least one big disadvantage: lack of gamingbuttons, too slow, too expensive, too big, closed as hell, shitty display resolution and so on. You have to admit, that Pandora is just the right combination of hardware for mobile gaming and computing without compromises.
To your very first post: “…looks like from the 90s…”: Yes, maybe you are right. But most people forget that a design with shininess, color, expensive brushed metal cases, blinky things, fancy Slide-Displays and silver clicky-Buttons often render gadgets down to uselessness.
E.g. I like the rubberkeyboard of Pandora, they are responsive and silent, not “clickety clickety Smartiephonie oops broken after long text input”.
sorry for long post, had to say all that.
The way you said things about pandora is that it is ready to take on the world. Look at the whole internet. Nobody cares about it. Sure linux fans and devs are on it. But that is as far as it gets. I will go out and ask 100 people if they know pandora. Prolly not a single 1 of them knows about it. It is not an indication of something that will be the “one”
Good thing about it is that drivers are magically available. But not only drivers you have to deal with. Everything deals with Command lines. Even OSX which is GUI operated still relies on terminals on a lot of things. Even iPhones needs command lines to be rooted.
A lot of people are enthusiastic about Pandora. Sure, it’s open source. It’s freedom. Just like Android. They want to put android here and there. Most of those people does not even own an android device.
As you can see in this article, Not too many people are really excited about it. I made this article interesting. Others just join in, simply to try to prove me wrong. They don’t really care about the Pandora. Look at engadget, Not to much buzz about it. Why is that? I simply say there is nothing new to explore.
Games emulations are in almost any platform. Mobile computing is around for awhile now. Put them both together in 1 device does not make something magnificently new. The idea is awesome. But like I said, if it’s the 90′s.
We have a nice discussion here, jethro_static.
“Nobody cares about it.”
versus
“A lot of people are enthusiastic about Pandora.”
-> Maybe this scene is still too undergroundy to be widely noticed, but Engadget already had several articles about Pandora. It pops up here and there sometimes, not only on Engadget. And the newer articles receive more and more positive comments. We’ll have to wait till mayor gadgetblogs and magazines get a Unit for real hands-on articles.
Press coverage doesn’t matter at all.
Mind: Only a handfull of people made this device. They never aimed at the mass market where everyone wants to see the Pandora on (is this correct english?). If they sell 20000 Pandoras in the coming 2 Years, they would call this a huge success!
Every Startup begins small, its great that a handfull of people could actually make such a device (that easily competes with similar devices) WITHOUT a big investor, who always has own interests to make profit.
Here, the community is the investor (money from preorders..). At the end, it turned out to be the best way.
“Games emulations are in almost any platform.”
I have never seen a pocket-device that fits my needs (dont want to enumerate all advantages again). I know, psp, iphone etc. are able to emulate this and that console but actually playing is a joke. Even installing the emulator is a hassle on some devices. Remember roothacking, touching all around to find the buttons <- lol.
“Mobile computing is around for awhile now. ”
Right. But always with drawbacks in this size-class.
Throw away (even very small) netbooks, they’re still too big to carry around every day.
You mentioned Android. Yes, its “a kind of” linux but some functions/areas are closed. I remember that you have to code in a nonstandard-Java for Android. Perhaps you know what that means to the performance of apps. In this case, Google is an investor. Circle closed.
You don’t have to buy a Pandora, so one remaining for a guy who really wants one. And believe me, the queue will be looooong(cat) once Pandora finally hits eagerly waiting fingers.
I know, its difficult to see what an impact and influence this device will have. Better a Pandora than Sony+Microsoft+Apple+Nintendo taking over the world – Oops, too late, already happened.
“does not make something magnificently new”
Yes, partially correct. But until now, nobody tried to melt together the best of smartphone+console+computer+pmp AND did it right.
Ok-ness of the 90s
+
awesomeness of 2010
=
GODLIKE in a clamshell
Good points and i think it’s fair enough. The thing though is that You speak of Pandora very positive at this point. The Pandora doest have any reviews yet. We will soon see.
A lot of gadget enthusiast already owns a UMPC/Netbook/MID’s,iPhone,PSP’s etc. Some owns both console and a mobile computer.This is the reason why I see people not spending another $300+ for a device that just puts a MID and game console together.It is also not backed by a game software developer/overall support by the manufacturer(since Pandora is a homebrew). Will PSP fans ditch their PSP’s? Will netbook lovers ditch their bigger screen netbooks? WIll Mbook users ditch their smallest notebook? I don’t think so. So again, these are the drawbacks for Pandora. Would Pandora developers want Pandora to be on top? WHo doesn’t. But like You said, The world is already handled by the juggernauts in Google, MS and Apple. The Idea is awesome. But in the real world, It not gonna cut it.
I would give you an Idea why Pandora’s gaming capabilities will be murdered by PSP. First of all, Pandora is using an Arm cortex A8 which has the same GPU and CPU as an Iphone. And here are the comparisons.
PowerVR SGX 535 (iPhone 3GS): 28 M triangles/s, 400 M pixels/s
Sony PSP: 33 M triangles/s, 664 M pixels/s
There is no way Pandora can outclass a PSP that is built for gaming.
And about the Computing side of the Pandora, I don’t think it will beat the processing power of an X86 CPU.
I understand your points.
“It is also not backed by a game software developer/overall support by the manufacturer(since Pandora is a homebrew).”
Games, smallest problem. Many games for Iphone are easy to port to Pandora (similar hardware) and exactly that is going to happen. Many devs from the Iphone-Scene have this intention. And the homebrewers from the PSP-Scene are somewhat pissed because of Sony and Firmware-crap, you know that.
Sure, I never may see Kratos fighting against gods on Pandora, but look into the Independend-Scene, there are very brilliant games that were not available on PSP. I am through with commercial consoles and games. Too many years, too much money spent and too few good and new ideas seen. At the end, its not the graphics, its the GAME that counts. Homebrewers and Independed Studios are brilliant in focusing on gameplay.
Support of Manufacturer? Pandora owners will have the best support they have ever had. The “Manufacturer” (bunch of enthusiasts) give all the help they can on the forums. Its a very personal athmosphere there. You can actually talk to the people that build the device. I am sure they have NDA-contracts with some Gamestudios but they can’t talk about that right now because of that.
You compared performance of PSP and Iphone(Pandora Hardware). These numbers are just numbers. On Iphone, the performance is useless (lack of buttons for gaming) and the PSP is clearly slower than that. Numbers are not everything: PowerVR is capable of crunching complex shader effects (small examples: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnr4HCIoFlk ). You can’t compare them just by numbers.
What about PSPs 8MB ram against 256MB ram (Pandora)? Also I don’t say Pandora is as fast as PS3 only because they have the same amount of ram.
Its a bit pointless to compare those numbers. A main processor is also nessesary for good performance. In a real game, the max triangles per second mean nothing.
Go to pandoraforum and say: “PSP is faster than Pandora!” – you will be instantly murdered (not literally
) by devs that know why this isn’t true.
Pandora cannot be faster than a PSP. Bcoz PSP’s OS directly communicate with the hardware. The OS is Embedded. Unlike Pandora, ANd Emulation, It has to pass thru a lot of files from the OS first before reaching the hardware. Which is why a 2000 dollar gaming PC is just as fast or not even with a PS3, Which is only 250 bucks.
PSP’s has 2 CPUs clocked at 333Mhz, one is the main CPU, the other is the media engine for assisting the main CPU with other tasks, such as video decoding and stuffs. The fact it’s a parallel design means there is a lot more power available, and the main CPU also has an FPU and Vector unit increasing its raw performance even more. All the hardware in the PSP is there for one main reason, to play games. There are less compromises needed to run a more complicated OS like the iPhone’s or Linux and a variety of applications. PSP is a pure gaming machine. Sure the Pandora prolly has a lot more RAM than the PSP, but a lot of that RAM is needed for the OS and running apps… so when you think about how much RAM is actually available for the game developers it would be a lot less than 256MB. On the PSP, most of the RAM is for the games, there is very little overhead for the OS and interface.
I am glad t hear about the Forum bocz I myslf is a member of various forums. I prolly entered each forum for a device. LOL. PSP,UMPC’s,MID’s,Iphone’s, WM, Hackintosh, Overclocking, PC modding etc etc.
Now that you explain a lot about the Pandora, I would like ti see it in action. It won’t be long I’m sure. Nice talking to you. Until the next topic.
You said it well. It’s designed for a niche market, and I believe they been sold out of the 3to4000 pre-orders for a whole year. It’s clear there is a market for the pandora, I wish it great success looking forward to Vectrex Emulator, Dos box for Dos games, and running old computers like my Tandy 1000hx those were the days if you had anything like this then you understand pandora and what it can be to you.
And lets not forget that pandora is small very pocketable.
I cannot resist to give comment another time.
You are confused about emulation and native games.
Sure, for emulation, you need way more processing power than the emulated system itself because the emulator has to translate every instruction to the host-system and has to map adress spaces and such. Also, an emulator on PSP does that.
Second, the OS is not in the way on both systems (psp and pandora). That means you can directly communicate with the processor, gpu, dsp-signal processor, say programming native games for Pandora. There is no significant overhead from the OS when running games.
On the Iphone for example, you HAVE to use OS-routines to do stuff – no direct access to hardware. This indirection slows down.
Btw: OS on Pandora takes not much ram, perhaps 70mb or less (just a guess). The OS is mostly just needed to comfortly start software, similar to PSP.
Talking about RAM. Think of how many textures, sound and game you can store in 32MB+4mb+2mb(psp) vs. 180MB. Good graphics need many textures. On limited ram, you have to repeat them, scale them down or just use less textures.
You talk about processor speeds but you don’t have a clue what those numbers actually mean.
Pandora: 600mhz cpu, 430mhz programmable dsp, NEON instruction set (for floating points) and 110mhz graphics core. How powerful this is? Depends on the developer how he uses all that stuff. Its really not bad, almost comparable to the first Xbox, but in a pocket.
I really encourage you to ask in the forum: http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?/forum/61-pandora/
They can explain that stuff better than me.
PS3 equals 2000$-PC? My PC is way under 1000$ and I can play GTAIV at very good graphic settings. Why that? Consoles may be optimal for games, but they aren’t the number crunching beasts anymore. Sure, still cheaper than PC but lacking software other than games.
Want to see in action?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsclXxxjxVg
Quake 3 running very fluid, no overclocking needed, IMHO the first device on which you can really play shooters thanks to good controls.
http://www.kultpower.de/pandoravideos/
bunch of other stuff, many emulator videos.
Maybe we’ll see Dreamcast emulation on Pandora (there are videos of that). Maybe.
I think that was my last post here.
I cannot believe what You are saying. For example, Your PC can play quake 3. But you did not mention frame rates and frame drops etc etc. Plus how long before you run out of system resources?
Don’t you know that a PS3′s Processor can power a super computer?
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/PS3-Roadrunner-supercomputer,5688.html
You may have been trying to play games on UMPCs but you have been doing so with terrible controls and big compromises. A keyboard is a horrible gaming “controller” for emulators. If you go and try to connect external controllers you have an unwieldy mess. Try putting all of that crap in your pocket. Good luck.
Does your UMPC have a d-pad? No? How about dual analog controls? No again? How about 4 game specific fire/action buttons? Shoulder buttons? Emu’s tailored specifically for the screen resolution? 10 hours of battery life? No, no, no, and no?
You “arguement” is poor.
If I’m not mistaken, the version of the Samsung Q1 that has the GMA 950 is the one with the A110 processor.
The A110 has a TDP of 3W.
The 945gm chipset takes another 7W alone.
Just for those two components, you’re running 10W. That’s not including the memory or any of the other peripherals that aren’t strictly a part of the chipset/CPU.
If you’re talking about the Pentium M version, that one runs the 915GMS chipset. I think it’s been discontinued anyways.
On the Pandora, you’re looking at the OMAP3530. To get an idea of power consumption, the chipset is similar to say a Beagleboard, which pulls about 2W. Except that includes everything else on the board, like the memory and the HDMI output, etc.
The result should be pretty obvious. The Q1′s about twice as expensive, more than twice as heavy, and more than twice the volumetric size (not including that game controller you’re happily lugging around along with your Q1).
I’m pretty sure you don’t want me to explain the limitations of the iPhone/iPod Touch, so we’ll just pretend you didn’t try to make such a silly comparison.
Like I said, I use a USB wireless controller. Any shape, any size, whatever is comportable to you. BTW, it’s the “real”game controller. If I am going out and wants to play games, I carry my PSP. Your attempt to prove me wrong is so poor.
kiddos, Pandora is not for the average user to buy, it is focused for tech savvy people usually in their mid 20′s who are nostalgic about old games, and wish to relive those memories.
The classic 12 year old gamer (like almost all the kids posting here) would be happier with a PSP, because they don’t know shit, and they are easily impressed by a 3d animation.
If I buy pandora I can be as cool as you?LMAO!
Oh shit. I typed a very long answer but closed the tab. NARF
So in short:
You have not read the article you posted from tomshardware.
That supercomputer uses 12,960 cell-cpu’s, but a newer version than the one of the ps3. Each one of them is roughly 7 times as fast as the cell in ps3. No argument here. PS3 is no supercomputer – that is a fact. And again: Nowadays, a ps3 is slower than a typical gamer PC. Every game-magazine says: This and that game looks and runs better on PC-Version.
An advice: Read and understand what you post. Just reading the headline does not count.
I have a strong feeling that you just act like a fanboy. Fanboys read something but they do not understand it. And fanboys are unwilling to accept facts and are unwilling to inform themself before stating something.
One last thing: Go and take out an UMPC on a train journey, also take out a wireless controller. Then balance the UMPC on your knees and play emulators after 5 minutes of configuring the controller. Do that, but you have been warned: That looks VERY strange to others and is uncomfortable.
PSP is getting old, Sony is slowly dropping support. Are there any NEW games out for PSP? The PSPgo is a clear fail. If Sony follows this download-only approach, they will have hard times with a potential PSP2.
And Nintendo? The DS is a toy for kids. Some games are good but that thing is not meant for serious gaming, just some casual thingies.
Go and throw your money to the big players, let yourself be punished if you brick a gadget you want to crack, pay hard dollars for copy protection, live with drawbacks you have because the big big manufacturer only pays attention to details that make a device brightly twinkling in the store but is shitty after buying. Ask yourself: Do you really want a device from Sony when they (for example) strip out features afterwards (firmware “updates”) to inhibit cracking?
You are no customer anymore nowadays. YOU ARE A SLAVE TO BIG COMMERCIAL COMPANIES – unless you break out and enjoy thingies like gp2x, Wiz, Pandora. Even the PSP fanboys crack and install homebrew like hell, why didn’t they buy an OPEN device? Yes, because PSP is cool and all that… just lol.
What to buy if you want to play and do computing stuff on the go (to sum up the whole discussion):
PSP-> cheap but old, shitty display
DS-> err, not really..
Smartphone-> no controls (touchscreen doesnt count)
UMPC-> 3 hours, battery drained, slow, shitty controls
Netbook-> Put that in your pocket, it will rip your pants
There is clearly no (commercial) alternative to Pandora on the market, at least for the next 2 years with a big IF. IF Sony or Nintendo do everything right with their next devices. I don’t think the leave their “Customer-is-slave!”-path.
Sure, many good games exist for PSP. I think: There are millions of nice older games (PS1, N64, etc.) that have good graphics and that I never played, so i will have enough fun with my Pandora, even if no big publisher jumps on board. Sony (and all the others) just want you to believe, that you have to buy all those NEW games to enjoy a PSP, and for shure: Sony disallows everything else.
Just for the record: Look at the Wiz or Dingoo. Neat thingies they are. Small, relatively cheap. Perfect for casual gaming and emulating on the go.
Not only do you clearly have a sub-high-school level understanding of computer science, you don’t even read specifications properly.
The Pandora will be faster than the PSP, hardware wise. Assuming clock-for-clock efficiency, the PSP has two 333mhz CPU’s (asymmetric) vs. a single 600mhz CPU in the Pandora. If you’ve got serial code (and I suspect a lot of emulator code is serial), the 600mhz CPU is going to win. It’s called Amdahl’s Law. Oh, and by the way, the default clock for the CPU’s in a PSP is 222mhz.
Even if you consider the “main CPU” comparison a wash, you sort of forgot about extra 430MHz TI DSP that rides along with the OMAP3530.
If you were really trying to make a comparison, it would read like this:
PSP Main CPU: 222MHz R4000
Pandora Main CPU: 600MHz Cortex-A8
PSP Coprocessor: 222MHz R4000
Pandora Coprocessor: 430MHz TMS320C64x
And it’s clear you know even less about operating systems than you do about just reading plain English specifications. Just because you label something “Embedded” doesn’t make it faster or more efficient. There is such a thing called “Embedded Linux”, so even if someone were to listen to your logical fallacy, it would cancel itself out anyways.
Comparing the cost of a gaming PC against a PS3 is even more gibberish because gaming PC’s don’t cost $2000 nowadays, and Sony LOSES money when it sells a PS3. Why in the world would you choose to use the price of the console as some sort of benchmark when you know full well that the price is basically subsidized?
How much more wrong could all of your reasoning possibly be?
At this point the Pandora is no portable gaming device for kids, its a mini Linux Laptop with gaming controls for Geeks who want to play retro games.
But it has the potential for more if software developers start programming new games for it which make use of the technical features of the Hardware.
Emulators for old consoles can only emulate old stuff thats not up to date and emulated games are not optimized for this Hardware at all.
…
Still waiting for the Pandora, but now the last parts are in production and its only a few weeks away
I’m really sorry for you jethro. I feel pity for you.
You don’t understand nothing. Absolutly nothing.
Why play old games in a device with the right buttons?
Why!!! Why we don’t use an IPhone?? Why???!!!
You simply don’t understand that…
You don’t know the joy of playing nba live 99 or mario kart 64 in a little screen for hours. That’s me and much more people being happy.
You can’t understand that. You’ll never do it.
Please, stop writting non sense stuff.
Thanks.
what a ridiculous dude …
stop being ridiculous.
again, stop being ridiculous.
Yup, jethro is not able to understad NICHE.
he owns his PeeeCeee and iphonEEE and that’s all.
Dead wrong. You compare the cpu speed then you determine who’s faster? Tell me the gigaflops, fpu’s and bus speed.
A 3.2 ghz 533mhz FSB P4 will be destroyed by a 2.4Ghz running at 2000mhz FSB.
Ok, Maybe the gaming roigs of today is a little faster than a PS3. But that is not a fair comparison. CPU’s and GPU’s are upgraded every month. Find me a Rig that exist when PS3 came out. Then compare.
Nice try. But no dice for you.
7 times faster than what they use on the super computer. OK, How much faster than ur desktop CPU?
PSP is years old. But still Iphones and the Pandora’s are just catching up.
I’m sorry, But only a few thousand of you will buy the Pandora, After a year, You will realize you just wasted $330 for it.
I am really sorry for you coz what you said has nothing to do with Pandora,PSP, UMPC, or anything about the topic. Ur the real nonsense and waste of space here.
You don’t even care about Pandora. You just post coz Ur pissed to see a smarter guy than you. Well, You will see a lot of smarter people than you I’m sure. LOL
LOL, You What do you have? a flip phone and a P3 desktop that your grandma gave you? Ouch!
Sorry to bring the bad news, Pandora is not going anywhere. It needs the jethro_static approval first.
go and wank with your atom.
What do you think “assuming clock for clock efficiency” means?
It seems that’s it’s OK for you to compare CPU clock speeds, but when anyone else makes the same comparisons you make, they’re invalidated. You’re the one who brought up CPU clocks, and suddenly you don’t want to talk about CPU clocks anymore? You were the one who brought them up; I was just taking your bad logic to it’s final conclusion.
Let’s stick with Pandora and PSP; you’re not ready for the bigger systems yet.
Since you seem interested in FLOPS and FPU’s, I did a little digging around, trying to find some floating point comparisons.
I took the NeonTest function from here, which has the results in the page if you look carefully:
http://wiki.davincidsp.com/index.php/Cortex_A8
Roughly, time to do 1,000,000 float multiplies:
Cortex-A8@600MHz: 7.36s (IEEE 754 Compliant)
Cortex-A8@600MHz: 0.94s (non-IEEE 754 Compliant; good enough for multimedia)
So I took that code, compiled and ran it on my PSP. The PSP homebrew tools are quite easy to use.
PSP@222MHz: 6.83s
I thought that was surprisingly abysmal given the hardware specs, so I inspected the generated output. It looked like gcc didn’t pipeline/try to use the VFPU. Fat lot of good your a VFPU is going to do if your tools can’t actually make use of it.
So I went into the function and hand coded the assembly to use vmul.q and lv.q in chunks of 16 registers to cut down on the overhead and speed things up. I wound up getting this:
PSP@222MHz: 1.31s (using VFPU)
So that’s a pretty good speedup with the VFPU.
If all you’re doing is simple floating point crunching, Pandora seems like a fairly good match against the PSP. Of course, this is neglecting the DSP…
This is a crappy benchmark, but a good lesson. You’re a smart guy, so you probably already know all this, right? I’m sure they probably covered this in your PSP Modding class.
With the ARM tools, you can get speedups by just playing with compiler switches. You can take off-the-shelf code and and get pretty decent performance right out of the box. That’s why so much software already runs pretty well on the Pandora without much tweaking. Once the hand optimization begins, things will be even faster.
With the PSP, you’ve got two options. You can go through someone else’s library to make use of the VFPU (in your baby-talk gibberish, you called it “pass thru a lot of files from the OS first before reaching the hardware”), or you get to start hand coding assembly yourself. This explains why it took so long for certain software to run well, that is, make good use of the hardware, on the PSP. It took a long time for this stuff to happen in the PSP scene.
You really think you know anything about computer architecture because all you do is run other people’s scripts?
Go grab a benchmark and compile it for your PSP, and when we all get our Pandoras, we can compare the results. Should be simple enough for a smart guy like you, right?
Correction (wouldn’t want to be inaccurate, would I?): that was actually 100,000,000 float multiplies. Rest of the data remains the same.
I understand there are people who just don’t need a handheld console like this, because they are happy with their atom subnotebook or their psp. But Pandora offers in just one single space a couple of possibilities that can’t be found in another machine. Just take a look:
- Full OS that can run virtually any type of software (open office, firefox, gimp, media players), easily upgradable and open source.
- A lot of emulators that can run thousands of games! yes, may be they are old games, but they are very funny as they were when released.
- Full keyboard to take benefit of any kind of software: surf internet, mail typing, play games which require keyboard and, obviously, use console commands in linux.
- Proper control system in order to play games. I think this is really important, because allows to play games in a really little space.
- Touch screen who allows to use proper applications, surf the web easily and play games who need a mouse or similar.
- A really active community of users that have been over this project and will give a lot of life to this console, because it offers a new kind of entertainment. The console itself is like a toy! you can play with it
In fact, only Pandora offers all these capabilities in one gadget. No other hanheld (psp, nintendo ds) or atom notebook offers anything similar. There is alwais missing something: Keyboard, controls, touch screen, OS, screen resolution…
I think there will be a lot of people interested in Pandora, and this will be proved as long as new orders will be available and the community grows.
i’m a very hardcore gamer.
and i’m getting one.
and it’s because it’s 100x better than the stupid old psp.
oh, and i can PROGRAM for it.
good luck doing that with the psp
i congratulate you at being so capable at maintaining a flame war going on for so long. i just came across these comments and was so surprised everyone kept trying to convince you. LMAO – why do people on the internet care what others think?
you’re obviously a moron. you know what they say. don’t argue with an idiot because he/she will drag you down to their level and win from years of experience (at being an idiot – that’s you in case you still don’t get the quote)
i have a pandora and you don’t – you must be so annoyed you’re gaming collection is made obsolete by this cheap little device. HAHAHA reading how much time you wasted – and really everyone bothered to keep arguing with you?
don’t worry i won’t check back – just telling how it is and then going fishing.
peace out.
Gegen euch ist Krieg ne Fete!!!