I'm mostly against Android not because of playback issues (as I've said, I've never played anything on my MK803 other than emulators) but I want to have as much control as possible. Slackware, naturally, is my OS of choice. What I intend to do, I only partially finished with my RPi: Boot into a custom SDL app that launches emulators and functions like a game collection manager. Of course there's XBMC, but there's a difference between enjoying a good DIY project and NIH syndrome.
NaturalViolence Wrote:Rough IPC estimates relative to pentium 4 northwood:
Bonnell (atom cpus): 1.3x
Bobcat (AMD E, C, and Z series APUs): 1.65x
Allendale 1M/Penryn : 1.9x
Your E2200/T3400 is around 80% faster than an atom D525.
Hey, thanks for that
I think I can use a program called cpufreq to essentially throttle my laptop to 1GHz or something like that, about a 53% drop in performance. Not quite 80% but it'll give me a something I can see and mess around with. I'll just have to imagine that remaining 27% decrease.
NaturalViolence Wrote:Intels IGP drivers are terrible. I highly recommend you avoid any atom based systems unless they have an nvidia gpu in them (atom cpu + AMD gpu systems don't exist).
Actually, the GPU is far from a concern for me. My laptop has a fairly crappy GMA X3100, and it handles N64 and PSX games just fine, which is the maximum that I'm interested in currently. Anything higher than that will have to wait (and I prefer Dolphin, Desmume, et al on my desktop atm, especially with my new 1080p monitor). The Intel drivers provided by Mesa have done what they needed to do so far, though for Dolphin you can clearly see how inferior they are. My E2200 computer has a G33/G31 Express Chipset, which from what I gather is weaker than the GMA X3100. Yet even when both were using OpenGL, the G33/G31 performed nearly twice as fast (the desktop runs Windows XP btw). I tested this way back when I first came to the forums, and that was with r75XX. Now neither can really run the latest Dolphin revisions.
Don't forget, what I need OpenGL for mostly essentially boils down to having an emulator copy the emulated system's framebuffer (which is calculated by the CPU) to an OpenGL texture for blitting. It's just a textured quad really; the driver would have to be nearly non-existent not to fufill that. Consequently, this doesn't require a great deal from the GPU, and even the lowest common denominator from today's IGPs snort at that kind of task. That covers Mednafen, SNES9x, FCUEX, and just about everything up until 3D PSX games and N64 games. That requires more from OpenGL (and thus the drivers) but I've been playing those games for quite a while on my laptop without issue. The IGP is pretty weak though, and some N64 games in 720p or greater seemed to push it too far. As long as the drivers for whatever device I buy are at least up to par with the GMA X3100 drivers (circa 2008 too, I have not updated them) that's fine with me.
NaturalViolence Wrote:Yeah the last time I checked Mupen was in pretty bad shape compared to pj64.
I dunno where people get the image that Mupen64Plus (which is different from Mupen64) has poor emulation, even in comparison to PJ64 (Squall propaganda maybe). Every game isn't perfect, but then that's the case with PJ64 as well. It can't seriously be considered hit or miss, not in my experience, as I've played a number of games fully with only minor issues. Name some games (you know, make it all of the games) you want to play and I'll tell you what the status is, then you can decide for yourself if it's worth the trouble.
NaturalViolence Wrote:Also fuck CLI. I don't know why so many linux applications only come in CLI versions. It's extremely annoying.
For the same reason why Dolphin doesn't support Wiimotes in netplay: no one on the project is interested in working on it. There are several projects aimed at being the Mupen64Plus GUI because of this. It's not a Linux-only problem (case in point, the Windows and OS X versions past 1.5 are CLI only as well), that's just OSS development. The devs have no obligation to work on a GUI, and with the community filling in the gap anyway, they spend their time working on what they want to.
NaturalViolence Wrote:And let's not forget all of the image quality enhancements that aren't possible on mupen like SSAA for example.
Nope. As long as your drivers can force those enhancements for OpenGL, you can add all the IQ enhancements you like. I dunno about AMD, but Nvidia's Linux drivers can force anisotropic filtering, various levels of MSAA and FXAA. You can't do SSAA specifically, though, not to my knowledge.
NaturalViolence Wrote:Also what about running PJ64 through WINE? Have you tried that?
Eventually I will. But it's on a long to-do list of gaming/emulation relating things.
NaturalViolence Wrote:Same as above. And for these two reasons windows is still the kind of OS as far as emulation goes. It's quite sad because I grew up mainly in this era so I would most likely spend the most time playing games from this era.
Two reasons? One being the CLI for Mednafen and two being... ? I didn't quite catch the second one. At any rate, PCSXR and Mednafen run the same code on Windows as they do on Linux, and you've got to be kidding if you think ePSXe doesn't have issues, even on Windows.
NaturalViolence Wrote:I remember the linux emulation situation basically being "everything works well except N64/PS1 emulation which is way behind windows". Which according to your list is basically still true.
No, with Mednafen, PSX emulation is just about complete for 2D games, and PCSXR covers 3D games. N64 emulation isn't perfect (and it probably won't be for a long time, Windows or Linux), but it's far from being a horrible, buggy experience. I'm not saying this for self-reassurance or validation; I'm saying this because I have literally been emulating games for hundreds of hours on Linux for these systems. Name me some games and I'll tell you how they fare. If you want, I'll even throw up a few YouTube videos.
NaturalViolence Wrote:These two sentences directly contradict each other.
Please read for context. I'm telling you to pimp it out because I think "[f]or you ... I imagine you'd rather have a dent in your wallet over having performance less than desired and still having to dent your wallet to later fix it." For me, I "go in very conservatively at first, then get it right the next time if I'm not satisfied." I don't think you're the type of person who likes to get less performance than they want on a project like this, so I advised you to get the faster processor. I'm already on the 3rd iteration of my emu-console (RPi -> MK803 -> ????); I'm okay with my results, but I'm obviously not wholly satisfied, so I'm trying to get it right the next time. My impression of you is that you'd rather avoid multiple trial and errors to get what you want straightaway. I'm actually pretty loaded in terms of expendable cash for luxury items, so I guess I can flirt with failure :p