Dell Axim X50v with Intel2700G

If only the bleeping thing weren't $500.

 

Got a friend at work picking one very very soon.

 

I find it strange that Dell don't make any mention of the 3D capabilities of the chip in their advertising. Obviously, 3D might not be the main reason that anyone buys this type of PDA but it's always a good advertising buzzword. Almost seems as though they are underselling the product. :?

 

There's a review of the Dell Axim x50v here:

http://www.pdabuyersguide.com/Dell_Axim_X50v.htm

2D performance lags behind the HP VGA model (with its ATI Imageon chip) Doesnt mention how the 3D performance compares although it says 3D games played well.

Anyone got any 3D benchmark comparisons?

Cheers,

 

and another new 3D game for the 2700G http://www.pvrgenerations.co.uk/*

*sorry, thought i'd pimp our site instead of the actual source as no-one visits us anymore

 

does any one know why the 2D acceleration is so bad ? and can it be rectified? many people seem to be saying it because of some GAPI driver thing. So can it be rectified easily like with a patch or something?

I was looking forword to buying this pda, but if it performs so bad in graphics , i will not buy it.

 

Here's another review:

http://www.aximsite.com/articles/link.php?id=200

An excerpt from this review:

 

sounds like the same old story - the original Axim used an 'xscale' video chip that supported all sorts of lush blitting, there were white papers and demos but nothing was ever supported by the OS so what was the point ....

 

This sort of thing seems to happen a lot and really suprises me, kind of like ATI with its fbuffer, lots of talk and the hardware is there but no software support to acutally be able to use it. :?

So now theres at least a few PDAs with 3D support, does anyone know if there are any cellphones with built in 3D chips yet? Now that would be neat.

 

[quote="GoragothSo now theres at least a few PDAs with 3D support, does anyone know if there are any cellphones with built in 3D chips yet? Now that would be neat. [/quote]

They're coming 8)

 

Sounds like the application may not be making use of all the HW (i.e. not using the right API?) <shrug>. I believe all the needed 2D support is in HW in the graphics chip.

 

Summary:

We have now this new and better PDAs with VGA, but only new applications that are write for the new APIs would run perfect.

If we use an old application we must expect that it will be slower on the new faster device as on the most old one?
There is no way to change this? Kristof?

 

One of the problems with DFB's is that they don't mix well with hw acceleration. As soon as you have direct framebuffer access on a system with hw acceleration you start having to synchronize operations. I.e. you have to wait for any outstanding hw accell operations to complete before allowing access to the surface, and vice versa.

The 2d benchmarks are probably going to go the same way as the PC market did, at first they were the big thing for marketing, and then eventually they realised that after a certain point it makes no difference to the user experience. What will make more of a user experience difference will be the playability of the games, and video performance.

Not sure about the various players mentioned in the reviews, but windows media player should be using some acceleration for mpeg2 and mpeg4.

CC

 

Looks like the battery life is even worse then HPs 600mhz model (though not by much). At this pace PPCs will be catching up with laptop battery life soon -_-

 

@Kristof and Caption Chickenpants

Ok I understand. So we must life with this and hope there will be soon newer software versions without this problems.

Even this old benchmarks not so importent for me, if I can work with 2D all is ok why I need a benchmark in this field , where are your real benchmarks for the MBX or is there not a demo or so for MBX to show how a application will run with and without hardware support?

 

I just wonder if there is some sort of 3D driver control panel that enables the user to select things like texture filtering options, anti-aliasing levels, etc., ala desktop/laptop pc. I'm new to pocket pcs, so I'm not sure if this sort of configuration is done within a 3D application, in some sort of driver control panel, or anywhere at all. Could somebody clarify?

It would stink to have all these abilities like "free" FSAA available (w/MBX), when they can't be activated on command.