Design possibilities for the next GBA
- Thread starter PC-Engine
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Panajev2001a
Veteran
Josiah, it is an SoC indeed 
Vince
A 4 inch wide screen, high capacity battery, 2.5 inch UDM disc drive, wireless LAN ect.. that sounds like a recipe for a very big handheld to me. But you never know, maybe they'll suprise me.
Are there any pics of PSP yet? I just looked for some but couldn't find any.
Phil
The difference is little when you consider what you were comparing it too. You were comparing the difference between 64MB/700MB and 512MB/1.8gb. They are not really comparable. If you even come close to filling a 700MB CD then its not going to be possible to port that game to a 64MB cart. It would barely be possible to port a half full 700MB CD onto a 64MB cart. But if you fill a 1.8gb disk then you could put out a very comparable port on a 512MB cart, it would take a bit of effort, but not too much.
Give me some evidence that it is...
Not that I even said it wasn't significantly more expensive in the first place. What I am saying is that 512MB carts vs 1.8gb discs would not put Nintendo in the same boat as they were with N64's 64MB carts vs PSX's 700MB CD's.
A 4 inch wide screen, high capacity battery, 2.5 inch UDM disc drive, wireless LAN ect.. that sounds like a recipe for a very big handheld to me. But you never know, maybe they'll suprise me.
Are there any pics of PSP yet? I just looked for some but couldn't find any.
Phil
The difference is little when you consider what you were comparing it too. You were comparing the difference between 64MB/700MB and 512MB/1.8gb. They are not really comparable. If you even come close to filling a 700MB CD then its not going to be possible to port that game to a 64MB cart. It would barely be possible to port a half full 700MB CD onto a 64MB cart. But if you fill a 1.8gb disk then you could put out a very comparable port on a 512MB cart, it would take a bit of effort, but not too much.
Give me some evidence that it is...
Not that I even said it wasn't significantly more expensive in the first place. What I am saying is that 512MB carts vs 1.8gb discs would not put Nintendo in the same boat as they were with N64's 64MB carts vs PSX's 700MB CD's.
Teasy:
That only holds true though if the price of a 512MB matrix ROM is reasonable. And even then, the point is still a valid one that the UMD is more flexible, yet cheaper for developers. I sure know which one I'd choose. Perhaps not the 'same boat' - but a similar one, and not a good one at that, again.
My evidence is based upon logic and history. Unless you want to point out when mass manufactured discs were more expensive the cartridges in history. If there's anything to prove, then it's how expensive those 512MB cartidges are - if you can't, then the above argument just doesn't hold any ground what so ever.
Teasy said:
That only holds true though if the price of a 512MB matrix ROM is reasonable. And even then, the point is still a valid one that the UMD is more flexible, yet cheaper for developers. I sure know which one I'd choose. Perhaps not the 'same boat' - but a similar one, and not a good one at that, again.
Teasy said:
My evidence is based upon logic and history. Unless you want to point out when mass manufactured discs were more expensive the cartridges in history.
If there's anything to prove, then it's how expensive those 512MB cartidges are - if you can't, then the above argument just doesn't hold any ground what so ever.You are right . Did not see taht slide . Which makes me think that this is going to be a bee to make . Getting all those cores to run at diffrent speeds on the chip and keep it cool .
But i still stand by nintendo being able to shrink the cube. (although i've been informed of even better tech for them to use.)
But i still stand by nintendo being able to shrink the cube. (although i've been informed of even better tech for them to use.)
Panajev2001a
Veteran
Normally, in gaming situation, when full power is needed all the chips are basically running at multiply of the "base clock" ( 166 MHz ), but I do realize that all the main chips have variable clock-rate ( power saving feature ) and I do not think that they all need to still be in the same relationship as the specs specify for maximum performance operation...
Unless they want to deal with asynnchronous communication between cores in the die, they can yes vary the clock-speed, but doing in such a way that 166 MHz is divisible by the clock-speed of the core that gets "clocked-down" ( that is the result of the division is an integer number... for lowered dow clock speeds that were still higer than 166 MHz then we would worry about the clock speed divided by 166 MHz ).
The busses are all clocked at 166 MHz, main PSP bus, VRAM bus... so it would not be too difficult to throttle down opportunely.
Multiple clocks on the same chip has been done before...
Phil
256mb ones are as cheap as basic GBA carts now.. and we're talking 2 years into the future. So yes the prices will be reasonable.
Its vaguely similar, but it won't have anywhere near the same effect as carts vs CD's did on N64 and PSX.
Neither of us actually has any real evidence either way though, which was my point. Not to mention the fact that I never even said the carts wouldn't be more expensive.
Vince
No of course not, we all know thier going to use thier magical Sony pixy dust to keep any of these components from adding any weight, size or power consumption to the PSP
256mb ones are as cheap as basic GBA carts now.. and we're talking 2 years into the future. So yes the prices will be reasonable.
Its vaguely similar, but it won't have anywhere near the same effect as carts vs CD's did on N64 and PSX.
Neither of us actually has any real evidence either way though, which was my point. Not to mention the fact that I never even said the carts wouldn't be more expensive.
Vince
No of course not, we all know thier going to use thier magical Sony pixy dust to keep any of these components from adding any weight, size or power consumption to the PSP
Which game was that?, Resident Evil?
Yeah I know its technically possible to port a game from a 700MB CD to 64mb cart, even two 700MB CD's. But to do it with both of them really being comparable is a different thing altogether, which is what I meant. The massive majority of devs won't A: spend large resources trying desperately to compress 700MB of data onto a 64MB cart or B: cut out loads of data, effectively changing there game, to fit it into a 64MB cart. Which is why there are only very rare examples of devs doing either of those things.
I'd really have to see that to believe it (not to believe you, but to believe that it was really all there and looked ok ect). Did they use some special 128mb cart or something?..even then it seems impossible. Unless the N64 versions FMV looked like total crap or the PSX versions FMV used barely any compression at all or something? Either way it was obviously too much work for the massive majority of devs since the examples of this are so rare.
Resident Evil 2 isn't quite the best example. All the backgrounds were redid specifically so they could fit into some special compression format(it wasn't just a simple conversion), fmv was heavily compressed and letterboxed, and the original game could have fit on one cd. The two cds combined only added up to about the size of one cd, and there was a lot of repeat data on both, I think it was only 2 cd just for the wow factor of being a 2 cd game.(I think the pc version was only a 1 cd game..and the pc version only takes up like 120 MB without video, and probably another 200 MBs for the video, so it was more like a half cd game) However, I do think all the backgrounds had their res doubled when they redid them, but this isn't quite 1.2 gig being put onto a n64 cart.
