GBA vs. MXP-X
- Thread starter nonamer
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The MCPX has two or three DSPs, depending on whether you consider one the fixed-function DSPs a DSP or not.
More importantly, the MCPX has a power supply connected to the wall, while the GBA has to run off of batteries. This means that the MCPX can switch far more transistors per second than the GBA can, simply because the GBA needs to conserve battery power.
The MCPX is clearly more powerful, but as the other posters have said, the two devices don't do the same job, so it doesn't really matter.
More importantly, the MCPX has a power supply connected to the wall, while the GBA has to run off of batteries. This means that the MCPX can switch far more transistors per second than the GBA can, simply because the GBA needs to conserve battery power.
The MCPX is clearly more powerful, but as the other posters have said, the two devices don't do the same job, so it doesn't really matter.
Mr. Angry Pants
Newcomer
MCPX is the sound chip for the Xbox--not the CPU.
Mr. Angry Pants said:
Woop! My mistake; when he said '32-bit processor' I thought he was referring to XCPU...
In that case, yeah, the MCPX is hands down more powerful than GBA's sound processor... GBA handles a maximum of two channels, MCPX does DD5.1... is there really some sort of performance question here?
Tagrineth said:In that case, yeah, the MCPX is hands down more powerful than GBA's sound processor... GBA handles a maximum of two channels, MCPX does DD5.1... is there really some sort of performance question here?
He isn't comparing the MCPX to the GBA sound processor, he's comparing it to the GBA main CPU.
Thowllly said:Tagrineth said:In that case, yeah, the MCPX is hands down more powerful than GBA's sound processor... GBA handles a maximum of two channels, MCPX does DD5.1... is there really some sort of performance question here?
He isn't comparing the MCPX to the GBA sound processor, he's comparing it to the GBA main CPU.
OK, I'm leaving this thread now...(Since this thread won't die until someone takes a guess...)
The GBA has an ARM 7 running at 16.7 MHz. I don't know much about the ARM 7 instruction set, but let's give it the benefit of the doubt and say it can do one MAD instruction every cycle - for around 33 MIPS.
The Xbox MCPX has two general purpose DSP cores running at 200 MHz, so it probably can do at least 400 MIPS.
400 > 33, so the Xbox MCPX is probably much more powerful at number crunching.
(Hmm, except that the ARM probably has a 32-bit CPU, while the DSPs are pretty much 16-bit CPUs.)
The GBA has an ARM 7 running at 16.7 MHz. I don't know much about the ARM 7 instruction set, but let's give it the benefit of the doubt and say it can do one MAD instruction every cycle - for around 33 MIPS.
The Xbox MCPX has two general purpose DSP cores running at 200 MHz, so it probably can do at least 400 MIPS.
400 > 33, so the Xbox MCPX is probably much more powerful at number crunching.
(Hmm, except that the ARM probably has a 32-bit CPU, while the DSPs are pretty much 16-bit CPUs.)
