PSP's CPU not 333Mhz, only 222 ....suxx

[ERP]

or suddenly people are getting 2 hours battery life.You think that wont hit the news media ?

That will be bad publicity for the games with such behaviour, not the system. You would have a point if no game existed with 2-3x better battery life - but we already have many, and more will come.

I think if this starts to happen then it is bad for PSP in general, I don't believe that your average PSP user correlates game with battery life, they are too used to thinking about device and battery life.

If it does start to happen Sony will add a TRC with battery requirements.

Besides if you want to kill the battery life, just use the UMD, it's much more effective than upclocking the processor. Try entering and exiting a game that loads from UMD repeatedly. You can get the life down to 2Hrs easilly.

 

[Fafalada]

I think if this starts to happen then it is bad for PSP in general, I don't believe that your average PSP user correlates game with battery life, they are too used to thinking about device and battery life.

When a user sees one game last 5 hours on a battery and then another 2, what else will they think? I've seen GBA debates of this fashion (though I'm not sure how much truth there was to them) regarding some games that supposedly drained power well below 10hrs expected minimum.

Besides if you want to kill the battery life, just use the UMD, it's much more effective than upclocking the processor.

It depends how you use it - UMD reading operation is not power hungry, but seeks are. You can easily stream a movie for over 4hours, so long as you're in fact streaming - rather then seeking - most of the time.

RidgeRacers power usage while browsing game-menus is roughly 15% higher on average then both in-game(which streams music from UMD) and opening FMV (which is your standard UMD streamed movie).
And that's with normal use of menus - if I got perverted and focused on a part of menu that will constantly re-seek & re-load, it would get that much worse.

 

[Lazy8s]

If enough games give the machine a low battery life, it doesn't matter that there are other games with long play times; users will logically begin to associate the problem to the system.

 

[Ty]

If enough games give the machine a low battery life, it doesn't matter that there are other games with long play times; users will logically begin to associate the problem to the system.

That's the question though. What is 'enough'? 50-50? What if none of the big name games have an issue? What if they all do?

 

[overclocked]

Is it safe to say that 50% extra raw power will NEVER be used? I find this very hard to belive and rather concerning if true, i don´t think 95% of the PSP´s owner will know this or even care but for a techfreak i think this is a very interesting thread/topic.

I sure many have heard that Intel starting 65nm in late Q3/early Q4 and
AMD probably following a quarter later if latest news holds true.
So how far behind/or before are Sony at it´s 65nm node i wonder, this is very interesting to know both because of the PSP and even more the PS3.

 

[jvd]

That's the question though. What is 'enough'? 50-50? What if none of the big name games have an issue? What if they all do?

The only thing is mabye now and for the next 2 years it may be only big games that use 333mhz . But how about when another hand held comes out , how about if the gba next or whatever happens in the next 3 years ? What if in 3 years production shifts and all new games use 333mhz .

What will happen is that the casual gamer will think the battery is going bad . okay no problem 3 years or so its bound to happen , buy a new batter. new batter gets the same lowered amount of play time .

People will then realize its the system .

 

[Panajev2001a]

Yes, the technology included in PSP is not really much more complex than the

But its not the same tech.

What is the concept of same ?

You are talking like chip design is this sort of magical mumbo-jumbo in which companies start working on a project without really know what they are going to deal with or with some urinal conversations between two executives on what they feel at the moment.

Part of the project planning is to try to accurately foresee what kind of complexity you will face, how to get to that point, if there is enough research done to justify that path rather than another, if there is something you can re-use.

Of course that process can fail, but in lots of cases it works wonders or at least minimizes the risks and the relative damages.

Of course things can go wrong even if the technology you are working with is familiar and you are planning really a moderate evolution: missing the target by 100 MHz on a CPU like PSP's CPU core seems very very odd.

You are not talking about the chips draining the battery too much: when you talk about bad yields, you talk about chips not working at that frequency (they melt or they give wrong results).

Giving the kind of technology they are working with (specs they were aiming at and technology know-how and past R&D, etc...) why should I see the PSP SoC as something mystical in which thinking SCE might have had an easier or worse time than with other kinds of designs ?

By your line of reasoning, I could not assume that going from R420 to R520 is not an easier move technically for ATI than moving soon to a full blown TBDR: it is not the SAME tech .

R520 has 50/50 chance or worse to just fail to work beyond 50 MHz: R3xx to R420 progress path should not influence my thought at all.

Your point is basically: I will play Devil's Advocate until I see myself a chip running at 333 MHz and I will not believe anything that can back-up your point unless it is a direct proof that the chips run at 333 MHz. For someone so skeptic about everything you seem to lean on "the chips must not be able to work at 333 MHz" side of the fence a bit too much .

 

[Shifty Geezer]

But how about when another hand held comes out , how about if the gba next or whatever happens in the next 3 years ? What if in 3 years production shifts and all new games use 333mhz .

Do you think people are going to replace handhelds like mobile phones - a new one every year? Seems unlikely to me. The rate of progress in technology is too fast to keep up to date with. You buy a top spec PC now, it's medium spec in 18 months. As long as it does the job you stick with it rather than spend more and more money trying to stay on top of the tech race. I would expect the same of handheld consoles. A machine comes out 3 years after another, and because of technological progress it is more powerful. But the earlier system it is competing against already has an established user base, software and infrastructure.
Just as a more powerful XB coming after PS2 didn't displace PS2, a more powerful GBA2 wouldn't necessarily mean PSP would lose out.

PSP tech provides a very competant level of performance. It'll take quite a lot to totally outclass PSP, something that few companies can manage. That is, produce the hardware and sell at a decent price. Something like the Zodiac or Gizmondo is powerful but expensive, whereas the prime competitor, Nintendo, tends to skimp out on some aspects like screen and RAM to remain profitable. I don't imagine GBA2 to totally outclass PSP, and as such PSP won't need that 50% boost.

By the time PSP is looking long in the tooth, 5 years from launch, Sony with have some Cell based system no doubt.

Regardless of PSP's specs, games look good and play good. As long as they appeal, the underlying hardware, whether it runs at 40 GHz or 1 MHz, really doesn't count for much, and as long as competitors can't present an advance of technology in the order of PS1 to PS2 I think most people will be happy with what they've got.

 

[overclocked]

Panajev2001a with your knowledge on the semiconductor of Sony could you please respond to my earlier question/question´s about how far or behind Sony is to the 65nm node. i Know you given link´s and your private assumption earlier but it would be nice with some new and fresh info and speculating from you, esp now when we have a timeframe from AMD/Intel to compare with.