ManuVlad3.0
Regular
Unshackled: PSP firmware 3.50 allows official games to hit 333MHz
- Thread starter ManuVlad3.0
- Start date
crazygambit
Regular
About time I'd say. I wonder what the hell took them so long. Is there a new battery coming out by any chance?
Perhaps an upcoming remodelled PSP with 65nm. You'd want devs targetting 333MHz now to run on that machine when it appears. Current PSP's will suffer shorter battery life, but the future models will cope okay.
Incidentally, on the matter of battery life I'm disappointed Methanol fuel cells haven't appeared. Prior to PSP's release there were some great strides being made, but negligable commercial products have appeared.
I'm sorry but this news item smells ... I'm fairly certain that devs have always been able to set the PSP anywhere from 1 to 366, and the only thing stopping them has been the Sony dev guidelines / certification process. They simply weren't allowed to.
My point being, that FW 3.50 doesn't contain anything that allows devs to suddenly start using a clock setting of up to 333, as it only takes a directive from Sony in the form of "You are now allowed to set the clock of the CPU up to 333".
My point being, that FW 3.50 doesn't contain anything that allows devs to suddenly start using a clock setting of up to 333, as it only takes a directive from Sony in the form of "You are now allowed to set the clock of the CPU up to 333".
Yeah, that may be the case. But I still find it weird that the battery life of the current base of the 20+ millions of PSPs suddenly is not as important as before.
Maybe they will offer new better batteries as accessories as well?
Another theory would be that they will offer more downloadable games that will not use the disk drive and thereby save the battery.
I actually think the frequency bump is a mean used by Sony to control the visual progress of the games on the platform. I predict the frequency of the RSX on the PS3 will see a similar change sometime in the future, maybe 2-3 years from now.
We're kind of at the point where lots of rechargable batteries would be giving up the ghost anyway (or at least losing charge to the point of real inconvenience), so they could catch people wanting to upgrade anyway. There are already higher-capacity batteries out there (I picked up a 2200mAh, instead of the launch/more-common 1800), and will be more to follow, so I don't think it will have nearly the impact that lower-times-at-launch would have had.
crazygambit
Regular
No, Ratchet and Clank runs at 266Mhz.
Maybe it'll allow setting 333Mhz in the XMB thus allowing the official overclocking of previous games to 333Mhz like has been done with custom firmwares for a while.
In all the news items I've read so far it's announced not to work with previous games.
That said, it does seem to be official of some sort, so I guess maybe there was a limitation built in for UMD based games to not be able to set it higher than 222. Then again, if R&C runs at 266, that's already above usual spec anyway.
I'm still thinking the 3.5 SDK update or whatever way that works comes with the official go ahead to clock the system up to 333.
Gradthrawn
Veteran
Supposedly R&C got some kind of waiver to do 266, and is the only example of a >222 PSP game to date.
Gradthrawn
Veteran
I was wondering that myself, thanks for the clarification. Though I'm not sure why anyone would claim the original shots were doctored. There's already some pretty darn good looking PSP games out there, excellent graphics shouldn't come as a surprise anymore (especially for a 1st party property).
Can we just define it as dreamcast level and be happy?
I question how much of a boost the extra 50% clock speed will truly allow though. It's not a generational improvement, so I wonder if the difference will even be noticeable. It's like the difference between the xbox and the cube in raw performance, but minus features, the xbox port of the game never really looked much better. And a geforce ddr to a geforce 2 wasn't a life changing experience either. To me, +50% clock speed means a slightly better framerate as the only noticeable visual change.
I wish it was Dreamcast level, but it becomes obvious when you see games like PowerStone on the PSP that the latter it is far behind the Dreamcast version. Textures are a HUGE problem on PSP. Having a dedicated GPU designed by an experienced company certainly pays off.
That is precisely Sony's handheld weakest point, but apparently they've learned the lesson and started working with nVIDIA for their next handheld console. Personally, I find the lack of AA quite disturbing, especially given the relatively low resolution of the LCD screen. In some games that's ok, but more often than not, it's a jaggy fest...
The 50% clock speed carries to CPU, GPU, Media Engine and all busses. To my knowledge, the RAM is the only thing that doesn't get a boost, but i don't think that matters alot for games, see PCs and the influence of main memory on FPS. 50% is definitely noticable.
Why do you insist on a one dimensional order of hardware? No single number defines a whole system - if it were otherwise, we'd call that number 3DMarks and dedicate our life to raise and praise it.
Why do you insist on a one dimensional order of hardware? No single number defines a whole system - if it were otherwise, we'd call that number 3DMarks and dedicate our life to raise and praise it.
There are plenty of psp games that superior looking then that game, PowerStone was obviously a shitty port
i agree with you on the AA part though and i'm no AA whore
