RetroAndroid or RetroPi? - General Questions and Answers

I want to get my wife an NES/SNES/Sega/N64 emulator for Christmas but I am having trouble deciding what rout to take.
I was thinking of an Android tablet (specifically the Yoga Tab 3 for its battery life). The tablet would be portable and could do other things when not playing games. But, I have other concerns about that. Will it support split screen? Will it support multiple controllers/players? If I use Chromecast to get the games to the TV, is there a lag between what happens and what we see?
My other idea was a RetroPi (based on Raspberry Pi 2) It looks good and has a great interface, but I’m not sure about the performance. Will it handle, say, Mario Kart 64 on split screen? Can it have more than 1 wireless controller (using an Xbox dongle or Bluetooth, nothing wired), is it stable? (my ODROID keeps crashing)
Which platform would give me the best performance for N64 games? The Raspberry Pi 2 (900mhz Cortex-A7 and 1 gig of RAM), or a Yoga Tab 3 (1.1ghz Qualcomm APQ8009 with 1 gig of RAM)? What should I look for when judging hardware specifications for this purpose? RAM? CPU speed? Graphics processing?
Finally, if I am looking in the wrong place, please direct me to the proper place for these questions.
Thank you,

Anyone? If I need to post this somewhere else please let me know

Related

Playstation2 for Android (samsung galaxy)

So, with the new Samsung Galaxy on its way (waiting for some carries to get a move on) there (to me) seems to be a possibility to get a PS2 emulator running quite well with the new specs.
1Ghz HummingBird "Cortex A8"
PowerVR SGX540
---{"Samsung Galaxy S’ “Hummingbird” A8 chip will be able to process around 90 million triangle per second. That is compared to the Moto DROID’s 7 mill tri/sec, the Nexus One’s 22 million tri/sec, and the iPhone 3G S’ 28 million tri/sec."}---
---{"In other words, the Samsung Galaxy S will have around 36% the video processing power of a PS3. Hopefully it doesn’t get as hot as a PS3."}---
With this in mind I would think that is it quite possible to run a PS2 emulator on the new Samsung Galaxy S. Not to mention the rumored 1.5Ghz dual core Snapdragon coming to T-mobile either this Christmas season or early next year.
One thing to remember, is that although a PC with say a 3Ghz Dual core with 4Gb ram trying to run a PS2 emulator runs like crap, the architecture of the PC processor and graphics is different form that of consoles, which is why it requires to much to get a smooth play out of it. Cell phones share a very similar structure (from my knowledge at least) to consoles. This to me says that newer android phones should be quite capable of running a PS2 emu.
If you head over to the GLBenchmark website (.com) and look up the result database you will see the Galaxy S at the top (minus a comal naz-10, whatever that is) and if you compare the Galaxy S results with the Droid, Droid X, Droid 2, Iphone 4, you will see that it just rapes each phone by a huge range. I am not sure of playstion 2 specs but I am more then sure the phone should be able to handle it!
Playstion2 specs can be found on wikipedia (will not copy and paste all that info.)
To me it seems like its highly possible, and I would love to play my racing games on the phone (Tokyo Extreme Racer Drift2, TXRD2)
Thoughts and opinions welcome, no bashing (I get this in other forums).
even a 3 Ghz i7 isn't able to emulate a ps2 @fullspeed (depending by the emulated game - sure, there are many playable games - i know that because im interested in emulation and tested many games (search youtube for "frankyfife"). there is many code to translate by the emu, to produce native code for the plattform running on. the ps2 has vector units, the emotion engine, spu and gs which need to be emulated. no way to do this an a 1 Ghz cellphone, even with similar specs or identical main cpu architecture/function.
I really hate to be a nerf herder but if a 1Ghz snapdragon droid can play playstation one games, and the galaxy s with 1Ghz hummingbird and graphics chip that is way more powerful then the droid should be able to handle it fine.
Take for example facts that lead to a hypothesis of power.
Motorola Droid: TI OMAP3430 with PowerVR SGX530 = 7-14 million(?) triangles/sec
Samsung Galaxy S: S5PC110 with PowerVR SGX540 = 90 million triangles/sec
These results are based off SOME facts with SOME uncertainties that leads to a hypothesis. If this is INDEED the case, the galaxy S is ALMOST 7 times more powerful then the droid (6.4xxxxxxxx when 90 is divided by 14). And your saying that it can't handle it without trying? I've seen youtube video's of phones playing playstation games smoothly with little jitterbugging and medium quality sound. Take into account the faster processor and cpu in the galaxy s and you use less resources to play the game, leaving more for sound processing, which in turn will make the ps1 games run perfect (theoretically) and possible ps2 if not DECENT ps2.
EDIT: Not to mention the PS3 running at 250 million triangles/sec, that makes the galaxy s like 38 some % of a ps3!
No, just no. It can't be done with cellphones as @xdaywalkerx said. I have been able to play Guilty Gear and some visual novels on PS2 emulator on my i5 @ 4.00GHz and with 4GB of DDR3 RAM. Unless you find a way to efficiently emulate all the hardware in PS2 it is impossible.
Quintasan said:
No, just no. It can't be done with cellphones as @xdaywalkerx said. I have been able to play Guilty Gear and some visual novels on PS2 emulator on my i5 @ 4.00GHz and with 4GB of DDR3 RAM. Unless you find a way to efficiently emulate all the hardware in PS2 it is impossible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
PC Processors and GPUs work completely different then consoles, that's why it takes so much power to even try to squeeze out performance. Phones have the same if not extremely similar processors and gpu's (at least how they are made and how they work).
Running a emulator on a phone is different then a PC. If the droid can run final fantasy and other games from playstation one, then what is the galaxy gonna be able to do with over 6x more graphics processing power?
keep on dreaming
Just stop, it is impossible. It doesn't matter if the architecture is similar, you're still emulating which takes way more resources than the native machine requires.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
namcost said:
PC Processors and GPUs work completely different then consoles, that's why it takes so much power to even try to squeeze out performance. Phones have the same if not extremely similar processors and gpu's (at least how they are made and how they work).
Running a emulator on a phone is different then a PC. If the droid can run final fantasy and other games from playstation one, then what is the galaxy gonna be able to do with over 6x more graphics processing power?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can't just take theoretical numbers like that and simply assume that just because the Hummingbird can crunch out (throwing a random number right here) 15 million polygons/second, it doesn't mean that it can emulate PS2 titles and crunch out 15 million polygons/second emulating a PS2 title.
As xdaywalkerx said, the Emotion Engine is much more difficult to emulate when compared to the PlayStation 1's MIPS R3051. PS2 emulation is not even well done on Windows computers; not necessarily because of the lack of CPU/GPU power, but the difficulty in emulating the titles as well.
Hell, the Droid can't even run every single PS1 title available, even when overclocked.
how about a psp emu? some psp games look and feel like ps2 games.
Maybe possible with very dumbed down graphics and super-low resolution... but then would it look like ps2? Probably not
SNES StarFox and Stunt Race FX don't run full speed on my Galaxy S.
Burnout 3? Vice City? GOW? MGS2? No chance.
But a Sega Saturn emulator...well...
I've seen the captivate run crash bandicoot 3 on psx emu @ full speed with no problems, just lack of control since its touch screen and requires quick reactions.....
It's simply not possible.
I'd say... it won't work. The processor wouldn't even run it...
The GPU would fail.
However,
A psp emulator, could potentially work.
The facts
You see, a standard PSP (not the PSP Go) is overclocked automatically to 333mhz for SOME games... This 333mhz is the maximum. Most games run at 266mhz. To Emulate something you need roughly 4 times the processing power. And for graphics, you also would need a decent GPU.
So processing wise, a PSP emulator for phones is actually very possible. The graphics could possibly be pulled off.
But this would only work on High end phones with a decent enough screensize... e.g. the streak, droid (X) to name a few.
Edit:
Did some research.
Pixel Fill Rate of the PSP's GPU is 664 Megapixels per second, on a high end phone the GPU is around 133 to 250 Megapixels per second. The PSP does 33 Million triangles a second.. Whereas, we'll get possibly 7 to 22 million triangles per second. This shows that even a emulating a PSP entirely would be impossible... However you COULD emulate it. It just never would be full speed..
So if a PSP, won't run perfectly, I'm afraid a PS2 emulator won't.
Synyster_Zeikku said:
Pixel Fill Rate of the PSP's GPU is 664 Megapixels per second, on a high end phone the GPU is around 133 to 250 Megapixels per second. The PSP does 33 Million triangles a second.. Whereas, we'll get possibly 7 to 22 million triangles per second. This shows that even a emulating a PSP entirely would be impossible... However you COULD emulate it. It just never would be full speed..
So if a PSP, won't run perfectly, I'm afraid a PS2 emulator won't.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Samsung Galaxy S is rumored to be super powerful compared to the measly droid.
It is also rumored to have 90 million triangles per second.
http://www.androidpolice.com/2010/07/03/samsung-galaxy-s-is-a-beast-runs-quake-3-perfectly/
I hate to be an ass but the PS3 has 250 million triangles per second from what I've seen around the web (rsx chipset?), the psp is no where near that entirely. PS3 runs the RSX chip? or w/e it is, and its said to run 250 million triangles per second, and also seen a comparison (but i don't really believe it) says the 360 does 500 million triangles per second.
"66 million vertices / triangles per second calculated by the Emotion
Engine, and 75 million triangles per second can be drawn by the
Graphics Synthesizer (obviously the EE can only feed 66M per second to
the GS, thus as a result the EE can never overload the GS "
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
"PSP can *calculate* 33 or 35 million vertices / triangles per second
at the full 333 MHz clock frequency, which currently restricted to 222
MHz, so that cuts vertex / triangle rate down by 1/3. so, this
33~35 million per sec is currently at about 22-23 million per sec. at
222 MHz. Remember, this is the amount that can be transformed /
calculated, so you can think of this PSP triangle/sec number as you
would the 66M per sec that Emotion Engine in PS2 does. "
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/33327-13-versus-triangles-second
I still think its possible with newer phones, especially if the dual core 1.5ghz snapdragon comes out @ christmas like its rumored.....
You're confusing two entirely different things.
Yes, high-end Android phones are able to run games that are similar in graphics to the PSP/PS2.
But emulation? Impossible. To emulate a system, you generally need to be at least 3 times as powerful, and that's probably way too little.
If it was this easy, you'd think the people that made the PS2 themselves would be able to emulate it on the PS3.
Lesiroth said:
You're confusing two entirely different things.
Yes, high-end Android phones are able to run games that are similar in graphics to the PSP/PS2.
But emulation? Impossible. To emulate a system, you generally need to be at least 3 times as powerful, and that's probably way too little.
If it was this easy, you'd think the people that made the PS2 themselves would be able to emulate it on the PS3.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They did emulate it on the PS3, they took it out on the newer models for god knows what reason. I have the original PS3 from launch and it plays all my PS2 games without a hickup.....
And where do you get this 3x more powerful, if that's the case, my dual core amd 3.0ghz with 4 gig of ram and a 5770 should run ps2 games just fine and it dont, its laggy.
Emulation on a PC is massively different then emulating on a phone. The phones shares more architecture with consoles then actual PC's do, hence why phones are just now hitting the 1ghz and 1.5ghz level. There are already videos of the galaxy s running crash bandicoot 3 with the droid emulator set to 60fps max and it runs perfectly, and I mean PERFECTLY. (except lack of controls). The Galaxy S also runs quake 3 arena perfectly (minus lack of controls, but that one i think can be solved with a simple bluetooth mouse and keyboard?).
Its possible, people just like to write it off..... w/e, I'm done with this website, too many haters with no facts.
namcost said:
They did emulate it on the PS3, they took it out on the newer models for god knows what reason. I have the original PS3 from launch and it plays all my PS2 games without a hickup.....
And where do you get this 3x more powerful, if that's the case, my dual core amd 3.0ghz with 4 gig of ram and a 5770 should run ps2 games just fine and it dont, its laggy.
Emulation on a PC is massively different then emulating on a phone. The phones shares more architecture with consoles then actual PC's do, hence why phones are just now hitting the 1ghz and 1.5ghz level. There are already videos of the galaxy s running crash bandicoot 3 with the droid emulator set to 60fps max and it runs perfectly, and I mean PERFECTLY. (except lack of controls). The Galaxy S also runs quake 3 arena perfectly (minus lack of controls, but that one i think can be solved with a simple bluetooth mouse and keyboard?).
Its possible, people just like to write it off..... w/e, I'm done with this website, too many haters with no facts.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, emulating process is the same on all architectures - creating virtual machine and "translating it" to be understandable for device's architecture. Of course it's not that simple, but hope you understand . Even if sb wrote PS2 emulator, I doubt it'll have over 5 fps.
Quake 3 is running smooth, because it's running natively (ported engine for ARM and GPU is supporting OpenGL, which quake uses). Maybe PSX is running great on Galaxy S, but even my very old PC with Pentium III 400MHz and geforce 2 mx could run it at full speed
Oh and your PS3 is running PS2 games smooth, because first consoles had PS2's chip inside . They removed it later.
How about you get your facts straight first?
It was on the first batch of PS3s because Sony put some of the PS2s hardware in the PS3, as they couldn't possibly launch without backwards compatibility.
They took the PS2 hardware out later to reduce costs.
Emulation on phones is not "massively different" than PCs, our phones use ARM architecture CPUs, while the PS2 uses MIPS processors for its Emotion Engine.
make an emulator that works and we will buy it. shouldn't be hard since you seem to know a lot about it

any suggestion for buying android 2.3 tablet?

Hello everyone, Now, I've just gotten into the Android game. I have a HTC Desire, but I want more (no surprise, )
Normally, I'd post such a question at my favorite forum, but unfortunately, it is down, and I was hoping you guys here could help out.
It's a 7" android 2.3 tablet from a China site: SpeMall.com.
1) It's cheap. Half the price of branded tablets
2) People say that it can out-perform the iPad in certain areas.
3) The size seems to be just about right, a good compromise between portability and legibility
Now, I don't really need all the features that other tablets have, namely the 3g/4g wireless connectivity. I was just looking to use this at home, or at my grandparent's place (Where the computers there are absolutely ancient!) just for web browsing, facebooking, and the occasional game of Angry Birds.
Now, to the question. How does this stand up to other tablets of today? (Examples would be iPad, maybe iPad 2, XOOM, Galaxy Tab (7 inch and 10 inch)
I know that this tablet can be overclocked to 1.3 ghz and more which puts it to the same clock speed as most of today's tablets, except for they have dual core processors. How much of a difference would it make? Also, It can play a lot of high end android games when overclocked (Tegra 2 games?). However, I'm sure all the rooting and overclocking is bound to kill the battery. The original battery is said to last 8 hours with WiFi off. If Overclocked, and with WiFi, can I expect to have 5-6 hours of constant usage? Also, assuming it does last about 5 hours overclocked, I know that there are some kernels that allow for the tablet to be a USB Host, meaning keyboard, camera, and (maybe) mouse support. But such devices require power to be used, so can I expect 3-4 hours?
Thanks for your time to read this long writing, If anybody with a mid-high end android tablet can give some suggestions would be great, tanks a lot!
i wouldn't buy anything off a chinese site TBH, bad experiences in the past.
2.3 tablets? hmm, most on the market are running 3.1 and higher (honeycomb)
so, i can't REALLY say much. bigger question, why would you want a Gingerbread tablet? when honeycomb has been out for almost a year now.

What ist better for Windows RT Tegra3 with Geforce or Qualcomm S4Plus with Adreno 225

Hello at all,
i have a problem.
at the moment i have a "Surface RT" from Microsoft, but the Game-Performance is not as good as on equals Android-Tablets (like Nexus7)...
Many Games on Tegra3 are stuttering (like Jetpack Joyride etc.)
Question:
Wich CPU/GPU Combination ist better
(Tegra3 CPU with Geforce ULP GPU like Surface RT, Asus VivoTab)
or (Qualcomm S4 Plus CPU with Adreno 225 GPU like Samsung Ativ Rt, Dell XPS 10)
http://www.qualcomm.com/snapdragon/tablets-pcs
Very Thanks for your informations...
Im not sure about which one is the better setup. However to fix your stuttering for now, try useing another input device rather than touch for your games. I use my touch cover for jet pack and my 360 controller for the other games I have.
Not sure why but a lot of games seem to stutter when you touch the screen , now this can be fixed as shown by hydro thunder developers in there latest patch.
THEBIG360 said:
Im not sure about which one is the better setup. However to fix your stuttering for now, try useing another input device rather than touch for your games. I use my touch cover for jet pack and my 360 controller for the other games I have.
Not sure why but a lot of games seem to stutter when you touch the screen , now this can be fixed as shown by hydro thunder developers in there latest patch.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
very thanks for your information, but i have only the surface 32gb without touchcover...
questions:
1. how do you connect your wireless xbox360 controller with surface rt?
2. do you know any games with no stuttering, without "hydro thunder"?
3. do you know any other games who push the power from tegra3 like "hydro thunder"?
At the moment i play the free game "Baller", very great, but also stuttering...
very thanks...
hi mate you will need the wireless pc receiver to sync the xbox controller wireless, however I just use a wired one. Games with controller are far better mate when supported, they even have rumble feed back. Both angry birds have been fixed not to lag on touch.
If you really enjoy jet pack mate why noT just plug in a usb keyboard or mouse works the same.
Soulcraft is a great game not tegra optimized though.
I can confirm that the game you are playing called baller has no stutter with touch cover but stutters on touch input.
it's all going to come down to optimization for the chipset, the tegra3 and adreno 225 are similar, but the tegra3 has the edge, but in real world, without something being optimized for the specific chipset, you're not going to see a huge difference.
now the s4 pro, with the new adreno is beast. i really wish the surface came with that vs tegra
adiliyo said:
it's all going to come down to optimization for the chipset, the tegra3 and adreno 225 are similar, but the tegra3 has the edge, but in real world, without something being optimized for the specific chipset, you're not going to see a huge difference.
now the s4 pro, with the new adreno is beast. i really wish the surface came with that vs tegra
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Optimization in most of cases is just a marketing trick.
Tegra 3 is really weak, even in comparison with MSM8960. Also Adreno 320 is up to 3 times faster than 225, so make conculisons.
If you want a nice cheap game to showcase the tegra chip in the surface search sprinkle in the marketplace. Great game with some great physics and good graphics.
is sprinkle on win8 now?

Is anyone using those cheapie Android computers-on-a-stick for general computing?

I've been wanting to buy something like this or this (which is not technically on a stick...) for a while now. When they all had Allwinner A10s I waited for better hardware, but now that better hardware's here - the ones I linked have quadcore CPUs and two gigs of RAM - I think I've done enough waiting.
Right now I'm using my main box (quadcore gaming computer) for everything, but it's hardly efficient when I'm not actually gaming. My idea is to use the tiny-puter with my 27" 1080p screen for light-duty things; by this I mean browsing the net, watching youtube videos and so on.
The only doubt I have is that I don't really know how effective these things are in this role. I don't want to have to wait for the CPU to render webpages; I've had to endure enough of that on my ancient Atom netbook.
What's your experience in using Android sticks?
Nobody at all?

Fastest Android - Win7 TV box

Hi everyone, the intention of this post is to discuss fastest solution TV plugable device to run kodi. I have googled few android boxes around £140 budget that have a 4GB RAM, fast CPU and GPU. I am also keeping an eye on pico ITX motherboards to run fully fledged WIN7 like VIA EPIA- P910. The idea is to have a small device to tuck behind a TV powerfull enough to stream 3D video without jitter.
Stream is matter of bandwidth. In other hand, have few boxes and.most used is MXIII-G S812 SoC. It's work as it intends to be. But the latest is Mini M8s S905 for just 38$ and runs like hell. Not worst than MXIII-G! If you install success OpenELEC you could have couple times more stable and fast devices (both of them) That's is waaaay enough for blu-ray and 3D movies. They aren't PC (depends on meaning under word PC! ) that's true, but why you need PC?
Sent from my GRACE using Tapatalk
Thanks for a prompt reply TopperBG. I will look into devices you've mentioned. I have OpenELEC installed on Raspberry Pi and admit it quite stable and convinient. Why I mentioned PC was that you can use it as a fully fledged computer. Install MS Office for example and do your work. It could be multy purpose device hooked to your big screen TV. But those boards cost a lot, so at $38 price margin who cares about MS Office.
Again I will look at MXIII-G and see if it fits the purpose.

Categories

Resources