So I got a GP2X...

Post by **lordofduct** » Fri Jul 28, 2006 4:39 am

So I got a GP2X... and I am definately pleased with my 270 dollar investment.
180 console + 10 case + 45 2GB SD + 20 SD card reader (I learned the one I owned had a fried SD port) + random shipping costs.

This thing is out right amazing! The Sega Genesis emulation is top freaking notch! NES is also superb. SNES on the other hand runs rather slow... but the emulator is 0.35 beta, so give it time. I watched Vanilla Sky Divx on it today and it looks great. I haven't found much to complain about yet...

except one thing; the sound SUCKS! The built in speakers are very quiet at max volume and when your playing a game your thumbs are right over the speakers blocking all the sound making the placement of them there retarded. If you get a GP2X, buy headphones while you are at it!

Has anyone else gotten their hands on one!? Let me know if you know of any good tweaks for SquidgeSNES (I've heard people getting much better frame rates then me... and I don't know how!)

Oh and one other thing... I use Gens on my PC and I wanted to carry my Phantasy Star 4 save file over from Gens to DrMDX on my GP2X. I figured out the DrMDX zips the save files after saving, but changes the extension from zip to sv# (the # being the save slot it is in). I've attempted compressing my Gens sav file (.gs# ... same thing for the # slot deal) and then changing the extension to .sv#. No worky... is the save file structure that different (I was able to transfer SNES saves and NES saves over just fine, though the NES emulators are based off eachother.)

I even extracted a save file from the compressed files and noticed DrMDX names the compressed file DRMDSAV with no extension and I tried doing the same. Any tips!? Or is my trial in vain!?

Post by **racketboy** » Wed Dec 13, 2006 7:16 pm

You all are going to hate me for this, but I just got a review unit today.
gp2xstore.com gave me one for free if I review it.

I don't have an SD card yet, so I'm kinda limited by the internal memory for now.

I shouldn't pay more for a faster SD card, should I?
I'm gonna place my order on Amazon tonight hopefully.

But so far I'm very happy with it. It feels nice and Sonic 2 runs very nice on it. (Some small emulation issues, but I'll cover that later)

So far, so good!

Post by **Mozgus** » Wed Dec 13, 2006 7:29 pm

racketboy wrote:You all are going to hate me for this, but I just got a review unit today.
gp2xstore.com gave me one for free if I review it.

I don't have an SD card yet, so I'm kinda limited by the internal memory for now.

I shouldn't pay more for a faster SD card, should I?
I'm gonna place my order on Amazon tonight hopefully.

But so far I'm very happy with it. It feels nice and Sonic 2 runs very nice on it. (Some small emulation issues, but I'll cover that later)

So far, so good!

I look forword to that review then.

Post by **Zalphier** » Wed Dec 13, 2006 11:19 pm

Now thats an impressive peice of hardware. I'd love to get one for it's emulation purposes.(playing sonic on the go, that is heaven) But does the genesis emulator have cd and 32x support?

Post by **lordofduct** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 12:15 am

They are working on 32X support. SegaCD support probably won't ever happen though merely due to the size of the games. First you'd only be able to fit a small amount of games on your SD-Card (4 or 5 at max on a large SD card) AND most emulators work by loading the entire game into RAM and running it from there for regular roms and with CDs that aren't actually on a cd they mount the image like a CD (sorta like daemon tools) the amount of processing power required to emulate that probably wouldn't be plausible.

It probably could be done, but I haven't really heard of them even trying it for the SegaCD for reasons similar to this. Maybe in the future though.

Post by **Zalphier** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 12:46 am

We can only hope that it get's developed. If they do make cd support, that's whats ganna sell me on this product :/

Post by **lordofduct** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 1:02 am

oh yeah... racket.

a faster sd card will gain you from what I can tell this:

Programs and Roms will innitially boot faster, but loading times during a game or program will be unneffected because they are first loaded to ram and soulily ran from there.

Movies should get a smoother play back

Putting stuff onto the card will obviousily increase in speed.

Playing large NeoGeo games that use rom-streaming will run smoother.

Most music will be uneffected due to their low bit-rates... except for may some large lossless formats and wav. (out of box though the supported formats shouldn't suffer except wav, from what I remember it is ogg, mp3 and wav out of box. Other formats require new programs).

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As for your sonic comment. Have you played 3 or S+K? Notice the water?

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Also if you want a short second opinion of the system I can write up something. Not a full blown article (not very good at writing articles), but I'll write a 'second thought' to give that non-bias feel. One thing I can bring up is a comparison to the PSP hacks which I've also used before.

Post by **Ivo** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 11:11 am

racketboy wrote:You all are going to hate me for this, but I just got a review unit today.
gp2xstore.com gave me one for free if I review it.

I don't have an SD card yet, so I'm kinda limited by the internal memory for now.

I shouldn't pay more for a faster SD card, should I?
I'm gonna place my order on Amazon tonight hopefully.

But so far I'm very happy with it. It feels nice and Sonic 2 runs very nice on it. (Some small emulation issues, but I'll cover that later)

So far, so good!

That is a nice Xmas present you got there, congrats

I read a review on the system where it mentioned an Amiga emulator - can you check it out while you're doing the research on the review?

Ivo.

Post by **lordofduct** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 12:42 pm

The amiga emulator is nice but not full speed when I tested it a while back. There has been some updates to it since though. uae4allgp2x is the name and it is a port of the emulator "uae" for the dreamcast.

With overclocking though it gets up in FrameRate speed. Downside to OC'n your GP2X is not all of them have the same potential. The ARM processor is clocked at 200mhz and mine might get up to 250mhz OC'd, but yours might get up to 280mhz. They generally all can get up to atleast 240mhz though.

That and OC'n eats more batteries obviousily.

Post by **racketboy** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 6:57 pm

here's my initial review:
http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2006/12/ ... -easy.html