#154921 - 11X_daemon_X11 - Tue Apr 22, 2008 11:24 pm
Alright, I know this is probably wishful thinking and entirely impossible, but couldn't they incorperate another processor in an exp. pak? I mean really... it would give the DS more power than just a ram upgrade, perhaps putting another 67mhz processor in there (if thats possible), and perhaps give it a little better 3d capabilities.
But, my question is what does the regular expansion pak affect when it comes to homebrews, like DS organize? I noticed when you view multiple pictures on DS organize, after about 10, it stops being able to render them. Would getting the 8mb ram expansion pak fix this? Along with would the webbrowser work a little better? just wondering. :)
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#154928 - spinal_cord - Wed Apr 23, 2008 12:10 am
It should be possible, didn't some SNES games use an extra processor in the cart.
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#154930 - Lazy1 - Wed Apr 23, 2008 12:20 am
It would be really nice to have some extra power to work with but there are a few problems:
1) Finding developers willing to write code for it
2) Cost
3) Availability in the homebrew community (see 2)
4) Battery life
Emulators would love this cart though :D
#154934 - simonjhall - Wed Apr 23, 2008 12:49 am
I'd love a co-pro in slot-2. An FPU or an old P4, perhaps?
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#154935 - silent_code - Wed Apr 23, 2008 12:50 am
yes, some snes (also some nes games had stuff like custom sound processors on cart) games used some extensions in their carts, like the fx processor for games like starfox, doom (?) and yoshi's island. that effectively made the 2.5 mhz system a 16+ (or some other random value, i can't remember the numbers) mhz system with extended capabilities.
you can recognise snes carts with build in hw extensions by the two (left and right) extra pin connector parts on the bottom.
on topic: it depends on the slot2's bus speed, i guess. but i could be done, although production costs for such a game would be too high, so i don't see it coming very soon. the nds is still a pretty powerful device. ;^)
#154936 - 11X_daemon_X11 - Wed Apr 23, 2008 12:56 am
Well... the thing is, I see the ds as slightly underpowered. Its mostly because of its low 3d power, which I wish it would have more, but also, I was wondering, you would need a more powerful battery for the DS its self for this, wouldn't you, because of how this would also require the DS to work a bit hard to access this extra processor and ram? and about how much would this cost (and could someone possibly make it themselves at home, just wondering lol)
Also, is this true? i found it on a website:
CPU: ARM946E-S @ 67 MHz (capable of up to 200 MHz)
Sub CPU: ARM7TDMI @ 33 MHz (capable of up to 133 MHz)
It had the specs about the DS. Is it true that you can over clock (I don't know if thats the right term, I'm kinda guessing on that one) the CPU to 200mhz? wouldn't that fry it? (just wondering)
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#154942 - Rajveer - Wed Apr 23, 2008 1:28 am
On the tiny DS screen, I'm not sure having alot more polygons would be worth it, it's all about compromise.
For instance, I used my OBJ loader to load a 1900 polygon mechwarrior I modelled once just to see how it would turn out, and it looked pretty much the same as a scaled down model in the hundreds.
Personally I think development for the DS is interesting because it's about creating something with limited resources. I remember simonjhall saying if he wanted to program for something with power, he'd program on his PC, if he wants a challenge then he'd program on his DS. I guess that's how I feel too, although an FPU would be great!
Regarding the overclocking, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYIvASbELkw
The only 2 things that would (generally) fry a processor are heat and too much voltage. Overclocking a processor and not supplying enough voltage to keep it stable wouldn't damage it, but the extra heat generated could. Slap a Thermaltake Ultra-120 Extreme on it!
Last edited by Rajveer on Wed Apr 23, 2008 1:38 am; edited 1 time in total
#154944 - tepples - Wed Apr 23, 2008 1:37 am
The video and audio signals are output in lockstep with the CPU. How stably can the LCDs run at that speed?
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#154952 - HyperHacker - Wed Apr 23, 2008 6:26 am
I've asked this before and was told the GBA bus isn't fast enough. I don't really see why that's an issue if you're doing something like the SPC700 though, where you have very little communication between processors and a bit of RAM on the card for it. For something like an FPU it'd probably still be faster than software floating point. (And for SNES emulation, an actual SPC700 and a headphone jack. ;-))
| silent_code wrote: |
| you can recognise snes carts with build in hw extensions by the two (left and right) extra pin connector parts on the bottom. |
I could swear my Super Mario Kart cartridge didn't have those.
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#154965 - Rajveer - Wed Apr 23, 2008 11:03 am
Super Mario Kart didn't use the SuperFX chip did it? I remember Stunt Race FX and Starfox using it but not Mario Kart.
#154975 - silent_code - Wed Apr 23, 2008 2:48 pm
i don't know why mk would need it in the first place? ;^)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_FX
it looks like mk had the dsp-1 math co-processor, though.
EDIT: yes, i think only the fx games had those extra pins (for DMA etc.)
EDIT2: the processor had its own 256kb of ram. :^)
Last edited by silent_code on Wed Apr 23, 2008 7:54 pm; edited 3 times in total
#154980 - Rajveer - Wed Apr 23, 2008 3:53 pm
Ah yeah it had the DSP-1. Only the SuperFX had the extra pin connectors on the side right?
Sorry for going so off-topic!
#154987 - Programix - Wed Apr 23, 2008 6:10 pm
Sorry if it's off topic but i found this on GBATek :
| Quote: |
Most game code is usually executed on the ARM9 processor (in fact, Nintendo reportedly doesn't allow developers use the ARM7 processor, except by predefined API functions, anyways, even with the most likely inefficient API code, most of the ARM7's 33MHz horsepower is left unused).
The ARM9's 66MHz "horsepower" is a different tale - it seems Nintendo thought that a 33MHz processor would be too "slow" for 3D games, and so they (tried to) badge an additional CPU to the original GBA hardware.
However, the real 66MHz can be used only with cache and tcm, all other memory and I/O accesses are delayed to the 33MHz bus clock, that'd be still quite fast, but, there seems to be a hardware glitch that adds 3 waitcycles to all nonsequential accesses at the NDS9 side, which effectively drops its bus clock to about 8MHz, making it ways slower than the 33MHz NDS7 processor, it's even slower than the original 16MHz GBA processor.
|
. What the hell?!?!? Does this mean that the DS is not faster then GBA? I've never coded for GBA befor so i'm dont know...
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#154989 - silent_code - Wed Apr 23, 2008 6:55 pm
@ Programix:
short answer: no, that's just a special case. there's nothing to worry about. ;^) after all, the nds doesn't only print money, it's also quite potent computation wise (for a rather cheap handheld gaming system).
#154991 - Lazy1 - Wed Apr 23, 2008 6:59 pm
I guess you could just use the DS for input, video and sound and have the main program running on a separate system in slot-2.
The only real issue is if there is enough bandwidth to transfer a 256x192x16bpp framebuffer at 60 frames per second as well as 32KHz audio.
Maybe slot-1 is fast enough?
#154992 - simonjhall - Wed Apr 23, 2008 7:15 pm
I reckon there's enough bandwidth in slot-2 to be able to do this...(not that you'd actually want to do it though!)
I would actually be interested in sticking a second CPU on that bus just because you can. Thing is, I don't have the know-how in order to do it! Hmm...
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#154994 - silent_code - Wed Apr 23, 2008 7:33 pm
...
the chinese (Nintendo) iQue Player is an n64-on-a-chip. ;^)
...
#154998 - 11X_daemon_X11 - Wed Apr 23, 2008 9:15 pm
The main reason I wondered this was because well... 1, it would help alot with homebrew developement, 2, it would give the DS a little more kick to it and allow a little more power for actual games themselves and 3, just to see if it was literally possible to slap an extra processor into the DS without actually modding the system in any way. Does anyone know the biggest ram exspanion pak for the DS, though? is it really limited to only 8mb, or have they made higher (because I thought somewhere I read that there was an 8mb one and a 10mb one)?
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#155001 - simonjhall - Wed Apr 23, 2008 9:21 pm
32 meg is the largest unofficial RAM expansion that I know of. I talked to some people from ez-flash about making a 64 meg card but nothing ever came of that.
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#155004 - 11X_daemon_X11 - Wed Apr 23, 2008 9:44 pm
Wow... how much would it cost for that? lol
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#155008 - simonjhall - Wed Apr 23, 2008 10:09 pm
Well I can buy 2GB of fancy DDR2 for ?30 so there's no good reason for a 64 meg Supercard to cost dramatically more than a regular 32 meg model...
Q3A for the win!
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#155012 - tepples - Wed Apr 23, 2008 10:30 pm
| simonjhall wrote: |
| Well I can buy 2GB of fancy DDR2 for ?30 so there's no good reason for a 64 meg Supercard to cost dramatically more than a regular 32 meg model... |
The FPGA or ASIC might need to be bigger to handle RAM bankswitching because GBA ROM space is only 32 MiB long.
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#162717 - mreaves - Wed Sep 10, 2008 5:05 pm
The 3D power in terms of geometry isn't really your bottle neck. It is the fact you are limited to a maximum of 2048 polys in a frame (4096 if you drop to 30fps).
It doesn't matter how many polys you can transform, at the end of the day you can only draw what the DS is capable of. That is the shitty end of line-buffers I'm afraid.
#162751 - silent_code - Fri Sep 12, 2008 12:06 am
| mreaves wrote: |
| (4096 if you drop to 30fps). |
That shouldn't be taken literally.
You can still render just 2k primitives at max. per frame (the refresh rate is always 60 hz) and if you use the "frame drop cheat" via capturing (which I guess is meant above), you have to be very clever to hide it's big, big problems of having no depth information, as you are essentially just glueing two independent frames together.
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