1.45ghz C2D ULV + GMA950 = Playable?

[DeathTheSheep]

I think my rig is the best money can buy. It's a $3400 machine. It's this guy: http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/04/sonys...-for-2500/ upgraded with a 128GB SSD and a Core 2 Duo U7700 unlocked @ 1.45ghz. That's just as fast as the t7200 @ 2ghz.

Matters aside, I honestly think a frameskip of 1 would be more than enough. 30fps is just fine. I don't need high res or high detail or high accuracy (the screen is small, as you can see). Just sync.

[Zeydlitz]

Benchmarks are useless for pcsx2 emulation. For emulation raw clocks are more important than others scores of CPU. U7700 is a bit faster that 1 core Atom 330, that could not provide emulation at all. And at real 20 fps you could not got normal play at all.

And 30 fps it 50% of full speed, so you've got a lot slowdowness. 60 fps mark is important.

[Larfin_Man]

But even if it's as fast as the 2Ghz t7200, that's just not enough to run FFX at a playable speed.
Also, $3400? Wow that's expensive... Unfortunately you'll have to get a different model altogether, or fork out more cash. Frame skipping just doesn't help enough to get it playable.
Of course, if you can test it out on a machine like the one you plan to buy first, then you'd have your answer, hopefully you know someone with the same laptop?

[DeathTheSheep]

It's not really a laptop; it's a UMPC (weighing 1 pound and pocketable), and sadly I don't know of those who have it and also have played FFX on it.

The processor cannot be compared to an Atom. The atom architecture is almost that of a P3 in some ways. It has no Out-of-order processing unit, so games are useless on it. It only has 1 core. It is by all acounts less than 1/5 of the speed of the U7700 @ 1.45ghz. In fact, most real-world gaming testing (I guess you could call them 'real world benchmarks') put in in line with the 5000+ athlon64.

No game would run as well on an ancient P4 clocked at 2.8ghz as it would on a Core 2 Extreme at 2.8ghz. Clock speed isn't everything...

So what exactly does frame skipping do then? Wouldn't setting a frameskip of 1 cause the game to skip outputting half of its frames, increasing its perceived speed? Well, or increasing speed by 30% at the sacrifice of smoothness?

[Larfin_Man]

Well it seems the only way you'll get your answer is if you can find someone who owns one of those and can also use FFX on PCSX2 on it, so maybe you should check some forums targeted at users of that machine?

Well there are 3 types of frame skipping in PCSX2, but basically, skipping frames will make the game very choppy and laggy, both in video, sound and input.
These are the 3 options for frame skipping on PCSX2.

[indiandude]

It's not really a laptop; it's a UMPC (weighing 1 pound and pocketable), and sadly I don't know of those who have it and also have played FFX on it.

The processor cannot be compared to an Atom. The atom architecture is almost that of a P3 in some ways. It has no Out-of-order processing unit, so games are useless on it. It only has 1 core. It is by all acounts less than 1/5 of the speed of the U7700 @ 1.45ghz. In fact, most real-world gaming testing (I guess you could call them 'real world benchmarks') put in in line with the 5000+ athlon64.

No game would run as well on an ancient P4 clocked at 2.8ghz as it would on a Core 2 Extreme at 2.8ghz. Clock speed isn't everything...

So what exactly does frame skipping do then? Wouldn't setting a frameskip of 1 cause the game to skip outputting half of its frames, increasing its perceived speed? Well, or increasing speed by 30% at the sacrifice of smoothness?

Agreed that clock speed is not everything in real world benchmarks but for ps2 emulation specificly clock speed are going to decide ur fps.I think the 65nm vs 45nm c2ds for eg would perform the same for ps2 emulation at the same clock speeds.

[Zeydlitz]

The processor cannot be compared to an Atom. The atom architecture is almost that of a P3 in some ways. It has no Out-of-order processing unit, so games are useless on it. It only has 1 core. It is by all acounts less than 1/5 of the speed of the U7700 @ 1.45ghz. In fact, most real-world gaming testing (I guess you could call them 'real world benchmarks') put in in line with the 5000+ athlon64.

In normal test U7700 is x2, not x5 faster than Atom (that is 1 core, but hyperthreaded). And target CPU for pcsx2 is E8600 -- than is incredible faster than any of this low-voltage CPU. Hard to tell, what tests did you mention, it's just unimportant, they just to slow. For pcsx2 clock speed and cache - is only 2 important things. P4 dual core at 2.8 is slower than C2D at 2.8, but could be compared with C2D at 2.3 -- clock speed is most important here.

Anyway, any speedup you could gain with frameskip is not to big, 3-15%. EE and VU Speedhack's could give to you another lesser speed. So from 20fps you got 26-30. To slow.

[seinfeldx]

pcsx2 is all about power, that why laptop cpu are worse then desktop cpu, low voltage mean even lesser performance just look at the speed - > 1.45ghz.

[DeathTheSheep]

Thanks, that's quite the useful pic. There does appear to be a lot of power in frameskipping. Yeah, the third option is what I'm going for. I'd set the first 'setting' to 9999, the second to 1, and the third to 1 to test.

All rightie, I'll see if I can find owners who've done it! If I can't, I'll deliberate for obscenely long periods of time, and if I decide to get it, I'll report the results if anyone cares to know. Thanks for all the input.