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Apr 24 2005
GT4 to unlock PSP's power
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When we first heard that the PSP's performance was capped at 222mhz when a full 333mhz was possible from it's hardware, one thing came to mind - the extra potential must soon become unlocked. And by the looks of it, it has.
According to GamesRadar, certain games will come a key to unlock the extra power that will push the PSP to its limits, the first of which will be Gran Turismo 4. This game will eat up processing power, so to get the most out of it, the additional 111mhz will be unleashed.
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Comments
but when is it going to really come out?
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That's debatable, if it unleashes it's full potential, battery life will fall apart. This way, the extra 111 mhz comes into play only when it's needed. My theory is that if it ever gets "unlocked" in a firmware update, Sony will release a more cpable battery pack to go along with it.
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I think it's "unlocked" per game - IE if it isn't coded to use it, it won't.
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i heard that sony said that they are coming out with an improved battery shortly before gt4's release. it will be able to support the psp's full power and still have the same or longer battery life when playing on a full 333mhz.
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processors don't eat much battery power; mostly only things with moving parts (UMD Drive) or things that produce temperature changes (nothing in the PSP does that). Although it would eat more battery power it wouldn't be of any significance; it likely wouldn't even be noticeable.
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apparently the increased processor power eats enough battery for them to cap the release games at a lower processor speed.
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Cyruz - cpu usage is a bigger than UMD's even. UMD's 'on-spinup' chew up power, but once running are very efficient. Much more so than a 300 odd MHz MIPs. These are 32/64/128 bit CPUS (they have various levels of instruciton sets), and also have very high data bandwidths and buss speeds (much higher than comparable PC clocked chips). Also, because these are air cooled, they run even less efficiently.. along with being in very tightly enclosed spaces. Imho.. the simple fact this handheld doesnt get insanely hot.. or doesnt crash due to O/T us plain amazing imho.
About the battery - Sony and Toshiba recently annouced new batteries that they have been researching with double the capacity of previous mobile device batteries.. so it would make sense that these will be seen soon (months away?) for PSP and mobile phones..
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Grover, one of the developers on another forum said he had been devving for the PSP and that the battery life loss between 222mhz and 333mhz was very minimal and that most people probably wouldnt notice the difference. Apparently another of the reasons for the lower clock speed was also that Sony didnt want all the developers to do straight ports of the PS2 games, so limiting the CPU ensured that developers had to do 'some' work. (take that with a pinch of salt though)
One of the biggest power-eaters is the display, and you'll notice this with mobile phones. i can leave my phone on standby for 5 days no problem with the display off, yet, if i leave the display on and leave it on standby i'm lucky if i get 8 hrs out of it (ran tests ages ago when we were developing our first mobile game, other tests included sound playing which is another battery killer, but thats a hard one to test cos its also using CPU to play the music)edited: Apr 26 2005
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I heard the frequency restriction was a choice Sony made about PSP games coming out now, I didn't thank they actually "locked" the PSP, I heard the way the system runs each game can specify which clockspeed it'll run at, so a game like lumines might only use 100Mhz. If it is true that sony is highly recommending having games run at a lower frequency than is possible for the sake of the battery, it would be a really crappy move if sony released GT4 using the full potential of the PSP. I think Sony will release this game running at their "recomended" clock speed because if they didn't I doubt any other developer ever would.edited: Apr 26 2005
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no molton, ppl will not buy GT4 if it's not going to use the full PSP power. GT4 is by far the best "real driving simulator", so i don't think they want to ruin that reputation. i also think that most ppl don't really care about battery life if they can get the best game play experiences. i bet you wouldn't want GT4 to look crappy right?
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OPM is the real playstation magazine!
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OPM and PSM don't directly talk to Sony much though. Just because it has "official" or "playstation" in it's title doesn't mean that Sony has anything to do with it. They're just words to convince you to buy the magazine. I don't trust any websites or magazines with info, unless it's directly quoted from Sony. And I highly doubt PSM had any evidence to support their claim.edited: Apr 28 2005
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Just for the record, OPM is directly linked to SCEA, in fact the demo disc they provide comes directly from the PlayStation Underground which is run directly from SCEA. Additionally, the PS Underground is incorporated directly into Sony's websites if you need further proof. So no, the "official" part isn't just something that is used to try and sell more mags.
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Does anyone know the release date on GT4?
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Midnight - all depends what you are doing with the CPU. The MIPS R4000 has vector units like the PS2, and if they are idle, then you wont use much power at all (the VU's are generally what you use in tight loops, with massive data being number crunched). Also remember its ot just one CPU.. its 4 .. so an increase in clock, isnt just making one CPU drain more power, its making 4 do so - 2x MIPs R4000, a GPU (that has 2 cores), and a VME (Sound chip - programmable dsps). I think the claim that 222Mhz->333Mhz makes little difference is a little on the 'optimisitic' side of things. I have worked on an SGI Onyx 2 with 4 x R4000's @ 166Mhz, and they had _massive_ heat sinks and fans on them - admittedly its a previous generation of chip, but the point is that R4000's are plain beefy CPU's and suck _alot_ of power and produce _alot_ of heat.
Sony definitely didnt want PS2 ports - but this is not why it was set at maximum of 222Mhz. The CPU's and GPU together (at their higher clocks) produce too much heat... Even on 222Mhz, feel your PSP on the non battery side after a couple hours of use - the PSP can get warm.. CPU's power usage vs clock, isnt linear, and its because of internal heat that this occurs. As clocks on CPU's go higher and higher, their heat producton and thus cooling requirements much more rapidly increase. This is the main reason P4's cant go past 3 GHz.. heat production is too high and causes all sorts of failures.
Mobile phone screens def do use alot of power, but they also have very low power CPU's in them. Even the higher clocked ones are only 16/32bit cpus - thats a quarter the data switching caps of the mips. And their busses are rarely bigger than 32 bit - whereas PSP's is 256bit.. alot more transistors to switch per cycle. Mind you the most power hungry thing on the PSP is the wifi though - that is a battery killer - and its all for similar reasons as to why CPU's are a killer. The wifi chip is a very high frequency oscilitaing device (much like the CPU) but it needs to be able to switch on a much higher power scale (to produce a strong enough signal) - ie think amplification circuit.
LCD Screens are alot like normal fluros (well they are in actual fact).. so they arent so bad while running, but turning them on takes alot of power. You need to initiate a very high voltage across the tube to get it started (usually through inductor/capacitor type setup like a fluro), but once going they are pretty efficient - the power drain for a screen at runtime comes from the transistors in the lcd that need to be switched - however there are many less transistors in an LCD than in a MIPS R4000 :-) And they are much better spaced, hence heating and subsequent powerloss is less of a problem.
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