Dingoonity.org

Crap I want to buy something but there's a lot of choices. Who of you have the latest handhelds and can drop an opinion of what feels better?

D pad position, battery, psx emulation, etc..

We appreciate the sincerity.  Only sorry for the developer of GKD.

Enviado de meu moto g(7) play usando o Tapatalk

I finally got my two GKD350H, here are my observations and thoughts on it :
- The GKD350H's Soc is way faster than the JZ4770 found in the RG-350, GCW0 and PG2. At least 50% faster and up to 100%.
VBA Next is finally running smoothly on that device with little to no frameskipping aside from NES Classic games. (which are very CPU intensive and even the Retrostone 1 struggles with these so it's very impressive)

- The low memory, 128MB of RAM, can cause some swaping issues in games like SRB2Kart. Can be remedied somewhat
by putting the CPU level in the settings to the maximum. (level 7)
This also prevents ports like Supertuxkart from working ingame. But that game was not running smoothly on the RG-350 too anyway...

- No IPU support, as i expected. Manufacturer told me that IPU only works for ISP. However, i've talked to a few people about it
and looknig at the datasheet, it seems that they simply didn't want to bother.

- The Power button doesn't work like the menu button in the RG-350/GCW0/PG2 : it simply kills the app that is currently active.
The irony is that it does not always work in case of freezes... This also prevents bringing up the menu in some emulators.
Why ??

The build quality is pretty nice. Compared to the RG-350, it is lighter. The screen's tearing is also much less noticeable than the RG-350, on which it is very visible and pretty bad unless triple buffering is used. The GKD350H's screen is less prone to that thankfully.
The screen is also, in my opinion, looking better than the RG-350.

However, the RG-350 has better analog sticks than the GKD350. My analog stick on mine was spinning around itself out of the box...

I also noticed that they do look at my github repositories because they bundled the device with NGPCEmu, and my only public release of it was only for the GCW0 with IPU. They actually took my RS-97's video code in my branch and simply recompiled it against it.
The date is from September 25. At that time, i didn't add IPU support yet. It looks like they did this because they didn't like the fact that Race had no support for save states or ingame saves, lol...

There are no volume sliders : You must change the audio either in the settings or using Left/Right + Start.
Brightness can also be changed in small steps by pressing Up/Down + Start.

I haven't tested the battery life but it seems to have a lot of potential. The battery is decent too. (2800 mah)
With the single on a chip design (including the RAM built inside of the Soc), the battery life should be good. (they claim 6 hours but it could depend on the CPU level or brightness.)

Conclusion ? It's not too bad but unfortunately they should have put a little more effort on the software side of things. The analog stick is not as good as the RG-350. Maybe it could be fixed with some modding ?

I will be releasing my 350H specific ports here :
https://gitlab.com/gameblabla/gameblabla-releases/-/tree/master/opk/350h

I'm just hoping that they would be releasing the source code for the kernel... Maybe.

EDIT: Battery is 2800mah, not 1000mah. My mistake.

<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20221209015322/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNTiTMlTTQ4" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNTiTMlTTQ4</a>
So i recorded myself playing my own ports of SRB2 Kart and VBA Next.
Apart from NES classic games, they all run smoothly.

I may get one of these devices for mame and as it is a 2d powerhouse, does it have enough power to emulate the sharp x68000 computer at fullspeed?

The latest MAME release should work with it but i have not tried to play games like MK2 or other intensive games yet.
FBA SDL should be able to play CPS3 games at 25 FPS or so. (Guess i also need to try it on my unit)

The low memory can cause some swapping issues on big roms but i think that it won't be a huge issue for the most part.

I may get one of these devices for mame and as it is a 2d powerhouse, does it have enough power to emulate the sharp x68000 computer at fullspeed?

@David Knight told me he ported px68k to the GCW0 but that it was too slow. I have asked him for source code but he never delivered and disappeared from Dingoonity ever since... Oh well. Looks like i will have to do it again.

No. you must not enter settings to increase decrease volume or brigthness..

vol. up/ down...   Dpad <left or right> while you press A button...also works in game
brigthness control works with a very similar combo...D pad up-down...while you mantain pressed A button...

its in the device manual btw.

i know positively that you are pretty clever..so Yes. 
and i take a mistake you are absolutely right..
 its the START button...the one to be pressed not A.
As you can see my chinese is worse than yours....

Quote from: eltehero on January 08, 2020, 11:58:57 am

Users on discord have reported CPS3 running at 60fps fullspeed using FBA which is amazing.

Which makes it the best compact handheld one can buy!

Yes GDK350 certainly in terms of raw power and 2d games . Gameblabla review above is very good.

But the GDK issues of it's own like no GPU, no IPU support and closed source kernel so not much development until they release source code if at all, but if you are a hardcore 2d gamer and no interest in 3D then it may still maybe a very good device. I might buy this device as I love 2d games.

The RG350 is by far the most popular device with devs and users and has good build quality but I hate the control placement, that's why I'm giving it a miss. I'm waiting for the next revision of RG350 to see what it's like.

Pocketgo 2 has too many issues and defects which is disappointing because it looks like a polished gcw zero, but instead seems to be much less in quality. It might be worth considering if they release further issues improving build quality

This one doesn't have stereo, not even from the headphone output, that's a deal breaker to me.

Yeah i was about to point-out that after someone pointed out to me that the Soc's Audio DAC does not support Stereo sound, only mono.
Big bummer, even though the sound quality isn't too bad.

Been having some issues with performance in ReGBA, but also less noticeably in PocketSNES and Fceux on this handheld.  Basically, even though the FPS counter is a constant 59/59 and it has fluid motion on screen, it will transition back and forth between 60fps and what appears to be 30fps.  The slowdown is most apparent in ReGBA and maybe 30% of the time in PocketSNES, especially when first starting a game.

I've tried various settings in the emulator, boosting the CPU to Level 5, and putting the ROM on the internal SD.  Does this performance seem normal?

No idea for PocketSNES and Fceux but i would suggest that you use my port of VBA Next on the GKD350H instead.
It will play all of your games, even incompatibile ones with ReGBA, with less problems.
https://gitlab.com/gameblabla/gameblabla-releases/-/raw/master/opk/350h/vbanext_350h.opk?inline=false

Find my other 350H specific ports here :
https://gitlab.com/gameblabla/gameblabla-releases/-/tree/master/opk/350h

No idea for PocketSNES and Fceux but i would suggest that you use my port of VBA Next on the GKD350H instead.
It will play all of your games, even incompatibile ones with ReGBA, with less problems.
https://gameblabla.nl/files/ipk/350h/vbanext_350h.opk

Thanks for letting me know about VBA Next -- I didn't realize that was for GBA.  The performance is definitely better than ReGBA, but, the dreaded slowdown still occurs, but much less frequently.  The built-in homebrew games and PSX emulation work perfectly, so I can't quite understand why the 2D emulation performance is problematic.