Dell X50 vs Asus 730

[dodocaca]

It seems that most people on this forum are more excitied about the new Asus 730 then the Dell X50. Althought neither are out in full production now, from all the info I have read from this forum and others, both are very capable devices.

Is it the hatred a lot of people have towards Dell as a company?

Just Curious.

(Devices I have owned or currently using: Casio E 125,(Still best gaming configuration) Casio E200, Toshiba e740, Dell Axim x5 (300mhz) X5 (400mhz) and now Dell X30 624 with wireless features)

[Dan East]

Well, the Axim X5 basic was the worst performing Pocket PC of all time, so that certainly was a big strike against them in this community.

A lot of people here are by Asus fans because the a620 was heads and shoulders above the rest for quite a while. It was a gaming powerhouse that basically had it all (nice screen + performance + good hardware controls). So that has simply carried over to their newer devices, which don't stand out (as much) against the competition as the a620 did.

Dan East

[Guest]

If the Dell had 128mb of RAM, then I would most likely be purchasing that instead of the Asus.

[Drex]

Neither. Wait for the WM2005 devices...they will have a much better OS, especially in terms of its handling of VGA, will be faster because more software will be written to take advantage of the hardware, etc. You'll get people who will say if you wait you'll never buy anything, but understand these people just use a cliche when they should focus on the fact that if you buy either device, you're an early adopter of a next gen device. There will be problems and they will be worked out in future devices. I know this from experience.

Drex

[sponge]

There has already been an OS release focused on VGA. I don't think that's early adopter anymore.

[spiral]

It seems that most people on this forum are more excitied about the new Asus 730 then the Dell X50.

Most people on this forum don't really seem that excited.

I would argue VGA is still a relatively early adopter thing. There isn't much VGA software available. It's had its share of problems: the thing where PocketTV alerted manufactueres to implement Getwhatever(), the issues software GAPI drivers, and most recently, whether video cards (2700g) can speed up VGA drawing. There's a lot of work to be done.

[Jinks]

I would argue VGA is still a relatively early adopter thing.

They are early adopter things. But there are a lot of developers around here so many will be early adopters. After all most games are playable in small measures as they are written, even if there is 6 months to go.

Developers can get really close to DirectX WM2005 graphic primitives with OpenGL ES and the X50v. Developers have to write the software for WM2005 on the current VGA PDA's so they won't miss out on software until at least a year after WM2005 has been out.

I think if you want a VGA device now waiting 6-9 months will do your head in. Plus I do worry M$ may make WM2005 slower and more bloaty and use .NET too much. Anyway for me the choice is a no brainer but many people will just wait 1% of thier lives to be sensible.

[Guest]

WM2005 is unproven. MS has a history of not getting things right on the first release, and due to the PPC nature they just can't release a new SP for self upgrading. I would much rather wait for WM2005SE, which is the OS we really need. By that timeframe there will be apps that support native VGA better.

As far as the graphics accelerator, PPC_DX, and games, all you need to do is take a look at the PC Gaming industry. Games out today don't even use all the new features of video cards that are 2 years old. The PPC market is even smaller, and I doubt you will see the benefit of the new Dells until its 2nd generation is out. Now I hear that nVidia is building a graphics accelerator for the PPC, history has shown that Intel has had the slowest graphics chips on the market, so this already has made the Dell obsolete.

[Jinks]

Microsoft don't have some magic second time lucky. 98,ME,NT were not great XP I think is great, though SP2 was a nightmare. So I think waiting for the second version has no real pattern of history. Anyway that would be two years gap before replacing.

Intel I think are doing a better MBX core than ARM. MBX cores will get into everything there is one fully integrated with a MIP chip see DreamCast on chip in the tech forum.

So I think the whole X50v obsolete is wrong. ATI will find it hard to compete with so many manufactures using one common base. If ATI do win I think it will be in years not a year. About the time Sony's walkman brand beats Apple's IPod brand.

I just read this back and had ATI on the brain is there a reference to this new nVidia chip so I can see what it does??

[dodocaca]

Second only to my old and aging casio e 125 the Dell X5 was and still is a powerhouse of a device for the money. No its not the Asus 620, but dollar for dollar it was better then anything else out there.

The 400 mhz model which I just gaved up for a X30 624 was a very good device even for gaming.

I liked it so much I order 30 of them for my company.

[Jinks]

The X50v is made by HTC your previous Dells weren't but I guess it is priced by Dell. HTC make the XDA and Blue Angel, if only the X50v had buttons both sides of the landscape screen.

If ASUS make the ASUS I'd be dumb asking, but I can handle the stupidty.

[Digby]

NVIDIA's 3D GPU for Handheld Devices

[Jinks]

Thanks, we get such cool toys.

Gizmondo and NVIDIA plan to distribute up to 500 software development kits throughout the game developer community by the end of first half, 2005.

I haven't heard anything positive about the Gizmondo maybe that is all unfair. Is anyone round here writing for it?

[Tala]

As far as the graphics accelerator, PPC_DX, and games, all you need to do is take a look at the PC Gaming industry.

Thats actually a good idea. When the first 3d chips were released for PC (Virge3d and few months later 3dfx Voodoo and Riva 128) the industry picked them up very fast. A year later 2d games were virtually dead.

Now I hear that nVidia is building a graphics accelerator for the PPC, history has shown that Intel has had the slowest graphics chips on the market, so this already has made the Dell obsolete.

Guess you need to take a lecture on graphics chip history. PowerVR chips were always more efficient than comparable chips from NVidia. Tile based renderering is the way to go for mobile devices, since you do not make the chips as fast as possible, but as fast as possible given a power budget.
Also you can bet, that more devices next year will have an MBX core integrated, while i doubt we will see many NVidia based devices.

Tala

[Jinks]

I like what I read about nVidia it isn't as good as the MBX (I'm a signed up MBX developer of course so I would say that). Looking between specs the nVidia has a instruction set for shaders and 6 textures, the MBX has 2 textures but tile render as Tala sais a scene manager to make it work, Internal 32-bpp to the nVidia 18-bpp and MBX also has a Texture compressor. Both do the OpenGL ES and DirectX Mobile things at upto 1 million triangles a second. I don't know the full screen anti alias abilities of the nVidia but MBX does FSAA.

I think this is all good news... no way am I buying a DS or PSP I'll be having far more fun playing and coding these things.