New Gaming Possibilities brought to us by 3.5.1?

[Corona_B]

I've seeing alot of posts from people comparing oz 3.5.1 with previous oz releases, and it appears as though the floating point calculations are WAY faster on the latest oz release.

I remember when i first got my 5600 i loaded up quake on it and it was unplayably slow, like 3-4 fps.

My thought is that perhaps with the newfound  quicker fp calculations, might something like quake become playable on the z?  has anyone tried this yet?

I'm going to try and get quake built for 3.5.1 this weekend, but i just wanted to see if anyone else beat me to the punch.

Also, does anyone have any inclinations as to which would be better for gaming...qt\opie or x\gpe?

~Corona_B

[neuroshock]

Thats a great question...I had been thinking about that myself.  I pointed it out to my fellow geek at work and he doesn't think that it will matter much.  The new oz has a much faster software fpu than the previous versions ... of OZ.  The stock sharp roms he believes never suffered from this problem as sharp did not have to do any retro engineering.  I believe he's on the right track...on my 5500 prboom played much smoother on the stock roms than it ever did on any previous version of OZ.

That said, I would REALLY like to  be wrong about this!  Free performance is just too tempting a prize.

Somebody let us know or set us straight with the final word.  I'll anxious to see the final verdict.

NeuroShock

[lardman]

Hows about we do a comparison. I'd be interested in the relative fp performance for OZ versions against Sharp/Cacko/PdaXrom/etc..

Try this thread here: https://www.oesf.org/forums/inde...51&hl=benchmark


Si

[lardman]

Actually these programs will have to be compiled and linked with your ROM's particular toolchain otherwise the -soft-float functionality (or not) won't be taken into account.


Si

[Mickeyl]

The new oz has a much faster software fpu than the previous versions ... of OZ.  The stock sharp roms he believes never suffered from this problem as sharp did not have to do any retro engineering.  I believe he's on the right track...on my 5500 prboom played much smoother on the stock roms than it ever did on any previous version of OZ.

Your colleague is wrong. FP performance on systems without a FPU is a matter of the compiler and the kernel. Both OZ and the SharpROM used the 2.95.3 w/ hard float and 2.4.18-embedix in previous versions - which means their performance was equal. OZ now uses gcc 3.4.x w/ soft float, which means it's 1000% faster than both 2.95.3 based OZ as well as the SharpROM and its clones.

The way I see it is that Sharp won't upgrade anytime soon to a modern gcc or kernel, this means that OZ is more or less your only chance for future performance upgrades. Then again, you can always buy faster hardware