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-   -   HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900? (https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=34121)

Tomaszd 2009-11-09 12:55
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Aren't we over this yet? Some people are really out of touch, it's mainly the apps (and by that I also mean the UI itself) that make or break the platform, not the specs, which all of 5 people care about.

Trust me, the N900 has good enough specs for what is expected from it and things can still be optimized. Once we have those magical, affordable, economically viable batteries with much, much better energy density, then we can think about moving forward, OK?

nwerneck 2009-11-09 13:01
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rocketman (Post 369194)
I am also concerned with premature flash wear due to swap usage. I had a very expensive Psion Netbook Pro become an expensive brick when I flashed the firmware and it encountered bad flash blocks.
Doesn't the swap go on the replaceable SD memory card you can change after it wears out?

MrGrim 2009-11-09 13:07
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Crashdamage (Post 369495)
I'm with you! I'm cancelling my pre-order on this outdated piece of junk N900! I'll wait for something with at least a 2G Firedragon CPU, 4G RAM, 500G NAND and fuel cell battery!

If I live long enough...
Actually, that may be only a few years from now. Remember how specs were in 2000?

MrGrim 2009-11-09 13:17
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by nwerneck (Post 369548)
Doesn't the swap go on the replaceable SD memory card you can change after it wears out?
You could make a swap partition there, but by default there's one in the internal memory, so that it can work without card
I see no reason why a device cannot be flashed because of bad blocks in swap memory (which isn't special in itself, it's just normal storage space). If the swap partition gets bad, just make another one!

SubCore 2009-11-09 13:37
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by nwerneck (Post 369548)
Doesn't the swap go on the replaceable SD memory card you can change after it wears out?
the default location of the swap partition is on the internal eMMC, which can't be replaced AFAIK.

but you could place it on the external SD card if you wish, though i doubt it would make much of a difference. there are optimizations in place to minimize flash wear out, so it shouldn't be an issue.

Rushmore 2009-11-09 14:04
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by bandora (Post 369225)
Now I have one thing to ask here.. I pre-ordered my N900 btw.. My question is that if I max out the 32 gb... will i still have the 768MB of virtual RAM?
Since the OS is going to use 2gb of the 32gb for app space, what space do we actually have of the 32gb?

32gb - format space - app space = 29-ish gb?

SubCore 2009-11-09 14:06
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rushmore (Post 369622)
Since the OS is going to use 2gb of the 32gb for app space, what space do we actually have of the 32gb?
from the wiki page i linked to:

Current situation

* 256MB OneNAND chip: bootloader, kernel, root (ubifs - with compression)
* 32GB eMMC: /home ~2GB (ext3), /home/user/MyDocs ~29GB (vfat), swap 0.7GB

Rushmore 2009-11-09 14:09
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quindor (Post 369324)
Personally I am glad that nokia went with the OMAP3 instead of the Snapdragon with the N900. Snapdragon might give you the magical "1Ghz" figure, which in reality will drain your battery like I don't know what.

In reality, reading the whitepapers, snapdragon is not bad, just a very different SOC then OMAP3 is. OMAP3 gets it's strength from it's DSP's and GPU, where the Snapdragon gets it with raw cpu from clock speeds.

Using DSP's has been proven that it's less flexible, but way more power efficient. So if they can make good use of that design, it should be a win there.

Also... the N900 might just not need it. If you can do everything with it you want and in terms of mobile devices, is pretty much the fastest out there, or fast enough to do what anyone can think of doing with it? The choice is right again.

Also keep in mind that we don't actually know if anyone is using the GPU with licensed drivers from Qualcomm, in the past there have been major issues with this. Power consumption comes into play again, it might be faster, but at what cost?

About the memory issue. I'm thinking 256MB with 768MB swap should be sufficient, we will probably see a bump in this with Maemo6. If developers are aware, it should work pretty smoothly. And just like any other computer platform, if you run a rendering of for instance 3D Max, expect it to take all cpu and mem, if you are using notepad, expect it to only take a fraction of that. Use it wisely.....

It's like with the Nokia N97 and Samsung Omnia i8910. The Omnia i8910 has faster hardware and more memory all around, but the N97 somehow seems faster and the better experience. Purely efficient use of what is there, instead of throwing raw power at it, without optimizations.

Take a look at some info for Snapdragon and OMAP3. The OMAP3 has been "hand designed" for a port and is a quite balanced chip in the end. Where the SnapDragon has made consessions to achieve the 1Ghz, in a way that is less usefull, to me at least.

As a last note. I think that including only 256MB is also done because of power constraints. Using more high-speed RAM, uses more power. Simple as that.
This is basically what I said earlier, so I agree :)

Of course, the ironic thing is we do not have either device to compare anything, apples or oranges.

At the rate things are going though, people mght have HD2's before N900's ;)

allnameswereout 2009-11-09 14:59
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex Atkin UK (Post 369128)
I have to admit I was a little surprised that the N900 did not have 512MB RAM which is the magic spot for Linux in my experience.
:confused: which experience based on which hardware and which software? We're not talking about a workstation running KDE/GNOME & Maya/Blender...

And top is ********.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rushmore (Post 369139)
Another point of concern is the AMD made GPU in snap is apparently power hungry too.
Which one is that?

Rushmore 2009-11-09 15:02
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by allnameswereout (Post 369722)
:confused: which experience based on which hardware and which software? We're not talking about a workstation running KDE/GNOME & Maya/Blender...

And top is ********.

Which one is that?
Snapdragon, unless there are more than one source for their GPU-not counting the integrated features on snap itself.

Quindor 2009-11-09 15:07
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rushmore (Post 369631)
This is basically what I said earlier, so I agree :)

Of course, the ironic thing is we do not have either device to compare anything, apples or oranges.

At the rate things are going though, people mght have HD2's before N900's ;)
Yeah, my post was mostly a recap and some links, but most information was in the topic allready, just wanted to offer my insight into it.

And you are quite correct. How can anyone determine if it's "fast enough" without actually having the devices, both in their hand. And then still, what if the SnapDragon with Windows Mobile is 2 seconds faster in rendering the same page. Is that a winner then? Your still stuck with windows mobile (no offence) and other stuff which comes with it.

So it will be everyone, by themselves which will have to determine if the N900's hardware AND software is up to the task. Benchmarks and benchmarks, sure. But reallife sometimes differs.

Rushmore 2009-11-09 15:11
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Well, one thing is for sure, BOTH chipsets are MUCH better than the non-hardware-driver-due-to-legal-reasons Qualcomm 7201 that is in my G1.

Well, at least the Xperia 2 has the drivers :)

JBax 2009-11-09 15:33
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rushmore (Post 369631)
This is basically what I said earlier, so I agree :)

Of course, the ironic thing is we do not have either device to compare anything, apples or oranges.

At the rate things are going though, people mght have HD2's before N900's ;)
HD2s have shipped already

allnameswereout 2009-11-09 15:34
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rushmore (Post 369730)
Snapdragon, unless there are more than one source for their GPU-not counting the integrated features on snap itself.
Nm... Adreno 200 (formerly known as AMD Z430)

Rushmore 2009-11-09 17:36
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by allnameswereout (Post 369794)
Nm... Adreno 200 (formerly known as AMD Z430)
Yep and the spec is apparently 600mhz, but the power to get the chip to push polys is the issue. Watching Quake 3 play with bots on the N900 with sound and no sign of lag at least tells me the N900 can at least perform practically for stuff that needs it :)

I think it is fair to say that the 3430 is a more balanced chipset solution for "phones" when considering power consumption and graphics balance.

Alex Atkin UK 2009-11-09 18:04
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Benson (Post 369255)
Not really -- swap is good even if you have plenty of RAM, because it allows more caching. Paging in the exact portion of a cached file that's needed is significantly faster than rooting through the filesystem to read it.
I do agree that it's a bit of a cheat the way they go on as though it had 1GB of RAM, but I'd want significant swap in any case.
Ah I never thought of it that way, never seen anyone mention cache being dumped into swap, I always figured cache just was dropped outright as RAM runs out (as it sometimes feels like it has).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Benson (Post 369255)
I don't think it really remains to be seen, unless you've some reason to suspect the eMMC will wear out faster than the 1GB in the N810. People have been using swap on them ever since they came out, and I've heard of no problems. Actually, since the swap region is a smaller fraction of the 32GB than of the 1GB, it should last longer.
To be fair, I know nothing about previous tablets. However you do have to consider that the faster the device the more it can hammer the eMMC.

I would imagine you are right as its not like Nokia will have just grabbed a box of spare parts and thrown it together. There will have been extensive testing before deciding on this hardware.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Benson (Post 369255)
Yes, the MMC spec requires wear-leveling built-in. I've heard that some cheap cards disregard the spec and don't have wear leveling, but I've no clue the veracity of this rumor. (FWIW, I heard it in conjunction with couterfeit name-brand SDs.) I'm sure the eMMCs Nokia's using are genuine and conform to spec.
Good to know. I just was worried that as MMC/SD started out being used lightweight that its usage pattern may have evolved quicker that the specification. I just remember a SmartMedia card failing on me because my old MP3 player was buggy and seemed to have to do every write multiple times, funnily enough a similar problem happened with an MMC card too. But we are talking a long long time ago.

Alex Atkin UK 2009-11-09 18:08
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rushmore (Post 369747)
Well, one thing is for sure, BOTH chipsets are MUCH better than the non-hardware-driver-due-to-legal-reasons Qualcomm 7201 that is in my G1.

Well, at least the Xperia 2 has the drivers :)
Don't rub it in. If it was legal issues then why can't they release updated firmware to fix all the older hardware?

The only big difference between the Xperia 1 and 2 is the drivers, its a total ripoff and one reason I am glad I am rid of mine. I bought the Xperia on the condition it had 3D hardware, might have had second thoughts if I had realised about the drivers. Pah!

Roll on N900......

Rushmore 2009-11-09 20:25
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex Atkin UK (Post 369980)
Don't rub it in. If it was legal issues then why can't they release updated firmware to fix all the older hardware?

The only big difference between the Xperia 1 and 2 is the drivers, its a total ripoff and one reason I am glad I am rid of mine. I bought the Xperia on the condition it had 3D hardware, might have had second thoughts if I had realised about the drivers. Pah!

Roll on N900......
Xperia 2 shows what kind of media powerhouse we could have had if the cpu did not have to do all the work :(

It is an issue of money and dev roadmaps. Xperia 2 had good timing and Sony E has the resources.

You want to see peed off people, just wait until all of the G1, Cliq, My Touch, Hero etc 7200 series users try to run Android 2.0 AND Flash 10.1 at the same time. Lag city, especially for people that can not clock to 528mhz. They are all underclocked AND have no drivers for video hardware and integrated DSP.

Yikes.

bemymonkey 2009-11-10 07:20
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
I'd love to see a comparison - the HD2 has some pretty impressive hardware, and there's been a few videos posted to support that:

http://wmpoweruser.com/?p=9905

The person filming opens one app after another and leaves them all running in the background, scrolling around in the GUI and opening new apps (including playing videos and navigation software) and the HD2 doesn't even stutter.

What would happen if you did this on the N900?

ossipena 2009-11-10 07:31
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by bemymonkey (Post 370624)
I'd love to see a comparison - the HD2 has some pretty impressive hardware, and there's been a few videos posted to support that:

http://wmpoweruser.com/?p=9905

The person filming opens one app after another and leaves them all running in the background, scrolling around in the GUI and opening new apps (including playing videos and navigation software) and the HD2 doesn't even stutter.

What would happen if you did this on the N900?
when i tested a proto, there was about 10 programs open in the background. and i found that out after a while when i managed to get all running apps as a list to the screen...

bemymonkey 2009-11-10 07:37
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Hmmm, no slowdowns?

How about with 5 Youtube browser windows? Or just 10 to 20 regular browser windows? :)

JBax 2009-11-10 09:10
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
HD2 not actually getting rave reviews (check gizmondo) due to...you guessed it winmob. HTC pretty much gutted 6.5 to make it bearable.

chemist 2009-11-11 10:01
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by bemymonkey (Post 370635)
Hmmm, no slowdowns?

How about with 5 Youtube browser windows? Or just 10 to 20 regular browser windows? :)
as there is only virtual multitasking atm (for me the switching and leave it open in background does not count), I guess it doesnt matter how many windows are open... it depends on how draining is the application in background, or are the applications going nice-ing when in background
what about real multitasking, having a tv-out gives a huge screen to have many windows at once...

bemymonkey 2009-11-11 10:15
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by chemist (Post 372179)
as there is only virtual multitasking atm (for me the switching and leave it open in background does not count), I guess it doesnt matter how many windows are open... it depends on how draining is the application in background, or are the applications going nice-ing when in background
what about real multitasking, having a tv-out gives a huge screen to have many windows at once...
How is that supposed to work? On Maemo5 you can only open one app on-screen at a time... there's no window manager or anything like that, is there?

attila77 2009-11-11 10:33
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by bemymonkey (Post 372187)
How is that supposed to work? On Maemo5 you can only open one app on-screen at a time... there's no window manager or anything like that, is there?
There is, a Clutter based one :)

w00t 2009-11-11 10:46
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by attila77 (Post 372199)
There is, a Clutter based one :)
http://maemo.gitorious.org/fremantle-hildon-desktop

is probably a better link - but either way, this isn't what most people would call a window manager as such. It's very much based around mobile interactions, and only has one thing in "focus" at a time.

fms 2009-11-11 10:50
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by w00t (Post 372212)
It's very much based around mobile interactions, and only has one thing in "focus" at a time.
Surprise! All window managers have one "thing" (i.e. window) in focus at a time! The window in focus is what currently receives your keyboard and mouse input.

bemymonkey 2009-11-11 10:54
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by fms (Post 372213)
Surprise! All window managers have one "thing" (i.e. window) in focus at a time! The window in focus is what currently receives your keyboard and mouse input.
Hmmm, I'm still at a loss to imagine how this should work on 800x480... that's enough room for... well, one window :D

w00t 2009-11-11 10:55
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by fms (Post 372213)
Surprise! All window managers have one "thing" (i.e. window) in focus at a time! The window in focus is what currently receives your keyboard and mouse input.
Not what I meant, but I suspect you know that.

Also, with MPX, I doubt that is correct.

zerobyproxy 2009-11-11 11:08
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
I tried the N900 at the pre-launch party, here in Chicago, on November 2. To answer some questions of speed: this thing is fast. I had 9 windows/applications open (and minimized) and could swap between them without lag. Youtube was running as was another website that had some pretty heavy flash content. Facebook was running. The camera was in standby. The calendar was running. A twitter client was running. Google wave was running. A few other applications were running too.

You could minimize and see the thumbnails of all of the running apps and re-open any one of them. No pause, no gap. Pretty darn fast.

I cannot speak to Snapdragon. It is fast becoming my understanding that this is the beauty of a Linux OS. It is pretty compact and efficient and utilizes the RAM well. :)

archzai 2009-11-11 11:43
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
a bit of a sidetrack, but what's the difference between the ARM11 600mhz and Arm Cortex A8 600mhz. I'm a total processor IDIOT, but just wondering how big of a difference there is between the two in terms of processing. :) thanks!

Relativistic 2009-11-11 11:45
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by archzai (Post 372238)
a bit of a sidetrack, but what's the difference between the ARM11 600mhz and Arm Cortex A8 600mhz. I'm a total processor IDIOT, but just wondering how big of a difference there is between the two in terms of processing. :) thanks!
http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/sho...spx?i=3579&p=2

fms 2009-11-11 11:52
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by w00t (Post 372217)
Not what I meant, but I suspect you know that.
No, I do not. Maybe you can clarify what you mean?

fanoush 2009-11-11 12:27
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by chemist (Post 372179)
what about real multitasking, having a tv-out gives a huge screen to have many windows at once...
So the "real multitasking" simply means "more windows visible at once" for you? Why not just say so?

I prefer the current way of having one window and quick switching functionality. And I am calling it real multitasking too ;-)

As for TV-out - it has even less pixels than the display so huge screen does not buy you much except blurriness (NTSC is 720 x 480, PAL is 720 x 576, both are interlaced).

BTW is the TV-out only composite (no s-video)?

bemymonkey 2009-11-11 12:46
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by fanoush (Post 372269)
I prefer the current way of having one window and quick switching functionality. And I am calling it real multitasking too ;-)
My thoughts exactly. Having multiple windows open side by side isn't really feasible until you start hitting resolutions like SXGA and higher... even XGA screens make it really difficult. A web browser/word processor or whatever else is relatively difficult to use with less than, say, 800px width - that gives you 224px of width left on a 1024x768 screen, which is pretty much useless for anything other than an instant messenger or a (tiny) file manager window...

sjgadsby 2009-11-11 14:13
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by fanoush (Post 372269)
BTW is the TV-out only composite (no s-video)?
Yes, composite only.

eean 2009-11-11 14:27
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Btw, I was really worried about the ram on the n900 before I got it. Multitasking was a big problem on the n810, especially because when you turned it on its RAM was almost already full.

But multitasking really does work fine on the N900. I do just naturally close stuff more aggressively then I do on a computer. But you can easily browse the web, listen to music, have your email client and contact list open etc. So I have to say Nokia made the right call with the 256 of RAM. We should remember that the swap is much faster on the N900 then on your computer since its SSD (though truthfully not sure how much I make the N900 swap).

Rushmore 2009-11-11 16:11
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by chemist (Post 372179)
as there is only virtual multitasking atm (for me the switching and leave it open in background does not count), I guess it doesnt matter how many windows are open... it depends on how draining is the application in background, or are the applications going nice-ing when in background
what about real multitasking, having a tv-out gives a huge screen to have many windows at once...

My Q8200 desktop with 6 gigs of DDR3 and Nividia 9800 lags with mulitple video and Flash running in the background.

We need practical perspective applied here IMO.

Rushmore 2009-11-11 16:15
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by archzai (Post 372238)
a bit of a sidetrack, but what's the difference between the ARM11 600mhz and Arm Cortex A8 600mhz. I'm a total processor IDIOT, but just wondering how big of a difference there is between the two in terms of processing. :) thanks!
Arm 11 has less transisters so less power to execute operations efficiently and takes more power to execute the same operations.

Kind of like comparing a Pentium 3 to a Pentium 4 at same speeds.

Actually a greater difference than that, especially considering the Arm 8 supports discrete DSP and GPUs.

Heck, the integrated functions kick Arm 11's butt even without external DSP or GPU.

nadavwr 2009-11-12 11:35
Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 
I hope 256 MB RAM will be enough to run a few KDE programs (no KDE desktop). e.g. I really like ktimetracker.
After taking a sizable hit in the form of loading several shared objects, and running a few harmless daemons, I hope to still be able to switch back and forth efficiently between several apps.
On my n810 I always end up swapping.


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