HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

Cortez A8 can scale to 1Ghz and the N900 has 1GB of ram including physical and virtual. :D

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

I am talking about ram, the n900 has 256 mb. The HD2 has 448 mb.

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

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.

It was a bit of a cheat having 768MB SWAP. As its stealing from the main 32GB its effectively free for Nokia. Adding more REAL RAM however would cost more but negate the need for SWAP at all. It remains to be seen if having SWAP on the N900 will ultimately result in lag and a worn out NAND. Over the expected lifespan of these devices its probably impossible to wear down the NAND, although does eMMC even have wear leveling? I was under the impression eMMC, MMC, SD, etc did not.

As for the HD2, it seems a huge waste. The Xperia X1 had 256MB RAM and I NEVER hit the limit. I never really had problems with my old HTC Wizard with only 64MB RAM either running Windows Mobile 6.1. I never found good enough software to warranty having that much running.

I think a lot of these specs are bragging rights especially when it comes to Windows devices. As on desktop, you can generally do a lot more with less RAM on Linux than Windows.

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

3430 is a better choice than snapdragon. Snap has a weaker DSP and GPU, but makes up for this with more clock cycles from CPU. Same output from snap will likely drain more battery. Power consumption is a concern and why the chipset will be capped at 850mhz as a ceiling and most will cap at 750mhz.

Both chipsets are Arm 8 and 65nm, so do the practical math. Another point of concern is the AMD made GPU in snap is apparently power hungry too.

Another thing to watch out for is some device makers will not use the discrete DSP and GPU in snap and use the integrated features to save cost.

No contest on the ram though, but reports are it is not an issue and I will take the 32 gigs of fast media memory the N900 has and HD2 does not:)

Also, since WM is a resource and memory hog, HD2 will need the extra memory more than the N900 will.

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

But the Snapdragon HD2 is reported to have a good battery life, OK it needs to be charged every night like most smart phones but it will get you through a whole day. I hope the N900 will.

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

I'm confused as to where this idea of the Snapdragon platform being "weaker" than that of the N900 comes from. Can someone please enlighten me?

N900:

Cortex Arm 8 Omap 3430 CPU at 600 MHz
DSP 400+ MHz
PowerVR SGX 530 GPU (14 MPolys/s)


Snapdragon platform:

Modified Cortex Arm 8 CPU at 1000 MHz
DSP 600 MHz
3D graphics – (22MPolys/s)

What am I missing?

Regarding the HD2, from the previews I've seen this device flies. No lag or stuttering whatsoever. I have yet to see a video where the N900 offers that kind of fluidity.

Personally I would never own a WinMo 6.x device, but the idea that the N900 wouldn't improve with a Snapdragon chipset seems unfounded.

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

Hard to argue about being unfounded. We have neither device to compare right now :( It will be nice to see if HD2 can play Quake 3 as smoothly with sound as N900, but we already know control will be better on N900 due to KB.

As far as polys, it is all theoretical for both and we would need to see the correlating curves of both devices in relation to power output. Which GPU can push the polys efficiently.

Sorry if messed up. Typing on G1.

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

Don't forget these are SoC (System on a Chip). The RAM is not separate, it's stacked on top of the CPU in a single physical chip. Also, I don't know if TI has a 512 MB SoC for the OMAP 3 - 3430.

And as far as 1 Ghz goes this is not your normal Mhz game because in addition to the CPU there is a GPU, and one or more DSP's. (i.e. you could have chip A decoding MP3's on the main CPU and chip B decoding it using the DSP. Chip A could have a faster CPU, but chip B could "appear" faster because the main CPU has more cycles available).

Therefore, anything except for comparing one processor to another processor in the same family with different Mhz, is like comparing apples to oranges. I'm not saying the 1 Ghz Snapdragon isn't "faster" than the 600 Mhz TI OMAP at some things, but hard specs alone don't make it better.

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

I support open source and standards. Not to mention, WinMo 6.x is rather clunky and ugly IMO.

I do like HTC's Sense UI though.

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

Sounds like we will need a Quake 3 test. :) Crank the bot difficulty up so the cpu gets a workout and the GPU's can do their thing too with the polys and textures :)

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

Whatever's faster will depend on two things..

1) degree of operating system optimization
2) hardware (and it's not necessarily a straight 1:1 compare and contrast).

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

I too am disappointed that the N900 has only 256 MB of ram and that Nokia has been advertising claims of 1 GB using the heavily asterisked fig leaf of a 768 MB swap file. All the previous Nokia tablets had inadequate ram for their era/use as well and frequently bogged down after more than a few apps were open. While the N900 has twice as much ram as the N810, Fremantle presumably has a much larger system footprint as well. 512 MB of ram would have provided a much bigger cushion for running applications.

I got to play with an N900 for a couple hours this last week thanks to Matt Miller. The group discussed and played with multitasking and the conclusion was that while in theory the system could have dozens of applications open at a time, the practical limit before the system starts to feel sluggish is more like 4-5.

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.

But hey, don't worry about it. The flash only has to last through the warranty period and Nokia will expect you to buy another $600 device next year. After the 770 abandonment and no clear statement from Nokia with regard to Maemo 6 support, does anyone really expect anything different?

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

All this talk of N900 vs HD2,iPhone,Driod is a bit weird. Its really and I mean really hard to compare these things because first and foremost the software running on all of them is very different even tho they have almost similar hardware. Its like all the motherboard reviews we all read with thousands of benchmarks using standard set of tools. But the difference here is that we don't have a standard set of tools which can be run without the different operating systems on the mobile hardware and until we can have such software that we could flash the hardware with we won't be getting any real benchmarks on the hardware. Benchmarks using applications like Quake, Office, Google Maps etc against power consumption... won't give you a real number since the underlying operating system can and will get updates later in its life cycle. So we should all try to avoid comparing these apples n oranges n grape fruits and just look at the device with the operating system as a whole and see which one suits your specific needs.

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

Hehe good thing if you buy it with a credit card (but not Discover) you get an automatic additional 1 year warranty. So that means your covered for two years. Then Squaretrade makes it another year.

But yeah if Nokia does that I'm switching to Android next time. Might as well familarize myself with their platform if Nokia insists on screwing with the community.

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

exactly nashith...different OS's, optimized in different ways...Symbian for instance runs pretty well on the older ARM 11, like the 5800, optimized well...faster processor would help a bit but not too much.

Windows mobile is very intensive so it needs a fast processor...600MHZ processors struggle on WM

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

To give people an idea of how much RAM is generally available:

with only the following open: photobrowser (no pic loaded), calculator, xterminal, web browser with cnn.com open there is 5MB free physical free out of the 256MB
- with no apps open, there is 30MB physical free out of the 256MB

Kind of disappointing that your forced into swap if you run more than just the web browser.

Its kinda like running Vista (uses 800MB) with only 1GB RAM. Its fine unless you run several 'large' apps (Firefox, MSWord, Excel, playing a movie etc)

For those who are not aware, virtual RAM is not 'magic', there is a cost. If there are multiple apps actively competing for the virtual RAM, the O/S is going to use up CPU cycles to page in/out from disk into RAM plus the wait time for the IO the complete.

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

Linux uses free memory as cache so you can't just look at memory free and determine the available memory for applications.

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

Jeesh! I guess the browser is like a desktop one, since it is using just as much memory as one. Does not seem too efficient. Wrong?

CNN might be the problem ;)

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

If it doesn't ship this week, I'll go back to the flagship store and look at the 'swap in use' instead

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

Which will tell you jack again because linux doesnt work like you are used to. It uses as much memory as it is able to so free memory is something you dont want to see because its then not using the system memory to its advantage. The only time this becomes an issue is if you completely max out your swap and you need to start paging in and out

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

How does paying my credit card give you an additional year of warranty??

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

Credit cards aren't just to screw you over and put you in debt (though they shouldn't if you can keep your spending in rein and watch your finances) If you purchase electronic items with credit cards, most credit card companies (except discover) as part of their benefits give you an additiona year's worth of coverage simply by buying the product using the credit card. To file a claim (say after Nokia's warranty runs out and your n900 breaks two months after) you just file it with the credit card company and they'll get it replaced. This of course depends on who your card issuer is and their terms. Mine pretty much adds a year to whatever electronic device I buy. :D

- source

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

dude, the minute you see 'swap in use' above 0 means you've ran out of physical RAM. When you've ran out of physical RAM you're gonna page in and out 'IF' you have several active processes.

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

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?

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

Yes, the swap space is on a separate partition from where the data goes.

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

Yep and once the original paging in has been accomplished and the program is resident you should see very little paging in and out - yet your free memory is going to be very low and your swap usage high.

I admit I would have liked to see 512 MB of actual RAM - but simply saying there was almost none free doesnt tell is anything I need vmstat output :)

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

you should then be worried every time your computers hd spins up too... please read threads concerning ram & flash and you'll see why premature flash wear is really questionable worry.

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

It's not that simple. Yes, it means you have more data stored in VM than you have physical RAM. But, some of that may be e.g. cached files, which may never be paged in again (eventually being dropped after swap fills up with such "let's keep it in case we need it later" data). Even if it is paged in later, this would be substituting a slow swap operation for an even slower filesystem operation, not the harmful page thrashing when not all active processes fit in physical RAM at once.

It's IMO unfair to call this "ran out of physical RAM", and your conclusion is plain wrong -- it simply won't lead to excessive paging if the several active processes are fitting comfortably in RAM, and the only things paged out to swap are cache.

(And yeah, I'd like more RAM, and I get that swap is slow -- my point is simply that you are misunderstanding or distorting the actual behavior of the system.)

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

Next Nokia tablet better surpass those specs........seriously!

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

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.


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.

Over the expected lifespan of these devices its probably impossible to wear down the NAND, although does eMMC even have wear leveling? I was under the impression eMMC, MMC, SD, etc did not.[/quote]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.

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

Wait a minute... Windows Mobile is not as slow as some people are making it out to be. On top of that, there are plenty of WM devices out there that had 32 to 64MB of RAM and multi-tasked just fine. I use to run streaming software in the background while browsing, leaving my email open, etc. with no problems on my 300MHz 64MB iPaq. I even installed a "beta" version of WM6.5 about five months ago (on a different device) just to test it out. It ran fine. Now, if it had hardware acceleration, it would have been even better.

I personally am tired of the look of WM and is why I love my N810. But that doesn't mean that it was bloatware like Vista. It did most everything that my NIT does and some things it doesn't such as infrared control. It also has thousands of more apps available for it with many of them being free.

And when it comes to swap files, I run my N810 without a swap file. I do run into the "out of memory" error once in a while but feel that it is a good trade off to swapping RAM around and incurring the slow downs. I turned off everything on my desktop just to keep memory and processor time to a minimum. But, this is something that you could do with the N900 as well.

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

The RAM is not part of the SoC and is not supplied by TI.Yes, you can mount it on top (to save space/cost) but you don't need to, there are designs using same OMAP with separate RAM chips. The parts (OMAP chip, RAM/NAND chip) are bought separately and are soldered in factory just like other components. For available parts see http://www.micron.com/products/mcps/

The biggest RAM Micron lists even today is 2gb=256MB. When N900 was designed there was possibly no other option. Today there is 512MB available too, see http://igep-platform.com/shop/index....products_id=23 but that option was not available few months ago.

As for the Qualcomm SoC, not sure about Snapdragon but previous chips (MSM7200A) say it has 288 RAM but only ~180MB is really available to Windows Mobile. And when device boots most of it is already used. My Touch Diamond2 has 183MB of program memory (RAM) and 111MB is already in use when no user application is running.

I guess they are cheating somehow and count also RAM reserved for radio module or something. I wonder how much of that HD2's 448MB RAM is really available as program memory and how much is free when system boots.

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

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.

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

I have running 8 xterms, torrents, mysql server and postgresql, apache a mythbackend (recording tv), and am using 265MB physical. In this case it means +/- caches and buffers as they don't count. it uses as much as it is able to! 5xx it uses, some 25x is cache and the rest (1500MB) is used for page files and other kernel stuff and is free in the second I need it, at this state my system even swaps some MB. swapping on solid devices isnt as bad as it was 4 years ago...

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

I guess the questions you should be asking is that whether the N900 is limited by the amount of ram (+ the swap solution) it has, and the same goes for the CPU speed. Not to any absolute numbers, since the numbers are ultimately a bit meaningless. I think the answer there should be in the lines that the N900 hardware is much relative to the iPhone 3GS or the Palm Pre hardware, and therefore very much sufficient to provide a good user experience. You should realize that the HW solution is faster than "99%" (or whatever is the number, high anyway) of all similar sized devices out there. Power consumption is a major major issue with mobile devices. You don't just add megahertz without consequences.

Yes, better hardware will come along all the time, but that's not really the point. Devices are planned and created for the hardware that exists (to be available at the end of the design project) in the roadmaps at the time of the planning. One day the N900 hardware will be outdated, but that day hasn't come yet, and won't come for some time.

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

IIRC, intel has pretty much dropped processor classification by clock frequency, because they realised it had no meaning. They now use 'code-names' (like Q8500), and frequencies are pretty much disregarded.
Remember that a 100MHz cpu that does twice as many ops per cycle (double bandwidth) is just as good as a 200MHz processor, just with lower overhead => lower consumption
I have a feeling the snapdragon is not 'modified' for the better, and they need to compensate by increasing clock.
I agree that advertising 1GB of ram is wrong and that marketing people should be shot. In fact, who's to say you don't have 10GB (by extending swap partition) ? However, i don't think that's much of a problem. I have just 1GB in my desktop, and it successfully runs a full fedora system with all the apps i can use, hardly ever filling up memory. And while slower than RAM, NAND memory is nevertheless much better than a slowpoke HDD

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

Total Dealbreaker!



;)

Re: HD2 has 1ghz processor and 448MB ram, why not the n900?
 

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...