New Hardware toy!
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Absolutely worth it, if you have money to spare. I wouldn't recommend buying one as an Android device. It's a PC peripheral, basically, a really expensive one that a few other things. Works extremely well as a media device, as you can grab an HDMI to HDMI Mini cable, and hook it up to your TV, and it currently only outputs in 1080P, but it's been promised we'll get all the way up to 4K for media playback soon. It also (again, dual band router needed) effectively replaces any game console you could want via the PC streaming. You can hook it up to the TV, grab a Bluetooth Controller or a mouse and keyboard, and play your PC in all of their hyper detailed glory, making any console game look like a sad mobile version. The only drawback is that they're going to release a SHIELD 2 at some point in the next while, so it almost defeats the purpose of this. The next one is supposed to have a 1080P screen, a better controller, 4GB of RAM, and a Tegra K1 Processor (The one based off of the TITAN SuperComputer), which is supposed to be faster than most last Gen desktop CPU's under the $500 mark. Absolutely crazy power for a handheld, but the current SHIELD is still the most powerful mobile device.
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@StrongBad Nothing really so far, just what my PC can stream, and Dead Trigger 2 (Very impressive title). I'm planning on picking up Portal, Half Life 2, and Grand Theft Auto 1, 2, 3, Vice City, and San Andreas for it soon.
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Tegra K1 isn't even as fast as some of the $100 hobby boards. It's a nice proc but it is one generation old in ARM terms and only half the core count of their higher end processors and still part of their 32bit platform. It's the A15 already surpassed by the A17. The A5x family is the much more powerful 64bit AArch64 platform.
It's nice but nowhere close to a mid end desktop processor.
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When they talk about the Titan, they are saying that this has a Kepler-based GPU. This is an APU with CPU and GPU merged like low end AMD desktop models.
All the are saying is that it is a low power CPU with a nice GPU sharing the silicon.
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My bad, I didn't mention that it's a special K1 with a separate GPU on it's own chip for the Shield 2. Probably should have specified
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@Mike-Ralston said:
My bad, I didn't mention that it's a special K1 with a separate GPU on it's own chip for the Shield 2. Probably should have specified
My point was that it's not a very fast processor. Nothing compared to an Intel i3 for example. The GPU is impressive but a standard graphics card would spank it too. It's amazing for a handheld. But would be a very low end desktop.
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Have you seen the specifications on it? On paper, it's faster than an i5 2540M.
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@Mike-Ralston said:
Have you seen the specifications on it? On paper, it's faster than an i5 2540M.
On paper it is faster in what way than an i5? It's a fraction of the CPU power.
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Talk of K1 in servers. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2153560/nvidias-tegra-k1-chip-might-wind-up-in-servers.html
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@Nic said:
I would have gotten it for the streaming, but you can't run anything else on the computer at the same time, which defeats the purpose.
Now you can stream games from outside your home network, with relatively little lag, and there's only room for improvement.
@scottalanmiller said:
@Mike-Ralston said:
Have you seen the specifications on it? On paper, it's faster than an i5 2540M.
On paper it is faster in what way than an i5? It's a fraction of the CPU power.
The SHIELD 2 will be running an overclocked, unlocked version of the K1 chip. The K1 they're using is not even a stock K1, or even a boosted K1. It's one developed specially for this platform that will be able to run a lot of PC titles natively, as well as mobile emulation of possibly last gen Game Consoles like the Xbox 360. The stock K1 can preform all the necessary operations that are required to drive a car, all by itself, and it does it better than Google's several hundred pounds of hardware they've been using. This is the single beefiest mobile processor in existence, and it's just gonna get better.
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@Mike-Ralston said:
@Nic said:
I would have gotten it for the streaming, but you can't run anything else on the computer at the same time, which defeats the purpose.
Now you can stream games from outside your home network, with relatively little lag, and there's only room for improvement.
@scottalanmiller said:
@Mike-Ralston said:
Have you seen the specifications on it? On paper, it's faster than an i5 2540M.
On paper it is faster in what way than an i5? It's a fraction of the CPU power.
The SHIELD 2 will be running an overclocked, unlocked version of the K1 chip. The K1 they're using is not even a stock K1, or even a boosted K1. It's one developed specially for this platform that will be able to run a lot of PC titles natively, as well as mobile emulation of possibly last gen Game Consoles like the Xbox 360. The stock K1 can preform all the necessary operations that are required to drive a car, all by itself, and it does it better than Google's several hundred pounds of hardware they've been using. This is the single beefiest mobile processor in existence, and it's just gonna get better.
PC titles natively? How can that be. It's not PC architecture. Do you have a link? Something is fishy with this info. The K1 isn't even built on the top platform from ARM. It's fourth down on the list.
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Well, I'm currently sitting here playing Half Life 2 Natively. It looks better than it if were on highest setting on a PC, full particle effects and such. No other mobile device can do that.
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Even within the 32bit ARM world, the K1 is not up to spec with the Mediatek MT6595 which uses eight A17 cores rather than four A15 cores. Not quite the clock speed if the K1 but higher per thread performance and double the thread count. Likely 50%-80% greater performance.
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@Mike-Ralston said:
Well, I'm currently sitting here playing Half Life 2 Natively. It looks better than it if were on highest setting on a PC, full particle effects and such. No other mobile device can do that.
You are using natively in a confusing way and talking about the wrong thing. What do you mean by native. A PC native app cannot run on an ARM. So are you emulating or do you have an ARM native app?
And you are testing the GPU, not the CPU. You are talking as if we are discussing CPU power but video game graphics aren't processed by that. They come via the GPU.
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The particle effects and physics for Half Life 2 are done via CPU. And my mistake, by natively I mean that it isn't getting hardware support from PC streaming or anything. So far as I've seen, PhysX and video encoding are the most taxing CPU processes, and this has been running them without a hitch or hiccup. I know a few people who have 3770K's that choke with PhysX rendering.
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@Mike-Ralston said:
The particle effects and physics for Half Life 2 are done via CPU. And my mistake, by natively I mean that it isn't getting hardware support from PC streaming or anything. So far as I've seen, PhysX and video encoding are the most taxing CPU processes, and this has been running them without a hitch or hiccup. I know a few people who have 3770K's that choke with PhysX rendering.
PhysX is explicitly GPU. Always has been. Particular effects should be GPU too. Nothing significant in 3D graphics is CPU bound. Your seeing the GPU at work.
You can't even enable PhysX without a GPU and specifically an nVidia one. That's a GeForce proprietary physics engine.
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Video encoding can be done by CPU but practically never is. All of the "taxing" that you are seeing is the CPU providing data pipes to and from the GPU. The GPU is doing the real work.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Mike-Ralston said:
The particle effects and physics for Half Life 2 are done via CPU. And my mistake, by natively I mean that it isn't getting hardware support from PC streaming or anything. So far as I've seen, PhysX and video encoding are the most taxing CPU processes, and this has been running them without a hitch or hiccup. I know a few people who have 3770K's that choke with PhysX rendering.
PhysX is explicitly GPU. Always has been. Particular effects should be GPU too. Nothing significant in 3D graphics is CPU bound. Your seeing the GPU at work.
You can't even enable PhysX without a GPU and specifically an nVidia one. That's a GeForce proprietary physics engine.
I haven't messed around with video settings in a while, but I do recall being able to choose PhysX to run on either CPU or GPU.
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You are correct. I looked it up and there is a "software" version to allow it to go to CPU. It would be a dog though.
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Yeah, had an AMD chip for a year or so and had PhysX. I'm somewhat sure (Don't quote me on this lol) that the Shield uses the GPU exclusively for rendering, and then CPU does the PhysX end.
