# Odroid or Raspberry Pi?



## Ziggy Zigzagoon (May 23, 2013)

To put this simply, I want a machine that I can take with me and emulate plenty of games with an USB hard disk attached that has all the games I want to bring. I would either attach the system itself to a portable screen and play the games on the go or connect the system to a television screen, projector, or anything on those lines and play the games on the screen. I am hoping to be able to play Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo Revolution, and Sony PlayStation 2 games from the device... I also hope to be able to use the Real-Time Clock functions in games with a *true and honest* Real Time Clock (instead of, say, a patch). (On the objects I have, I already have a spare hard drive for carrying ISOs and ROMs, but I use an enclosure than requires 2 USB ports. I am willing to buy some other form of memory or another type of enclosure... I also have a 4GB Regular SD card, 8GB MicroSD Card, 16GB MicroSD Card, audio jacks and headphones, a miniHDMI to HDMI cable, a USB Mouse, a Nintendo Wireless Keyboard, and a LAN cable. I also can install a VNC server in my Android tablet, but I would rather have to buy only a Bluetooth adapter and connect through the tablet through IP over Bluetooth.)

Both systems have certain benefits...

*Odroid-U2*

1.7 Ghz CPU (theoretically play Dolphin and PCSX2 emulators)
Microphone Attached
Quad-Core 440Mhz GPU
*Odroid-X2*

Same benefits of Odroid-U2, but...
Audio Input
Camera Support
More USB Ports
*Raspberry Pi*

Already has emulator support
Can connect to regular television sets with composite video
Cheaper price
Easier to handle(?)
Easier to replace
Higher community support
Java-free Minecraft (though there is the problem that this Minecraft is worse than the regular one)
MicroUSB Charging (no need for buying another cable for charging)


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## FAST6191 (May 23, 2013)

You will be lucky to get proper N64 on the pi any time soon let alone PS2. Indeed maybe aside from the gamecube my advice if you wanted to play one of those is make a portable version of the console in question or get a laptop you just paid through the nose for.

Similarly the raspberry pi does support various webcams.


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## dickfour (May 23, 2013)

I just got the beaglebone black. Similar price to the Pi but with 1ghz processor. The beagle is the hot new board at the moment. The odroid looks nice but it's also a lot more expensive. For me the whole point of these boards is to have a cheap computer on my tv but what you get really depends on your needs. Odroid was the first company to make an android handheld. It looked like a big wonderswan.


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## trumpet-205 (May 23, 2013)

You will be much better off building LGA1155 Mini-ITX w/Core i3 than those ARM boards.* Those ARM boards are no where near acceptable to play N64, PS2, Gamecube, or even a Wii game. ARM simply does not have the computation power needed to emulate those games properly.*


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## Ziggy Zigzagoon (May 24, 2013)

trumpet-205 said:


> You will be much better off building LGA1155 Mini-ITX w/Core i3 than those ARM boards.* Those ARM boards are no where near acceptable to play N64, PS2, Gamecube, or even a Wii game. ARM simply does not have the computation power needed to emulate those games properly.*


Are you sure that i3 is sufficiently strong? (I mean, why i3 instead of an i5 or 17?)


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## trumpet-205 (May 24, 2013)

Ziggy Zigzagoon said:


> Are you sure that i3 is sufficiently strong? (I mean, why i3 instead of an i5 or 17?)


Yes they are strong enough.

You have couple options here,
* AMD APU (A8 and A10) paired with Mini-ITX FM2 motherboard. ---> balanced setup
* Intel Core i3-3225 paired with Mini-ITX LGA1155 motherboard. ---> very powerful CPU but weak GPU. You can get around weak GPU by dropping settings and offload GPU to CPU (such as selecting AVX instead of DirectX in PCSX2)
* Intel Core i3 with HD7750+ paired with Mini-ITX LGA1155 motherboard ---> ultimate setup

AMD FX won't work here because there is no decent AM3+ mini-ITX motherboard.


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## jrk190 (May 24, 2013)

Get a Cubieboard. As for emulation, it should be fine, My Xperia play has half as much ram and a lower CPU clock (Though I OC.) and still emulates fine. It's a single core ARM v7 with an Adreno GPU.


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## trumpet-205 (May 24, 2013)

jrk190 said:


> Get a Cubieboard. As for emulation, it should be fine, My Xperia play has half as much ram and a lower CPU clock (Though I OC.) and still emulates fine. It's a single core ARM v7 with an Adreno GPU.


Emulating N64, PS2, GameCube, or Wii game?


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## Snailface (May 24, 2013)

Another problem with the Pi is no realtime clock. Benefits, however, are tiny power consumption (.7W) and price ($25).

But you will be limited to GBA emulation and everything below it.


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## war2thegrave (May 24, 2013)

trumpet-205 said:


> Emulating N64, PS2, GameCube, or Wii game?


What's so hard about emulating the nintendo 64?
I could do that 10 years ago with a 500mhz pentium 3.


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## raulpica (May 24, 2013)

war2thegrave said:


> What's so hard about emulating the nintendo 64?
> I could do that 10 years ago with a 500mhz pentium 3.


Accurate emulation is pretty taxing on Android devices.

You might be remembering UltraHLE, which was heavily optimized for just a few games, and didn't really emulate the N64 in its entirety. That made it so "fast" it could even run on a Pentium 3.


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## FAST6191 (May 24, 2013)

war2thegrave said:


> What's so hard about emulating the nintendo 64?
> I could do that 10 years ago with a 500mhz pentium 3.



A pentium 3 is not an ARM processor, also you were not emulating in the traditional sense but taking advantage of what was then a new technique of dynamic recompilation (did it only work well on a handful of games and be reasonably error prone at given points within others?) mixed in with a bunch of game specific emulation/workarounds/fixes.

No doubt some of that could be ported/remade accordingly and indeed some people are trying various things here, it is just a pain and not what a lot of emulation users seek (regardless of what they will say) so the incentive is not really there.


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## trumpet-205 (May 24, 2013)

war2thegrave said:


> What's so hard about emulating the nintendo 64?
> I could do that 10 years ago with a 500mhz pentium 3.


Getting it running and having playable experience are two different things.

Like raulpica have said, back then emulator did not emulate N64 fully. It resorted to using various hacks and dirty tricks to get just only a few game working. Its compatibility overall is no good.


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## Ziggy Zigzagoon (May 25, 2013)

Thank you all. I decided to split my project in two parts: one that is stronger (that uses a proper computer motherboard) and one that is more portable that uses the Raspberry Pi. (I am fine with playing games that are no stronger than the GameBoy Advance, even if I can not play Nintendo 64 games. I just want a portable emulator machine, complete with screen and electricity.)


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## war2thegrave (May 25, 2013)

trumpet-205 said:


> Getting it running and having playable experience are two different things.
> 
> Like raulpica have said, back then emulator did not emulate N64 fully. It resorted to using various hacks and dirty tricks to get just only a few game working. Its compatibility overall is no good.


 
I was using project 64. Your points were just as applicable even up to today though since the state of n64 emulation hasn't advanced any since then.
N64 emulation is just as crap now as it was back then. 
I just thought that there would be enough devices available that could emulate it that they would negate it's status as some kind of benchmark.


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## LoloLakitu (May 25, 2013)

Ziggy Zigzagoon said:


> Thank you all. I decided to split my project in two parts: one that is stronger (that uses a proper computer motherboard) and one that is more portable that uses the Raspberry Pi. (I am fine with playing games that are no stronger than the GameBoy Advance, even if I can not play Nintendo 64 games. I just want a portable emulator machine, complete with screen and electricity.)


If you want a portable emulator machine, just get a PSP and softmod it. It even plays N64! (not every game though)


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## Ziggy Zigzagoon (May 26, 2013)

LoloLakitu said:


> If you want a portable emulator machine, just get a PSP and softmod it. It even plays N64! (not every game though)


There is no PSP port of RetroArch, though.


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