Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Gaming and hardware

[Dan MacDonald]

Hi Rob

>
> Does anyone bother with gaming, and what are you experiences, what hardware
> do you use?  I know people have used Intels NUCs - is anyone still using
> one, and how is that working out?

I'm not really a gamer. I used to be until around the time of the PSX
/ Dreamcast, then I largely lost interest in the games but I still pay
attention to the tech. I am currently learning Godot with a view to
creating some games of my own, just for fun.

The situation is the same a ever on the PC - Nvidia are the only
serious choice of you're serious about gaming and don't mind the
binary blob, nouveau is still trying to catch up (and now hampered by
the closed firmware modern Nvidia boards require) and some Radeon
cards have some pretty good FLOSS drivers, if not as good as the
closed Nvidia or AMD ones.

>
> I'm also coveting a Dragonbox Pyra!  Has anyone been following this?  It's
> pretty much a new version of the Pandora from a few years back, with a
> different person in charge.  https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/

I was interested until they announced it was using a Imgtec PVR
chipset. I'd like something similar that uses an Adreno, VideoCore or
Vivante GC2000/3000 GPU as these are the ARM GPUs with working open
source graphics drivers.The Videocore (VC4) is the only one of the
three that has open source HW video decoding/encoding although I hear
that is coming soon to Freedreno too.

I have bought myself a SABRE Lite board because I wanted an ARM board
with SATA and open source GPU drivers and I saw one going for £55.
Other affordable iMX6 / Vivante boards include the Hummingboard i2eX
(£80 - mSATA) and the wandboard quad, ~£100. The WB quad has 2GB RAM
but lacks onboard SATA power (unlike the SABRE Lite) so you'll need an
external PSU for any SATA drives.