GPD-Win Gaming UMPC

I went with the 200GB Sandisk Ultra, because... price. $169 for 256GB vs $70 for 200GB. I was hoping Sandisk would come up with a 256GB version of their Ultra Fit USB 3.0 drive because it's tiny. I have the 128GB version. But best thing would be if GPD put an M.2 slot internally, even for a 42mm M.2 SATA type drive. Or suggested by someone at IGG an internal USB header so we can solder on our own USB flash drive.

 

Do you know whether there is any speed difference between the two cards? I noticed in this emulation video the guy said the minor stutter he got while playing Smash Bros was due to his 200GB Sandisk card.



I looked up the Sandisk Ultra fit and quite a few reviews mentioned over heating at USB 3.0 speeds causing failures.

 

I just got my GPD-Win today. Just getting it cleaned up before I do any benching. Stupid Intel drivers though won't allow for any custom resolutions. Just want 800x450 because that will allow some games to play well at 16:9 aspect. Gain some FPS over 1280x720.

 

Initial impressions: It is well built and solid, very impressed. The metal casing is well designed and fits well together. The keyboard is very tacticle and easier to use than I expected. Still a bit awkward considering its small size, but it's not intended to be a full use laptop. Although you can easily hook it up to an LCD monitor with the mini HDMI port and USB port for keyboard and mouse support. I did just that and felt like a regular computer. The stock Windows install had zero bloatware. It was a clean fresh install of Windows. A couple odd things off the bad I did notice though is if you have it plugged in, and battery is full, when you power on, it won't boot up, it will just show a battery icon showing it's 100% full and then shuts down. Also, the corner bumper buttons feel a bit loose and take a bit of pressure to engage them. This is good and bad, so you don't get accidental button presses, since they act like mouse buttons.

I like the manual switch for the fan underneath for off, medium, high settings. So you have absolute control over sound and cooling. The right joystick works as a mouse, and there is a manual switch to change mode between Xbox controller, mouse, and D-pad. Stock speed for mouse control is a little slow, but easily adjustable. The display is glossy touch, and also has an orientation sensor because the screen will rotate with the device orientation. The hinge for the lid has a good amount of friction and stays in place. The 1280x720 60Hz screen is crisp and clean, brightness at maximum is quite bright, viewing angles are great. No backlight bleed at all.

Battery had 8% wear out of the box, but I haven't cycled it yet to get it calibrated. It should easily get 5-6 hours basic use and 3-4 with gaming depending on the game and settings, etc.

Overall this thing is solid, heavier than expected but it's not bad at all. I only have just gotten Windows 10 updates installed and now am going to have to wait until this evening to install some games and see how it fares. I plan on doing a copper shim mod eventually, but it looks like a pain in the butt to disassemble, but manageable. But will get a baseline for temps and performance first. I'm not one for Gamepad gameplay, but there are many older console port titles that will work great with this device that were built with older game consoles in mind (i.e. Xbox and PS2) that will manage well. Not to mention a multitude of indie titles.

Overall I am impressed with the device out of the box. We'll see how it holds up over time and with actual performance.

 

I noticed a stutter when playing Tactics Ogre Psp on my Samsung 256 GB (EVO Plus MicroSDXC UHS-I Grade 1 Class 10 Memory Card). This does not occur when using the GPD's internal memory. It does not happen in all games but performance may be lower without people realizing.

I suggest people compare internal to external memory when looking at emulation performance. This all makes me wish the unit came with bigger internal memory because there is not a lot left after the Windows install. Plus you have that space used from the anniversary update too.

 

Nice gadget! I think I could get one from geekbuying as well

 

You can do a Windows Cleanup after Anniversary update and clean up a lot of space.

But yeah, that was my one desire from the beginning, why not include an M.2 42mm slot for storage? Fast, low power, user replaceable mass storage. So far I haven't run into anything that stutters though, but faster storage would be more than welcome.

 

M.2 storage would take up too much space abd generate too much heat.. Probably why Micro-SD card can be used...

Sent from my LG-H850 using Tapatalk

 

M.2 storage wouldn't take up any more space than the eMMC chip and module, which it would replace. And at SATA speeds wouldn't generate any more heat. It's the NVMe drives at fast speed that generates so much heat.

Although I'd just be happy if they offered 128GB or 256GB variants. Although I don't know if 256GB eMMC exists yet.

 

If anybody is interested, price dropped to $339 at geekbuying.

 

It exists... Apple uses it in their iPhone 7 range remember?

 

IIRC iPhones aren't using eMMC drives anymore. I think they use NVMe over PCIe now.
I haven't checked extensively but seems like 128GB eMMC is about the biggest you can get (like in the GPD Pocket). Flagship Snapdragon SoCs support UFS 2.0 so even high-end Android is moving away from eMMC.

PCIe drive could be possible, but it'd probably be limited to one PCIe 2.0 lane (two total on Cherry Trail-T, one would be used by the 7260 WIFI card). That would be.... about 500MB/s max.


Slow SSD or not, I'm getting more and more tempted to buy one of these guys for light-weight Steam gaming

 

They are now offering a 7 inch "laptop" with full keyboard: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gpd-pocket-7-0-umpc-laptop-ubuntu-or-win-10-os-laptop--2#/

7 inch muti-touch 1920 x 1200 with Corning Gorilla Glass 3
Atom X7-Z8750 Quad Core 1.6GHz
8GB LPDDR3 RAM / 128GB Storage eMMC
USB 3.1 Type C, USB 3.0 Type A, Micro HDMI, headset jack
Stereo Speakers
180 x 106 x 18.5 mm / 0.48 kg
12 hours battery life
(No camera yet though - although frequent request, so they may add it)

 

Just thought I'd chime in and say I received my WIN

Here's a summary of things:

• Got it from GeekBuying when they had their sale which included carry case + 64GB Samsung EVO MicroSD. A lot of people say it's expensive, but compared to an equivalent Cherry Trail tablet + controller it's pretty much on par. The fact it's also roughly the size of a DS is also worth something.
• I'm using a cheap Sandisk 200GB (Formatted size is 183GB btw) MicroSD that was on sale on Amazon a while back.
• I've enabled Write-Caching for the SD card which seems to solve the stutter and other I/O issues with the SD card. Also disabled indexing on the card to prevent background I/O access.
• It's a Z8700/Toshi revision (unfortunately missed out on the current Z8750/Sammy revision by about 2 weeks). Performance is pretty good anyway.
• The Screen bezel popped out a bit on the right side while I was applying the Screen Protector. I've since popped it back in but it does pop out on occasion (I guess if the screen gets some torsion on it)
• I wiped it and installed my own Win10 Pro Anniversary. Drivers took some doing (since the keyboard/mouse doesn't work by default) but the driver package on Reddit works great.
• Lack of Stick Click is annoying as some games use it as a movement modifier (sprint etc). There is a mod for this though, might investigate it.
• I run mostly 2D games on it, particularly RPGs and TBS. Stuff like XCOM, Invisible Inc, Baldurs Gate 1+2, FTL, Fallout 1+2, older Tycoon games (RCT2, OpenTTD etc).
• Steam Streaming works great. Haven't tried Moonlight/SHIELD streaming yet though. It's quite a bit lighter than having to run Steam+Big Picture Mode so it may run better.
• Got RetroArch on there which seems to work pretty well (nice controller enabled front-end as well). Lots of config work to wrap my head around though. Fortunately, much of that learning will be transferable to my HTPC.
• Ubuntu/Bash on Windows works great since I can use it as a pocket terminal/ssh machine.
• I might try and dual-boot a Ubuntu or LinuxMint distro on it (probably just on USB storage) to see how that goes.
• The USB3 port apparently has enough juice to power my 2.5" 2TB WD Passport on battery. Did not expect that, given I've read about people having issues powering USB sticks, never-mind HDDs.
• Testing out ThrottleStop. Limiting it to ~2Ghz max with an undervolt keeps temperatures much nicer, especially for longer sessions.

 

Quick update. Undervolting and underclocking is VERY useful on the GPD WIN. Primarily it reduces temperatures rather significantly. Most games and emulators will still run perfectly fine at lower speeds.
I've dropped from 0.74V to 0.685V and it's stable but seems to hit the 5W power limit under standard multipliers.

Currently my stable (ie passes 1024M TS-Bench which takes roughly 20 minutes) profiles are:

Internet:
Multiplier = 20 (1.6ghz max, basically turbo off)
Clockspeed = 1.6ghz
VID = 0.685V
Package Power during bench: ~4.2W
Max Temp Celcius (cores 1/2/3/4): 61/58/61/57
Ambient Temp: 21C
Fan: OFF

Performance:
Multiplier = 26
Clockspeed = 2.1ghz (fluctuates down to 2.05ghz I suspect when Power reaches 5.1W which is over the 5.0W limit)
VID = 0.685V
Package Power during bench: 5.0-5.1W
Max Temp Celcius (cores 1/2/3/4): 67/62/64/62
Ambient Temp: 21C
Fan: OFF

All benches done with fan off, WiFi on, 50% brightness and on BATTERY (not plugged in). Fan is off for the "internet" profile to maximise battery life and multiplier is set to what I feel is still comfortable in the hands.

For some reason core 1 and 3 tend to get hotter (probably less dissipation surface area available based on physical location on the chip).

Next test is to increase package power to 5.2W or so for the "Performance" profile with fan on to see if I can get that clockspeed stable and under a comfortable temperature.

Unfortunately, the Atom doesn't have regular "Turbo Boost" which allows setting different multipliers based on core utilization. You only get "Turbo Burst" which is a global multiplier.
Furthermore, the full 2.6Ghz multiplier is only reliably hit on 1-core utilization from my findings due to the 5W power limit, even with the undervolt. At standard voltage it's probably impossible.

 

I posted a review here if anyone is interested. http://www.ultrabookreview.com/14380-gpd-win-review/

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk

 

Thanks for the info, I might actually buy it.

 

Quick Update on my unit:

1) I'm now running the Windows 10 Creators Update. It won't be deployed via Windows Update for a few days, but you can manually grab it via the Upgrade tool download here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

2) I haven't thoroughly tested the effects of the update (specifically Game Mode). Game mode is somewhat automatic from what I can tell. I run mostly 2D and emulators on my unit so I'm not really pushing it hard and haven't noticed any big differences there. Going to do some further testing during the weekend on heavier titles to see how they go.

3) I've upped the Package Power cap with Throttlestop and it works great. End result is I can now permanently sit on 2.4ghz (full turbo) on ALL 4 cores.

4) .685 Undervolt is not stable at 30T multiplier. Had to up it to .695 to keep it stable under Cinebench.

5) The Undervolt is necessary if you want to hit full turbo safely. Under standard VID (0.74) package power peaks at almost 7W and will shoot well past 70C in seconds under benchtest.

Details
Multiplier: 30
Clockspeed: 2.4ghz (2399.93mhz)
VID: 0.695V
Avg. Package Power during bench: 5.5-5.6W
Peak Package Power: 5.9W
Max Temp Celcius (cores 1/2/3/4): 69/65/66/63
Ambient Temp: 22C
Fan: FULL ON
Time to Complete 32M test: 30.698 seconds
Time to Complete 1024M test: 977.398 seconds
Cinebench R15 (multi-core): 135

 

How are you undervolting your CPU?

 

Using Throttlestop you can modify the "VID" setting which appears to be the fixed voltage at base clock and operates as an offset above and below that.

 

Thanks. I'll give it a shot.

 

Ive been playing some Nintendo DS and GameCube emulation and just installed the Intel Beta Drivers and switched to DX12 in the GameCube. Ive noticed a huge boost in performance from this. The Windows 10 AV edition may have also helped speed things up though. Even Metroid is playable now. Zelda Windwaker seems full speed so far as well.

This looks like a great resource to get the best out of your GPD Win. It has links to driver updates, an image of the GPD Win, tweaks and a compressed zip of all of the GPD Win Drivers.