Pocket Sized Dual Core Gaming Computer – GPD Win 2
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,686 words · ~8 min read
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remember when we showed off the gpd win
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a super tiny but full-fledged Windows
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computer well guess what there's a sequel and it's in a black and
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gold box and it comes out like this look people like unboxings right
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look at this thing it's bigger faster and better in every
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possible way let's check it out
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all right so now that our Windows update is done let's take a closer look at this
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guy we've got some kind of rubberized grips on the side here and here so that
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you don't lose your grip we've got a cooling fan um got kind of a black and gray
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aesthetic and then we can just i guess open it up and get started
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so right out of the box like spec wise this thing is really impressive the
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display is a six inch gorilla glass topped hips 10 point multi-touch display
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so it's 1280 by 720 which is not amazing
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today but is good enough for a device this size
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the processor is a core m3 7y30
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so what's cool about that is that that is not atom based that's a 15 watt kb
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lake that runs one gigahertz base 2.6
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gigahertz boost it's got two cores and it's hyper threaded it's running Intel
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hd graphics 615 so not the most capable
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we'll look at it a little closer later eight gigs of lpddr3 RAM it's got you
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can actually see it here on the bottom support for up to a 42 millimeter m.2
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though it should be noted it runs hci not NVMe it's got dual band ac wi-fi so
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i'd like to see how it handles something like steam and home streaming and packed
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into this you can see it's quite thick it's got two
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4 900 milliamp hour batteries for up to
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six to eight hours of battery life
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i'm really impressed with the io2 just like i was last time around so here come
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come have a look at this so you've got your usb type-c that handles charging
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duties and from our testing also handles
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outputting to like a usbc dongle so you could adapt it to HDMI or an sd slot or
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whatever else you want it's got a headphone jack
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it's got a usb 3 type a port it's got a microsd slot and it's also got a micro
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HDMI output so if you wanted to hook it up to a monitor or something then you
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could totally do that right now being totally honest the
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speakers aren't great but apparently this is
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mostly a driver issue that they're already aware of this is a pre-production sample and i'm more
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concerned in the longer term with the inputs the keyboard
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right off the bat way improved over the
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last generation it doesn't have a ton of flex to it and the tactile click of the
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keys like actually feels pretty good like it's not
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like i type on it all day or anything but
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way better than i expected and just like last time this little switch right here
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super handy so you change the joysticks from gamepad mode over to mouse mode and
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all of a sudden boom there you go you're moving your mouse cursor around it's not
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you know a nipple and it's not a track pad but with a little bit of practice
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you could definitely get really good with this thing
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joystick quality now that was really impressive apparently these are sourced
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from the japanese company alps which i totally believe because they
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feel really good like like like almost ds grade good and as for the shoulder
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buttons hear that these are nice clicky buttons
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on our two r1 and r3 now it should be
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noted that these were a little hard to distinguish
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especially at first from each other while gaming but i do think it's
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something that you might get used to uh something that would take a little longer to get used to is the weight this
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thing is a touch heavy it's about 460 grams and making matters worse the
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screen tilt is like just a little bit too far this way
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then all the way this way so i can't quite find myself in that perfect
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comfortable in between it'll kind of snap out like that but uh
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okay enough talk about hypotheticals let's uh let's fire up some games
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one thing that's really nice right out of the gate on a device like
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this with steam in-home streaming is if you have to make any configuration
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changes or if you run into any issues with it in general which
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let's face it they're a thing it's a lot easier to fix them and make
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any adjustments on a full-fledged computer than with
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you know something like a shield portable which as you guys probably know
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i'm a big fan of this is basically what it looks like running a game elsewhere
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on the network over wi-fi so check this
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out see those tips right there controller disconnected spacebar okay
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boom we're in pc mode hold it to drain urics for health
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switch to gamepad mode and
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boom it's working again already and all the prompts will change again so that we
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won't make any mistakes in terms of our control scheme check that out b to drop
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so the idea here is that over your home network using steam or even over the
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internet assuming your connection is good enough using a service like parsec
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if you have a powerful enough machine somewhere you can play full quality
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games even though the GPU on this thing
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really is not nearly powerful enough to run games like
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shadow of war so how bad you might ask running things
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natively well integrated graphics are still what
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they are so here i've got a steam library running
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off of this external one terabyte drive so i've got a bunch of different games
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installed and you're gonna see here that even in a fairly uh indie game not super
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demanding like gang beasts we're seeing occasional stutters and this is running
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at 720p actually not even apparently we're
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running with pillar boxes for some reason like to be clear it's not fair to expect
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deus ex mankind divided to run well uh you know even
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even at 720p hold on i got this guy i got this guy uh
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on all low settings but as long as you're just looking at
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kind of older games and you don't expect to be getting a smooth 60 or a 120
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frames per second not that would matter it's a 60hz display
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it's not the worst thing ever though i'd personally definitely prefer to stream
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off something else if i'm running something demanding
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emulation on the other hand is the win 2's wheelhouse so check this out this is
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star fox assault running on a gamecube emulator without any problems 60 FPS at
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the original resolution so that's at 480. less demanding titles can actually
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run enhanced at gpd's native 720p
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resolution and it goes pretty much without saying that it works really well
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for snes n64 psx via retroarch but we were
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actually pretty surprised to see that it works reasonably well with playstation 2
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games even at original resolution again though now
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we did see more than the occasional slowdown in grand theft auto for example
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but again in less demanding games this shouldn't be as much of a problem and
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input lag overall was basically negligible
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okay so what you're probably wondering at this point sorry can i actually take that from you enough grand theft auto at
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work what you're probably wondering at this point is how much does one of these
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cost well like its predecessor the win 2 is pretty pricey so it's 600 while it's
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running on its uh i don't remember which crowdfunding campaign site it is but
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while it's running its crowdfunding campaign and then 700 after that
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but it's got a lot of versatility and the fact that there is a second one means
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that there's clearly a market for these devices out there because the first one
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wasn't exactly cheap either
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LTT we're going to have that linked below so thanks for watching guys if this
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