The AMD Driver Updates and OpenGL Performance

Recently, we got some driver updates from AMD which have significantly improved the open GL performance on these APUs. This is a bit of a hit or miss scenario, but overall, we're seeing much better performance with many games. One specific example is Bayonetta 2 at 1080p Vulcan back in, where we were able to achieve a 15 watt TVP. This level of performance was previously only seen on the Wii U using the simu emulator.

However, it's worth noting that we can still experience some limitations when it comes to scaling up certain games. For instance, Breath of the Wild at 720p pulled up to 30 watts in some cases. While it's possible to lower the resolution and graphic settings to get a smoother performance, 720p seems like a sweet spot for this game, and it's definitely playable. But again, we'll need to push that TDP up next time.

Next Up: Original Xbox Emulation using Cxbx Reloaded

We've also been testing out original Xbox emulation using cxbx reloaded, and while it has its issues. We experienced some black screen issues and sound cutting out, which seems to be related to the newer Radeon drivers not being fully compatible with the latest version of cxbx. Fortunately, this is an ongoing issue that can be fixed as new updates become available.

One of the most impressive aspects of Xbox 360 emulation using Zenia, however, is the significant performance improvements we've seen in recent months. Six months ago, it was virtually impossible to run games at anything close to 60 FPS on this APU. But with the Canary build of Zenia, we're now seeing frame rates that were previously unimaginable. Take Forspaw 2, for example – running at 60 FPS is a truly impressive achievement.

However, when it comes to more demanding titles like After Burner, we do need to push up that TDP to get the performance we want. In this case, we're seeing around 30 Watts, which is definitely needed to maintain smooth gameplay.

PS3 Emulation using RPCS3

Moving on to PS3 emulation using rpcs3, Vulcan has been handling it remarkably well. We've seen consistent performance at 15 watts for easier-to-emulate titles like Ninja Gaiden and Demon Souls. These games are running smoothly and without any issues – it's a great sign that we're on the right track.

However, as with any emulator, there are some limitations to keep in mind. For instance, certain harder-to-emulate games like Skate 3 or God of War 3 require more power than others. In these cases, we need to push up that TDP to get them running smoothly. But for the most part, rpcs3 has been handling PS3 emulation with ease.

PS3 Emulation on the io2 – A Great Experience

One thing that's become clear is that the io2 handles emulation remarkably well. Whether it's cxbx reloaded, Zenia, or rpcs3, this device can handle a wide range of games and emulators without any issues. It's definitely an impressive piece of hardware.

Of course, as with any handheld, there are some trade-offs to consider. We do need to push up that TDP to get the performance we want out of certain games. But overall, the io2 has proven itself to be a powerful and capable device when it comes to emulation.

Additional Features – 40 Gig USB 4

One feature worth mentioning is the io2's support for 40 gig USB 4. This means that users can connect an external GPU (eGPU) if desired. In fact, we've created a video showcasing some performance with an eGPU attached – it's definitely worth checking out.

While this does mean that the io2 could potentially become a full-fledged gaming PC, its primary function as a handheld is still intact. However, for those interested in exploring more advanced features like eGPU support, there's certainly potential here.

Conclusion

Overall, we've been impressed with the io2's performance on various emulators and games. From cxbx reloaded to rpcs3, this device has proven itself to be a capable and powerful handheld. While there are some limitations to keep in mind, such as the need to push up that TDP for certain games, the io2 is definitely worth considering for anyone interested in emulation or gaming on-the-go.

And with its upcoming features like Steam OS installation and eGPU support, the potential for this device goes far beyond just emulation. It's a great example of how hardware can be used to create something truly unique and powerful – we'll continue to monitor its development closely.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's going on everybody it's ETA Prime P here again today we're going to be checking out some high-end emulation on the allnew I Neo 2 now obviously this is a more expensive device than the steam deck but it does outperform the steam deck and you know rightfully so given the price and the specs of this unit and straight off the bat I can tell you right now that this thing is an absolute emulation Powerhouse one of the best handhelds that I've tested so far for emulation and I'm sure we're going to get better ones down the road this has handled absolutely everything that I've thrown at it and in this video we're going to be testing out some PSP some Wii some GameCube some Wii U some switch some 3DS some original Xbox and some Xbox 360 I might have missed one or two in there but we've got a lot to test here but before we get into it I did want to go over a few things like you just saw the AP this is using is the ryzen 76800 U and it's backed up by the Radeon 68m igpu and with this one here we've got 16 GB of LP ddr5 running at 6,400 MHz when it comes to these a devices we have something called a space which will allow us to kind of change the fan curve we can also go through and change the brightness but the main thing here is the TDP we've got a power saving mode at 11 Watts we've also got a balanced mode at 15 watts game mode is 22 and from the pro mode we can actually go all the way up to 33 Watts we can adjust it from 5 to 3 three and at 11 Watts for the lower end stuff it's going to work fine if you just want to do some web browsing and some 4K video playback I would leave it right there but for most of the stuff we're testing in this video I'm going to go with the 15 watt preset until we move up to the really hard to emulate stuff then we'll have to do a little bit of adjustment there but I did want to get that out of the way before we get started here and there's one final thing I want to address before we move into emulation I've actually had a lot of people asking about it and that's the d-pad initially when we saw the first pictures of the ion Neo too I was a little afraid of this d-pad it's still a bit chunky and to tell you the truth I don't like the way it looks but ya has done an amazing job designing this d-pad so I mean for fighting games it's got a really rollable feel to it and when you need to get accurate for Platformers it'll fall right into place this thing feels and works awesomely and we will test out in this video but with all that out of the way let's go ahead and get into some emulation jumping right into it with some PSP emulation using the stain aloon version of ppsspp we're at 5x resolution bulking back in and yeah the i in theo2 has more than enough power to emulate this system I know it's not a high-end system but some of the harder to emulate PSP games can be a bit taxing especially with that upscale here's chains of Olympus and we're playing this just fine and if you take a look at afterburner at 5x with one of the harder ones to emulate we're only pulling around 12 1/2 watts and taking the resolution down will significantly lower that power draw up next we've got some GameCube and there's really only a few we need to test here like Rogue Squadron 2 definitely a harder one to emulate on some Hardware but the 6800 U definitely Brees through it even at 1080p we've got the Vulcan back end going and yeah this is one that's really playable I also wanted to throw f-z GX at it still at 1080p Vulcan back in and we're on one of the hardest tracks to emulate here fire field and if you take a look at afterburner we're at a constant 60 and we're only pulling up to 11 Watts this was really impressive given that we're at 1080P and yeah we could upscale more but we've got a 1200p display here and I think it looks really great up next we've got some Wii emulation still using the Dolphin Emulator we're at 1080P and I figured I'd use this time just to test out the d-pad and like I mentioned at the beginning of the video I really do like it I mean it feels very rollable and it works great for fighting games I'm not a huge fan of the look but uh functionality here is excellent with this new d-pad and by the way yeah Wii games also run at full speed 1080p at that 15 wat TVP if you don't mind taking the resolution down to 720p it'll pull around 12 watts and at Native you can get buy with around 8 to 10 watts depending on the game moving up to PS2 using pcsx2 I've got Sly Cooper running here at 1080p Vulcan back in by the way I'm using the development build of pcsx2 now this game's running great at 15 watts 1080p but it doesn't mean that every single game for PS2 is going to run great at 15 watts with some of them the harder to emulate stuff you will have to up that TDP if you want to do 1080p here's God of War 2 and I upu the TDP to 25 watts now at 720p we can get away at 15 watts with this game but if you want that upscale it's just going to pull a little more when it comes to 3DS emulation on these apus it's always been a bit Hit or Miss but recently we got some driver updates from AMD which do up the open GL performance on these apus and yeah I mean we're getting much better performance here with a lot of the stuff I was actually able to upscale the 3x some of the harder to emulate stuff you may have to still keep it at Native but we're getting much better performance than we ever have in the past Wii U has always worked really well on these apus using the simu emulator and this is really no different we're at a 15 wat TVP here with the Bayonetta 2 at 1080p Vulcan back in but again kind of just like PS2 and really all of these emulators you may have to up that TDP to get that higher resolution at a certain games for instance breath of the wild at 720p pulled up to 30 watts in some cases and that's just really how it is now we could always go into the graphic settings and try to lower the resolution of this game here but I think 720p is kind of a sweet spot and it is playable but remember you will have to up that wattage next up we've got some original Xbox emulation using cxbx reloaded and I did run into some issues with some other games I was getting black screen sound was cutting out and it comes down to the newer Radeon drivers not being really compatible with the latest version of cxbx but this is always updated and if you're really interested I can make another video just dedicated to that one of the most impressive things here was uh Xbox 360 emulation using Zenia I'm using the Canary build and we've gotten a lot of optimizations with this build in the last few months but I mean just you know 6 months ago you couldn't even think about running this game here on an APU over 15 FPS and really across the board with this Xbox 360 Emulator performance has definitely been improved here's fors a 2 running at 60 FPS this is really awesome but if you take a look at After Burner we're pulling around 30 Watts here so we do have to up that TDP to get these 360 games running well now it's time to move over to some PS3 using rpcs3 Vulcan back in 15 watts the easier to emulate stuff is going to run great at 15 watts ninja giden we've got Tekken six here and I also tested out Demon Souls which is coming up next all at 15 watts you're not going to have an issue running these games at full speed but as a lot of you already know when it comes to the rpcs3 emulator there are some harder to emulate games with which do require a little more power like Skate 3 God of War 3 and even Kill Zone but you also have to take a look at the compatibility list over on the rpcs3 website because it even states that God of War 3 isn't fully compatible so that's one of those games that's just not going to run at full speed on this device and it really comes down to the emulator but something like Skate 3 with a little more wattage I've upped it to 25 is fully playable at 60 FPS on the 6800 U and yeah so so far I've had a really good experience with PS3 on the io2 so in the end yeah the io2 handles emulation like a champ it'll basically do everything that you want it to do it's just a matter of taking that TDP up and getting less battery life out of it but that's really the case with any handheld right now and remember this does support 40 gig USB 4 so you can connect an external GPU I've created a video showing off some performance there and you could definitely up the GPU performance by adding something like that and you can basically turn this into a full-fledged 1440p or even 4K gaming SL emulation Machine by adding an egpu but the io2 first and foremost is a handheld and I think it's an absolutely amazing machine we've got a powerful 6800u Apu beautiful screen awesome ergonomics I mean this thing is really comfortable to hold I love the d-pad don't like like the look of it but it works really really well but that's going to wrap it up for this one really appreciate you watching if there's anything else you want to see running on the ion neo2 let me know in the comments below I plan on a couple more videos we're definitely going to be installing Steam OS on this thing to see how it performs like that but until then if you have any ideas let me know down below and if you're interested in learning more or maybe even backing the Indiegogo links are in the description and like always thanks for watchingwhat's going on everybody it's ETA Prime P here again today we're going to be checking out some high-end emulation on the allnew I Neo 2 now obviously this is a more expensive device than the steam deck but it does outperform the steam deck and you know rightfully so given the price and the specs of this unit and straight off the bat I can tell you right now that this thing is an absolute emulation Powerhouse one of the best handhelds that I've tested so far for emulation and I'm sure we're going to get better ones down the road this has handled absolutely everything that I've thrown at it and in this video we're going to be testing out some PSP some Wii some GameCube some Wii U some switch some 3DS some original Xbox and some Xbox 360 I might have missed one or two in there but we've got a lot to test here but before we get into it I did want to go over a few things like you just saw the AP this is using is the ryzen 76800 U and it's backed up by the Radeon 68m igpu and with this one here we've got 16 GB of LP ddr5 running at 6,400 MHz when it comes to these a devices we have something called a space which will allow us to kind of change the fan curve we can also go through and change the brightness but the main thing here is the TDP we've got a power saving mode at 11 Watts we've also got a balanced mode at 15 watts game mode is 22 and from the pro mode we can actually go all the way up to 33 Watts we can adjust it from 5 to 3 three and at 11 Watts for the lower end stuff it's going to work fine if you just want to do some web browsing and some 4K video playback I would leave it right there but for most of the stuff we're testing in this video I'm going to go with the 15 watt preset until we move up to the really hard to emulate stuff then we'll have to do a little bit of adjustment there but I did want to get that out of the way before we get started here and there's one final thing I want to address before we move into emulation I've actually had a lot of people asking about it and that's the d-pad initially when we saw the first pictures of the ion Neo too I was a little afraid of this d-pad it's still a bit chunky and to tell you the truth I don't like the way it looks but ya has done an amazing job designing this d-pad so I mean for fighting games it's got a really rollable feel to it and when you need to get accurate for Platformers it'll fall right into place this thing feels and works awesomely and we will test out in this video but with all that out of the way let's go ahead and get into some emulation jumping right into it with some PSP emulation using the stain aloon version of ppsspp we're at 5x resolution bulking back in and yeah the i in theo2 has more than enough power to emulate this system I know it's not a high-end system but some of the harder to emulate PSP games can be a bit taxing especially with that upscale here's chains of Olympus and we're playing this just fine and if you take a look at afterburner at 5x with one of the harder ones to emulate we're only pulling around 12 1/2 watts and taking the resolution down will significantly lower that power draw up next we've got some GameCube and there's really only a few we need to test here like Rogue Squadron 2 definitely a harder one to emulate on some Hardware but the 6800 U definitely Brees through it even at 1080p we've got the Vulcan back end going and yeah this is one that's really playable I also wanted to throw f-z GX at it still at 1080p Vulcan back in and we're on one of the hardest tracks to emulate here fire field and if you take a look at afterburner we're at a constant 60 and we're only pulling up to 11 Watts this was really impressive given that we're at 1080P and yeah we could upscale more but we've got a 1200p display here and I think it looks really great up next we've got some Wii emulation still using the Dolphin Emulator we're at 1080P and I figured I'd use this time just to test out the d-pad and like I mentioned at the beginning of the video I really do like it I mean it feels very rollable and it works great for fighting games I'm not a huge fan of the look but uh functionality here is excellent with this new d-pad and by the way yeah Wii games also run at full speed 1080p at that 15 wat TVP if you don't mind taking the resolution down to 720p it'll pull around 12 watts and at Native you can get buy with around 8 to 10 watts depending on the game moving up to PS2 using pcsx2 I've got Sly Cooper running here at 1080p Vulcan back in by the way I'm using the development build of pcsx2 now this game's running great at 15 watts 1080p but it doesn't mean that every single game for PS2 is going to run great at 15 watts with some of them the harder to emulate stuff you will have to up that TDP if you want to do 1080p here's God of War 2 and I upu the TDP to 25 watts now at 720p we can get away at 15 watts with this game but if you want that upscale it's just going to pull a little more when it comes to 3DS emulation on these apus it's always been a bit Hit or Miss but recently we got some driver updates from AMD which do up the open GL performance on these apus and yeah I mean we're getting much better performance here with a lot of the stuff I was actually able to upscale the 3x some of the harder to emulate stuff you may have to still keep it at Native but we're getting much better performance than we ever have in the past Wii U has always worked really well on these apus using the simu emulator and this is really no different we're at a 15 wat TVP here with the Bayonetta 2 at 1080p Vulcan back in but again kind of just like PS2 and really all of these emulators you may have to up that TDP to get that higher resolution at a certain games for instance breath of the wild at 720p pulled up to 30 watts in some cases and that's just really how it is now we could always go into the graphic settings and try to lower the resolution of this game here but I think 720p is kind of a sweet spot and it is playable but remember you will have to up that wattage next up we've got some original Xbox emulation using cxbx reloaded and I did run into some issues with some other games I was getting black screen sound was cutting out and it comes down to the newer Radeon drivers not being really compatible with the latest version of cxbx but this is always updated and if you're really interested I can make another video just dedicated to that one of the most impressive things here was uh Xbox 360 emulation using Zenia I'm using the Canary build and we've gotten a lot of optimizations with this build in the last few months but I mean just you know 6 months ago you couldn't even think about running this game here on an APU over 15 FPS and really across the board with this Xbox 360 Emulator performance has definitely been improved here's fors a 2 running at 60 FPS this is really awesome but if you take a look at After Burner we're pulling around 30 Watts here so we do have to up that TDP to get these 360 games running well now it's time to move over to some PS3 using rpcs3 Vulcan back in 15 watts the easier to emulate stuff is going to run great at 15 watts ninja giden we've got Tekken six here and I also tested out Demon Souls which is coming up next all at 15 watts you're not going to have an issue running these games at full speed but as a lot of you already know when it comes to the rpcs3 emulator there are some harder to emulate games with which do require a little more power like Skate 3 God of War 3 and even Kill Zone but you also have to take a look at the compatibility list over on the rpcs3 website because it even states that God of War 3 isn't fully compatible so that's one of those games that's just not going to run at full speed on this device and it really comes down to the emulator but something like Skate 3 with a little more wattage I've upped it to 25 is fully playable at 60 FPS on the 6800 U and yeah so so far I've had a really good experience with PS3 on the io2 so in the end yeah the io2 handles emulation like a champ it'll basically do everything that you want it to do it's just a matter of taking that TDP up and getting less battery life out of it but that's really the case with any handheld right now and remember this does support 40 gig USB 4 so you can connect an external GPU I've created a video showing off some performance there and you could definitely up the GPU performance by adding something like that and you can basically turn this into a full-fledged 1440p or even 4K gaming SL emulation Machine by adding an egpu but the io2 first and foremost is a handheld and I think it's an absolutely amazing machine we've got a powerful 6800u Apu beautiful screen awesome ergonomics I mean this thing is really comfortable to hold I love the d-pad don't like like the look of it but it works really really well but that's going to wrap it up for this one really appreciate you watching if there's anything else you want to see running on the ion neo2 let me know in the comments below I plan on a couple more videos we're definitely going to be installing Steam OS on this thing to see how it performs like that but until then if you have any ideas let me know down below and if you're interested in learning more or maybe even backing the Indiegogo links are in the description and like always thanks for watching\n"