Somebody said that there was a lot of nosense in this thread, I'll add my own semi nonsense to fill in.
Semi-Nonsense on---
I know from reading the press releases that the devices uses www.fathammers.com 3D engine that is especially speed optomised to use all the power of the processor, floating piont engine and dsp, which from memory the Zodiac has all three of (could be wrong about the floating piont). (Though I'm not saying it is the best API that could be made). I think this is the same stratergy the n-cage depends on for Tombraider 3D. We know that the 266Mhz Arm 9 Samsung processor gets so close to the Xscale 400's performance, in PQuake, it isn't funny, so it might be possible that this processor won't be far off. Obviously the xscale is typical intel long instruction pipe rubbish, usefull for getting higher Mhz rather than garranteed performance increases (as with P4 vs Athalon)(and they still haven't delivered the 1.2Ghz version).
I thought I heard that newer xscales where going to have floating piont, I think that the Arm 9 might?
Speed also depends on the way the OS is designed as to how much it gets infront of hardware control and how much resources it wastes/steals from a program. Isn't the Palm OS 5 series designed around the BEOS Multimedia/multithread/3D wonder OS. Pocket PPC isn't desktop Windows so I think it will be even slower, and worse than the BE/OS. For some strange reason (for those who don't believe this) Pocket Quake gets a major speed kick from Pocket PC 2003 over 2002.
Nonsense off ---
Really the Zodiac has failed a bit (I don't even want to buy it because of the name). It has it's own charm in looks though, for the price it could look more like a regular PDA by adjusting some controller positions and the shape. On the other hand it doesn't look as good a games machine as the design on the fathammer site. It doesn't have the fastest processor (not talking xscale here) for that price. What ever happen to the high performance Mobile PowerVR 3D chip that was to be built into some Arms. So no real 3D chip (more usefull than the planned xscale MMX instructions and floating piont). Even though the LCD is in the dots per inch range where further resolution won't really add much, 640*480 should be the minimum. The price is outrageouse (unless you add a few of the features I just mentioned) for a games machine, the optium price is from $99 to $199. Without the 3D chip it is not worth buying, as it will not be worth keeping against the vastly superior, and cheaper, Portable Play Station due out end of next year (which is underpowered as it appears to be built for price, in that time frame), and probably the GBA 3D replacemnt. Our biggest problem is that MS has not introduced the gaming Pocket PC's, or the pocket Xbox. Tapwave should have introduced a cheaper version 133-200Mhz Arm 9-10 based, Power VR 3D, and a 320*240+ Lcd for $99-$199 price, just enough to crush the GBA and be a real alternative to other PDA's for games.
The games may look lame at the moment, but this is no indication of what canbe done. The Playstation 1 and 2 and the Pocket PC's have suffered the same.
Wayne.
