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    Can a good SD Card Increase Game Performance?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General Discussion and Gaming
    sd card
    31 Posts 8 Posters 11.8k Views
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    • edmaul69E
      edmaul69
      last edited by

      @retrofreak89 im not sure about elder scrolls games. But i dont really have a whole lot of issues with the 200+ games i have on it. Duke nukem 3d i havent played long enough to see if it gets laggy with a bunch of baddies on the screen.

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        RetroFreak89 @edmaul69
        last edited by RetroFreak89

        @edmaul69
        Hmm what are some of your dosbox fav i could check out?

        Also damn i just had a talk with a guy at Reddit and he thinks that a good SD card vs a bad one in Zdoom is not gonna do anything he thinks its most likely a setting difference between us somewhere the reason being is Zdoom doesnt use i/o writes so wads can easy be played from memory so yeah getting kinda scared now because i rly want to play these mods if its not the card then what could it be..
        We already tried changing to the same settings as you that didnt work..
        The ini seemed fine
        We both running stock
        You sure there is nothing that enabled it somewhere or installed for Zdoom to run better?
        But also what do you call lag?
        In valient outside it seemed like it was running at like 12 fps so kinda jerky laggy but very unplayable at 1024 resolution tho and that is what you are playing at and its like 30-60fps for you at that part?
        So weird man even at the lowest setting possible its still laggy with like 10fps the weird thing is as soon as im in a building it jumps up to super smooth 60fps like...

        edmaul69E 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • edmaul69E
          edmaul69 @RetroFreak89
          last edited by

          @retrofreak89 its probably 60fps outside for me. I will send you my zdoom.ini for you to test. Another thing you might try is remove your fan. That is the last hardware you can rule out. I do use a vga adapter on a 1024x768 sd tv and in the /boot/config.txt i have it set to

          hdmi_group=2
          hdmi_mode=16
          
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          • edmaul69E
            edmaul69 @RetroFreak89
            last edited by

            @retrofreak89 please read my last post. also here is my zdoom.ini located in /opt/retropie/configs/ports/doom/
            click here for link

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              RetroFreak89 @edmaul69
              last edited by

              @edmaul69 what does changing the HDMI group do? And im not sure what a vga adapter is ill Google it heh

              Also i just encountered my first problem on the new card i want this fixed before i do anything else and thats when i go to es themes and install a theme there when i go to select it the theme doesnt work they all show up blank white screen i tried a diff one and all of them do this exept carbon not sure whats going now.. u dont know how to fix this i soposed?

              edmaul69E 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • edmaul69E
                edmaul69 @RetroFreak89
                last edited by edmaul69

                @retrofreak89 if it gives you a white screen just restart emulationstation. It will display the theme correctly. You might want to update retropie setup and emulationstation. I used to have that issue on an older emulationstation.

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                • edmaul69E
                  edmaul69 @RetroFreak89
                  last edited by edmaul69

                  @retrofreak89 also, changing to group 2 lets you choose pc resolutions. Of you use an hdmi to vga adapter you can use a vga port on your tv or monitor. But you probably can use group 2 without the adapter if you want to use a pc style resolution.

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                    RetroFreak89 @edmaul69
                    last edited by

                    @edmaul69 yeah i want to give it a shot at least so i just find the txt and change the mode there?

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                      RetroFreak89 @edmaul69
                      last edited by

                      @edmaul69 yeah u were right as soon as i did update packages and underlying os kernal the problem went away all theme working fine.
                      I didnt get to test any doom wads yet since it got pretty late last night all i did was transfer my games over so far

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                      • R
                        RetroFreak89
                        last edited by

                        @edmaul69 tonight i Will know if SD card fixes my problem or not if not ill try the hdmi thing .
                        You dont think the vga ur using is giving better fps?

                        edmaul69E 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • edmaul69E
                          edmaul69 @RetroFreak89
                          last edited by edmaul69

                          @retrofreak89 i dunno. Its possible. I would try removing your fan too and testing if just the sd card doesnt fix it. Some people have had performance issues while using one.

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                          • D
                            drake999
                            last edited by

                            I'm a bit late to this thread but I can honestly say a good SD card can make a huge difference, under certain conditions. Basically just your run of the mill SD card will work fine for any of the cartridge based consoles, because after an initial pause upon launch, the game is loaded into RAM and just runs from there. CD-based games like those for the PlayStation, PSP, or Sega CD is where you will see the improvement. This is because the data is often streamed from the ISO file while playing, and anything interrupting that stream will cause momentary (and very distracting) pauses in gameplay. I had this issue and was experimenting with various cards and overclock settings for weeks in my spare time to resolve it. Finally I found a near perfect solution. I bought a 128 GB SanDisk Extreme (not Ultra) series card and overclocked the SD card reader in the Pi from 50 MHz to 100 MHz. This high-performance card coupled with the reader overclock virtually eliminated any in-game lag I was experiencing in ISO based games. I have a thread somewhere on here documenting my experience and towards the bottom I have before and after benchmarks posted. Not sure how to link to it at the moment.

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                            • D
                              drake999
                              last edited by

                              I found that thread I mentioned in my previous post.

                              https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/4288/sd-card-experience-requested-fastest-128-gb-card/27

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