Raspberry pi zero image running slow on some but not others

[simonandrewwil]

Hello this is my first post, I am having an issue that is puzzling and annoying. Can anyone please help. I have been making some pi zero based Nes cart consoles for my family and friends with great feedback from them. I have bought a few pi zeros and put my own image of retropie 4.2 on it. Its runs great on some pi zeros but not others. It seems to run about 20% slower on certain pi zeroes. This make the SNES games very slow. How can i find out whats slowing down the pi zero? Thanks in advance.

[jonnykesh]

@simonandrewwil Are you setting them up individually or are you using a "master" image and just copying that for each installation?
Have you compared a "good" one with a "slow" one side by side? Perhaps it is just user experience and expectation?

[simonandrewwil]

@jonnykesh. I am just using a master image. I expected that there would be no difference between them. I will check out both config files. Thanks.

[jonnykesh]

@simonandrewwil Also, when you say "20% slower" can you clarify. Do you mean frame-rate, audio, input lag...? That could mean a lot of things.

[simonandrewwil]

@simonandrewwil And yes i have compared side by side on the same game, big difference.

[Hex]

Have you heard of Silicon Lottery? Search it.

[simonandrewwil]

@jonnykesh Fame rate is fine, audio and graphics are slower the game I am trying is GBA advance wars as my bench mark. The game just crawls.

[jonnykesh]

@simonandrewwil So it's not just SNES then? Have you enabled any sort of over-clock on the Zeroes? As Hex says above, not all PIs are created equal.

[simonandrewwil]

@jonnykesh I did once try to overclock it using the raspberry pi menu and i said 'this raspberry pi canot be overclocked'

[simonandrewwil]

@jonnykesh no, its most noticeable with the SNES and GBA emus.

[jonnykesh]

@simonandrewwil So, no then. Worth remembering in some older systems the European versions would run 20% slower due to the difference in the 50/60 Hz electricity system. Try going into the settings on a "slow" version and setting region to US.

[simonandrewwil]

@jonnykesh its the same image, the settings should not be different. The advice about the difference in chips sounds like that could be worth looking into. I will have a go at overclocking in the config menu. Some great advice. Thanks guys.

[simonandrewwil]

@simonandrewwil Silly me. I forgot to mention I am using a mixture of pi zeros and Pi zero w's. Guess What? The pi zero W's are the ones running slower. I have just figured this out. Doh! Why is this? Is it due to to wifi/Bluetooth running in the background? The pi zero image was running a wifi dongle with no big processor hit.