Retroarch 1.6.9 update slowing emulations down?

AndersHP

Anyone experienced a sudden drop of performance on their pi's with recent updates?
I'm running RetroPie 4.3.7 and Retroarch 1.6.9 on a standard Model 3B pi, and suddenly my SNES emulation (Chrono Trigger and Kirby's Dream Land 3 tested), and a few arcade games like Armed Police Batrider (0.78) have massive slowdowns and sound stuttering...

Is it possible to revert to 1.6.7 or do I have to restore my SD card / RetroPie image?
Or do someone have any tips to fix this?

Darksavior

@andershp Overclocking? Overheating icon? Shaders that aren't crt-pi? Low power icon? I'll try Batrider and those snes games when I can, since I'll have to downclock my pi to stock.

Update: On Stock pi3 speeds at 1080p with crt-pi shader latest retropie 4.3.7 with ra 1.6.9:

Batrider fullspeed on latest binary lr-fbalpha and mame 2003.

Kirby's Dream Land 3 on latest binary lr-snes9x2010 = 59-60fps most of the time. 57fps in that area with the hamster and cat. On lr-snes9x it's about 5fps slower. This game requires overclocking.

No sense in trying any more games...sounds like a config problem on your end.

AndersHP

@darksavior said in Retroarch 1.6.9 update slowing emulations down?:

@andershp Overclocking? Overheating icon? Shaders that aren't crt-pi? Low power icon?

No, no, no and no. Just bad performance.

No sense in trying any more games...sounds like a config problem on your end.

But everything worked a few weeks ago.
Did the update make the pi performance worse in some cases? Should I post my retroarch.cfg from my all folder?

Darksavior

@andershp Try another microsd, maybe it has write problems. I've been updating the same retropie build for like a year, and it's fine.

I don't mess with the retroarch.cfg much, maybe someone else can suggest something. I usually uninstall the emulator if it's causing issues so it gets rid of everything, then reinstall. I had to do that to fceumm like a year ago when it wouldn't save a setting where it would crop parts of the game.

AndersHP

@darksavior but my sd is not the problem since it's all good in 1.6.7 and then has problems in 1.6.9. Since it's both fba, mame2003 and snes, I don't think it's emulators. Maybe I should clean restart, but all my scraped images are on the sd and that's days of work only accessible via filezilla. Unless you have an idea about how to access the sd from finder, then I could move it to my ROMS folder on USB..

Darksavior

@andershp Speeds won't be that bad in filezilla if you use ethernet. Why not try another micro sd and update that to latest to verify a config error on your end? I can't reproduce the slowdowns you're getting in 1.6.9.

zerojay

@darksavior said in Retroarch 1.6.9 update slowing emulations down?:

@andershp Try another microsd, maybe it has write problems. I've been updating the same retropie build for like a year, and it's fine.

SD card speed isn't going to be a factor in how fast SNES games play because those ROMs are totally loaded into RAM at once and when that happens, it never accesses the ROM on the SD card again.

Darksavior

@zerojay I meant possible write problems in the update he did to 1.6.9 since he said 1.6.7 works fine. I never said he needed a faster microsd to help with speeds. Rom loading is not the issue, it's the speed they're ran at. Since he's not overclocking and doesn't get any power or temp icon popups, I can just guess that it's a configuration problem of some kind since the games I tested run fullspeed on my end. A simple test of using another microsd (so he won't need to backup his current one) and updating that to latest should quickly determine that.

arcadez2003

@andershp said in Retroarch 1.6.9 update slowing emulations down?:

and a few arcade games like Armed Police Batrider (0.78) have massive slowdowns and sound stuttering...

What other Arcade games are you now having trouble with..?? i recently added support for the FixEight bootleg which did require a few
changes in the Toaplan 2 video code this might account for why Armed Police Batrider has dipped in performance as it uses said
video code as well.

i can look at fixing this but i need more people to try the game then i'll know it's not just one single user having an issue.

Darksavior

@gamez-fan Maybe I should have asked if he's using a mame2003 built from binary or source. I'm using binary so it probably doesn't have your fixes. I'll start building it from source now and report back.

arcadez2003

@darksavior said in Retroarch 1.6.9 update slowing emulations down?:

@gamez-fan Maybe I should have asked if he's using a mame2003 built from binary or source. I'm using binary so it probably doesn't have your fixes. I'll start building it from source now and report back.

No problem fella let me know how it goes, but im attempting a fix for this just now via some V-Blank handling that was added to the driver at the same
time as the video code was changed i think i should have backported that also it will sort any sprite lag.

Darksavior

@gamez-fan Ok, I tried batrider..I do notice occasional dips in fps as low as 59.7fps using stock pi3 speeds with mame2003 cf5f0b9. Solid 60fps on fba. I don't believe this relates to @AndersHP 's problem but it does verify the dips others have said.

arcadez2003

@darksavior said in Retroarch 1.6.9 update slowing emulations down?:

@gamez-fan Ok, I tried batrider..I do notice occasional dips in fps as low as 59.7fps using stock pi3 speeds with mame2003 cf5f0b9. Solid 60fps on fba. I don't believe this relates to @AndersHP 's problem but it does verify the dips others have said.

Ok i've just committed some changes to the git for the Toaplan 2 driver which i hope will sort this.

Regards

Darksavior

@gamez-fan Trying 0f22fe2, I only see dips of 59.9fps now which are occasional. Fba is less common to see 59.9fps. I'm still using stock pi3 speeds. Much better performance, but I'd stick with fba for batrider.

AndersHP

@darksavior said in Retroarch 1.6.9 update slowing emulations down?:

@andershp Speeds won't be that bad in filezilla if you use ethernet. Why not try another micro sd and update that to latest to verify a config error on your end?

I only own one microSD. But maybe I could start with a clean install on this, and if it fails again, it has to be the SD? If the SD is broken, I just think it's odd that 1.6.7 works fine..?

Also see what @Slimy states here.

I will try a fresh install on my microSD, but I could also gather more data from all my installed systems if you like. A list of games that's affected, emulator versions and such. I'm no coder though, so a bit of input as to what you want to know would be appreciated.. Watch this space.

Darksavior

@andershp You can try and uninstall, then reinstall the emulators causing the problems. Not sure if that gets rid of anything that was altered. Still interesting how both of you have the same problem. You can also re-install retroarch from retropie-setup.

Slimy

@darksavior
Hello from the other thread. I tried removing and re-installing retroarch as you suggested, but that did not work.

Could the slowdown have something to do with the Pegasus frontend? Both myself and AndersHP had it installed, I think. I'm not using Pegasus right now, but I did still have it installed on the Pi with slowdowns. Although the slowdown still persists after I've uninstalled it.

AndersHP

@slimy said in Retroarch 1.6.9 update slowing emulations down?:

@darksavior
Hello from the other thread.

I must have called a thousand times :)

Joke aside, here's a list of tested games and how they perform. Note that pretty much all games I've been playing before, with no problems.

MAME2003:
1941, 1942, 1943, 1944, Alien vs Predator, Battle Chopper, Dodonpachi, The Punisher: Everything OK.
19XX, Air Gallet, In The Hunt: sound stuttering when much happens on screen. Game playable though.
64'th Street, After Burner II, Dangun Feverun: All sound stuttering, including music. Very slow video & audio. Completely unplayable.

Sega Megadrive & Sega Master System: All games tested ok!

NeoGeo (fba 0.2.97.39 romset): All games tested ok!

SNES (lr-snes9x2010):
Chuck Rock, Donkey Kong Country: All ok
Aero Fighters, Aladdin, Chrono Trigger, Choplifter III, Brawl Brothers, Donkey Kong Country 3: Sound stuttering, games playable though.
Alien 3, Clay Fighter: All sound stuttering, including music. Very slow video & audio. Completely unplayable.

This was my list. I don't know how to check emulator versions - sorry for being such a n00b! But before testing I updated everything, cores, and kernels and whatever.

arcadez2003

@slimy said in Retroarch 1.6.9 update slowing emulations down?:

MAME2003:
19XX, Air Gallet, In The Hunt: sound stuttering when much happens on screen. Game playable though.
64'th Street, After Burner II, Dangun Feverun: All sound stuttering, including music. Very slow video & audio. Completely unplayable.

Hi i only made changes to the MAME2003 codebase i never touched the code for the consoles or FBA, from the list above i made small tweak
the CPU comms to fix game speed in Avenging Spirit i suppose in doing that it might have broken the game speed for the other Mega System 1
games eg 64th street it'll be easy to revert that change if it's causing problems although it doesn't on any other platform, Sega core
has been rolled back to the previous libretro mame-2003 version so that should be good again.

You mention In The Hunt which is an IREM92 game Dangun Feveron is Cave i've touched nothing in those drivers which should affect
game speed so im at a loss here as to why this would happen in your build.

AndersHP

@gamez-fan as stated earlier, I think the Retroarch update stresses my system in a way that's giving the pi less headroom. The games struggling seems to be the ones with more advanced graphics/sound, or is it just me? I don't think this is because of tweaking in the code.

I will try a clean install tomorrow and see if that rules out my microsd.