Best Overclock settings for PSP emulation on Rpi 3?
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Hi guys, firstly thank you for all the awesome work you do and thank you in advance for any advice I get on this. I would like to run certain PSP games on my Rpi 3 that are listed in the compatibility list below as "working perfectly" but I've not had that experience (with PSP games chugging quite badly at best, and freezing completely at worst). Grateful for any advice on good and stable overclock settings to get PSP games working properly.
PSP Compatibility List:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1V-MEx1tOXqCcJL1fQzGh9xLHny-qL-PSWqvY7F80Y90/edit#gid=592711380 -
Can you give examples of particular games? Some require certain settings to work well.
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@zerojay Thanks! It's specifically Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep that I'm referring to (but Crisis Core is also listed on that compatibility list as "working perfectly").
If you can help me get KH: BBS running on the Pi I would be eternally grateful. I've got Retropie 3.6, Pi 3 (I have not yet disabled onboard BT but I can at any time), no problems with power supply or the SD card.
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What overclock settings are you running?
Have you downsacled the psp video to 640x480?
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@Twitch0815 No I haven't downscaled the video (thank you, this is the sort of advice I'm looking for). Though it would be nice to see the video in full screen, if that's what's causing some of the issues i'll downscale.
And I have not yet overclocked my Pi. I was planning on doing it this weekend with the following settings (which I understand are not intensive): Clock speed 1200, GPU_mem 512, Over_voltage=6, sdram_freq=500, core_freq = 500, GPU Freq=400
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go clock speed 1300
v3d_freq-500Downscale the video on tough games to play to 640x480
if you have good cooling you can try my overclocking settings
#Overclock Settings
arm_freq=1400 (Try 1350 if 1400 does not work)
over_voltage=6
sdram_freq=500
temp_limit=80
core_freq=500#GPU Based
h264_freq=333
avoid_pwm_pll=1
gpu_mem=450
v3d_freq=500
gpu_freq=400
#Ram Overclock
sdram_freq=588
sdram_schmoo=0x02000020
over_voltage_sdram_p=6
over_voltage_sdram_i=4
over_voltage_sdram_c=4
#Sound Fix
hdmi_drive=2 -
Will try these out and let you know how it pans out! Really grateful for the advice. In terms of cooling, all I have is the FLIRC case on the Pi 3 (which supposedly has a built in heatsink but I'm not sure how effective it is). Will try anyway, as I suppose the worst that could happen is that the Pi switches off if it hits 80C. Thanks so much!
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@Twitch0815 Hey - thanks so much for these settings. Not 100% there on BBS' performance but a significant improvement nonetheless. It's actually somewhat playable now, whereas previously it was impossible.
I'm beginning to think it might be unlikely to get BBS working perfectly on a Pi, notwithstanding that compatibility list saying "everything perfect" on pi3.
Still, your settings have vastly improved my PS1 game performance so I'm very grateful! Also noticed that although temperature of the GPU/CPU went up about 10C, they were still maxing out around 60C after long sessions, so no real concerns about overheating.
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your PS1 performance should be perfect at stock speeds, even in the higher resolution mode + speed hack. might be something up with your system...
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@dankcushions Oh it certainly worked well enough that I thought it was perfect before overclocking, but very minor things like the fact that music was playing slightly slower than normal. It just 'feels' slightly more right now.
Though your comment makes me want to get a new Pi and try the same settings to see if I can actually get BBS to work perfectly.
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@Samwise
So I have had about 5 diff pi'(3)s underneath my fingers and have had the ability to test them against each other.
I have found differences. For example 1 or 2 that would not take the 1400 overclock.
1 pi that when using the same sd card played Star Wars Shadow of the Empire terribly but switching to others it worked fine.But Birth by Sleep, even on my pi that I consider to be my most rock solid still has some slowdown. Only things that are going to push that game up is more video processing power. Just don't drive yourself crazy chasing something that the hardware can't perform and believe me I push every bit of performance out of the 3 that I can get. As I continue to work on game optimization I will let you know if I find anything that brings it up to a better performance.
I am actually going to try some Immersion cooling on one of my pis in mineral oil, but not enough overclocking experts have pushed their pi's so Im lost on voltage settings I need to get to 1600 MHZ but im sure we will get there soon.
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@Twitch0815 That's really helpful to know (re: the differences on the Pi3s) and nice to hear that I'm not the only one that can't get the game to run perfectly!
Thanks a lot for the overclock settings either way, and yes, do let me know if you ever find a way to improve BBS' performance, I will definitely be keen!
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Yo back at it again with some emulator improvement settings.
Go ahead and add the following to the bottom of your /opt/retropie/configs/all/ retroarch-core-options.cfg
If the options are already there just edit them to reflect what I have below.
ppsspp_cpu_core = "jit"
ppsspp_locked_cpu_speed = "off"
ppsspp_language = "automatic"
ppsspp_rendering_mode = "buffered"
ppsspp_auto_frameskip = "disabled"
ppsspp_frameskip = "1"
ppsspp_framerate_limit = "0"
ppsspp_force_max_fps = "enabled"
ppsspp_audio_latency = "0"
ppsspp_internal_resolution = "480x272"
ppsspp_output_resolution = "480x272"
ppsspp_button_preference = "cross"
ppsspp_fast_memory = "enabled"
ppsspp_set_rounding_mode = "enabled"
ppsspp_block_transfer_gpu = "enabled"
ppsspp_texture_scaling_level = "1"
ppsspp_texture_scaling_type = "xbrz"
ppsspp_texture_anisotropic_filtering = "off"
ppsspp_texture_deposterize = "disabled"
ppsspp_internal_shader = "off"
ppsspp_gpu_hardware_transform = "enabled"
ppsspp_vertex_cache = "enabled"
ppsspp_prescale_uv = "disabled"
ppsspp_separate_io_thread = "disabled"
ppsspp_unsafe_func_replacements = "enabled"
ppsspp_sound_speedhack = "disabled"
ppsspp_threaded_input = "disabled"I have yet to test all the permutations of messing with these variables are but I am getting promising results thus far.
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@Twitch0815 said:
@Samwise
So I have had about 5 diff pi'(3)s underneath my fingers and have had the ability to test them against each other.
I have found differences. For example 1 or 2 that would not take the 1400 overclock.
1 pi that when using the same sd card played Star Wars Shadow of the Empire terribly but switching to others it worked fine.But Birth by Sleep, even on my pi that I consider to be my most rock solid still has some slowdown. Only things that are going to push that game up is more video processing power. Just don't drive yourself crazy chasing something that the hardware can't perform and believe me I push every bit of performance out of the 3 that I can get. As I continue to work on game optimization I will let you know if I find anything that brings it up to a better performance.
I am actually going to try some Immersion cooling on one of my pis in mineral oil, but not enough overclocking experts have pushed their pi's so Im lost on voltage settings I need to get to 1600 MHZ but im sure we will get there soon.
I wonder if its heat.. the Pi3 thermally throttles once CPU hits 80C... so does not crash but DOES slow down.. the more you OC then the more likely this happens. Have U a heatsink AND fan? Is Pi in a closed case? Ceramic heatsink?
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you'll know when your pi is throttling - a colored square will appear in the top right of the screen.
Red square: over-temperature
Rainbow square: under-voltage -
@Methanoid
I do not believe heat to be the issue. A Pi 3 by default will throttle cpu_down at 85C I set my config file 5 degrees under thatwith temp_limit=80 just to be more conservative because I am using an aggressive overclock.All of my Pi 3 setups are identical. J-Tek Acrylic case (It is well ventilated) Aluminum heatsinks that have been thermal epoxied on, And an active case fan that is oriented to blow cool air over the heatsinks and away from the chip.
When I talk about different behavior I am talking about the dynamic of different properties of silicon even silicon from the same chip.
When chips are made they are all cast on a single wafer. The instructions are built ad etched etc etc. Say you were building a Pentium processor it is one big wafer that is manufactured then cut into pieces like a brownie. Then what they do is apply steps of voltage to them and run burn-ins on them as they increase the voltage certain chips from the same wafers will begin to have errors at that voltage where as other chips will not. This is just something from the world of physics and properties of silicate that happens. Meaning the I7 processor you buy at 2.80 Ghz for 100 dollars more the the 2.4 ghz proc could have come from the exact same wafer that the less expensive one came from one can just handle higher voltage at the same level of cooling while staying under a certain error rate. Which is where all the overclocking stuff comes from your increasing voltage to a chip and providing above standard cooling which will bring it up in speed at the risk of unstablizing it. And those higher level instabilities are managed with cooling the more you ask the more you have to cool. I am well versed in standard pc manufacturing but I have not really delved into arm architecture aside the occasional whitepaper but I am assuming we have something very similar going on with the arm chips on the pi's. Certain ones are just going to be of a better property then others when pushed passed their default clock limit. -
@Twitch0815 Amazing! Thanks mate. Looking forward to trying these out. This may sound stupid but I've been using lr-ppsspp for the convenience of having my hotkeys and controller config all set up already, but I am aware that PPSSPP is supposed to have better performance.
Will the settings above affect both emulators? I suppose I really should just go ahead and configure ppsspp and use that if it has better performance than lr-ppsspp.
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@Samwise I use the libretro one as well but the settings apply. I can tell because games like Tekken 6 were unplayable and now are smooth.
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yeah, anything in retroarch-core-options.cfg is only going to affect lr (libretro, the api for retroarch) cores. the standalone psp core would have it's own config file in /retropie/configs/psp/
that said, there are often vast differences in lr and standalone cores, so if performance is a factor i would always try standalone. it should only ever be faster.
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@Twitch0815 it was just an idea ;) The videos I have seen show Pi3 throttling at 80C by default.... but anyway sounds like U have that covered
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