Need for overclocking pi3B+ for playing pre PSX games?

m2306

Do I need to overclock my pi3B+ if I only play pre N64/PSX/DC? I really want the likes of SNES, NeoGeo, other same era MAME stuff and StreetFighter games to run well. I wont be dissapointed if I could get some newer SF games to run as well but wont overclock just for that if none of the above needs it.

The long story: I’m at planning stages of a bartop rPi/retropie cabinet. I will mainly be playing Nintendo, Sega and Arcade games pre N64/PSX/DC. I can’t test the system yet because I didn’t buy all the hardware yet and I don’t want to get the wrong stuff. I already ordered the ControlBlock (I hope this was the right choise?) for connecting the arcade joystick and buttons, the rest I didn’t buy yet. I’cant find any info on using heatsinks and a fan together with the ControlBlock, I know it connects straight onto (on the top of..?) the Pi so I’m thinking I wont be able to fit a big heatsink not to mention a fan. If I don’t need to overcklock for my current needs I won’t need a fan and then I won’t need an expensive analogue gaming pad (in addition to the arcade stick) since I defintely wont be playing games that need analogue sticks (I started thinking about all of this when I realized the 8bitdo sf30pro has some connection problems). In addition to the original question I’m gratefully accepting any tips regarding the setup I outlined above. Thank you! I hope I’ll be able to help someone else once I’m set up and know more about all if this.

BobHarris

@m2306 No there is no need to overclock. Even the last 2D Street fighter made (3rd strike) plays flawlessly without overclocking. Some 3d mame games might perform a bit better, if you're into that.
Every Pi is unique and reaches different temperatures on the same game. My Pi 3 reached over 70C while playing certain snes games. You won't damage the Pi as it downclocks itself when the temperature gets too high, but I wanted to play it safe (I'm planning to use my Pi 3B for years to come) so I use a heatsink and a fan.

Darksavior

@m2306 You bought that controlblock so I'm not sure how you can overclock properly. Should've bought a zero delay usb encoder, connect your joystick to that so then you can buy a flirc case or a heatsink+fan combo.

Do you need to overclock? No. Should you, if you had the ability to? Oh YES. Snes requires all the power it can get. The latest snes emulator, lr-snes9x, requires even more. If you want bleeding edge snes emulation the pi can handle, then you have to use that one. It's actively supported so any bugs will get worked on faster than the rest. MSU-1 support as well. As an example: I still get slowdowns on kirby3 at 1.5ghz. There's also a setting to speed things up to fix the original emulation slowdowns. So games like super r-type don't get slowdowns anymore.

Arcade games need it too. It's such a hassle testing each game to see which one runs the fastest and with proper emulation. In a perfect world, if the pi could run the latest mame, then one arcade emulator would be so awesome. As it is now, I have to juggle between four arcade emulators, other people even more. A faster speed would help the situation a bit. I'm still slowly moving games from mame2003 to fba and I need to re-test the 4player konami games again to see if I still get slowdowns, so I can eliminate using fba2012.

I forgot about lower end emulators like nes and genesis. They can also benefit by having the ability to enable the run-ahead setting to shave off a few frames of input lag. That feature requires tons of power too.

I would've gone with something more powerful like an odroid xu4, but the level of support will always make me stick with pi's....that and I have no idea if my original snes pad driver will work on the odroid. I would want a silent cooling solution and I heard the giant heatsink version doesn't cool properly.