Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo

Lyle_JP

I can also confirm a massive drop in playability on CPS3 games in FBNeo after updating less than a month ago. SF III 2 used to run at 60 fps with no audio issues in widescreen mode. Now, it can't play it's own attract mode without obvious audio stuttering and slowdown. I'll be rebuilding with a 4.4 image soon which I will then upgrade to 4.5 without touching FBNeo. At one point I think someone was working on a Final Burn Alpha 2016 fork. Sure wish it had happened.

barbudreadmon

@GreenHawk84 said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

@barbudreadmon

I am pretty sure I am clear on everything except maybe throttling. How do I confirm?

I'm not too sure how to confirm it, but here come a tips about the pi3b+ : if your cpu go above 60° (which happens quite easily, having a good cooling solution is highly recommended on the pi3b+, i'm using https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LWURJMI, the fan is perfectly silent), it will throttle to 1200Mhz, which is unacceptable for cps3 with FBNeo, a software workaround would be to rise throttle temperature to 70° by adding temp_soft_limit = 70 in /boot/config.txt.

@Lyle_JP said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

SF III 2 used to run at 60 fps with no audio issues in widescreen mode.

It's still running at 60 fps here on the same fresh RetroPie setup.

GreenHawk84

@barbudreadmon said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

@GreenHawk84 said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

@barbudreadmon

It's still running at 60 fps here on the same fresh RetroPie setup.

Not really sure why yours would be any different since I do not alter settings and I recently fresh installed on a 3B+? I checked the frames on SFIII and I am getting 58.2fps with dips as low as 53fps. My core temperature is 55C, I use heatsinks on my chips. If there is any data you want to see from my setup let me know.

Darksavior

Pi3b+ stock speeds. No bt. No wifi. Fresh 4.5 fully updated. No shaders. 70c temp soft limit. Flirc case to cool. Fb-Neo binary with sfiii 2nd impact:
60fps with minor .5fps dips. Widescreen mode ~52fps.

UPDATE: with latest Fb-neo from source:
SFiii2: Widescreen mode ~53fps. No real change.

SFiii3: ~60fps. Dips to 59.1fps when doing supers.

GreenHawk84

Can confirm FBA2012 is running SF3 at 60fps with occasional 59.1fps dips. Seems way better than fbneo. Very odd since we should all have the same stuff.

Darksavior

deleted

GreenHawk84

@lostless said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

@GreenHawk84 im running into the same issue since the update.

Well at least I am not alone on this.

barbudreadmon

@GreenHawk84 @Darksavior Sorry, i don't know how to help you guys, as i said sfiii2 run at a stable ~59.5 fps with widescreen mode for me, if you are using the same default retroarch settings than me then i guess the only difference would be the active cooling, maybe the power supply, and maybe the pi3b+ itself ? After all there has always been occurences of "bad" quality and "good" quality pi, mostly noticeable when you overclock them. Another thing to explore might be that i used retropie_setup.sh right after installing ? I ran update then manage package > core > retroarch > from source then manage package > main > lr-fbneo > from source.

GreenHawk84

@barbudreadmon yes I am using default Retroarch settings when the system is installed. Maybe I should remove fbneo and reinstall from Source. Doubtful on any solutions soon.

barbudreadmon

@GreenHawk84 the weirdest thing is that there was no change to cps3 emulation over the last 7 months, and several people confirmed it was running fine on pi3b+ at the time. Did you try the temp_soft_limit = 70 trick ? If it shows even the slightliest improvement, it definitely means your pi is too hot (which seems normal to me if you are only using heatsinks, pi3b+ has heat issues, pi4 has worse heat issues, latest pis are a disappointment imho, i recommend buying an odroid N2 next : it's a powerhouse compared to the pi4, it has no heat issues, and it's not that much pricier when you factor in the cost of active cooling, power supply and micro-hdmi cable to the pi4).

GreenHawk84

@barbudreadmon yes but I confirmed consistent 55C temps playing SF3 on fbneo. The game is choppy sounding and slowing down right out of the gate.

GreenHawk84

@Lyle_JP said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

I'll be rebuilding with a 4.4 image soon which I will then upgrade to 4.5 without touching FBNeo.

Please report your results with SF3 when you get your fresh install running.

Darksavior

I wish I had an older backup of fbneo. The one I provided from 7/3 doesn't change a thing. I'm not getting the same slowdowns as everyone else. Sf3-2i and sf33s run mostly at 60fps with minor dips which is the same performance that has been for many months. The major slowdowns with 2i is in widescreen. Source doesn't change a thing or temp limit setting. I even set the governor to performance.

barbudreadmon

@Darksavior said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

The one I provided from 7/3 doesn't change a thing

Yeah, as i said, there was no change to the cps3 driver in the past 7 months. I still don't understand why i have none of those issues, it's really weird. Maybe try monitoring cpu freq while playing to make sure there is no throttling ?

Darksavior

@barbudreadmon When did it change? I dug up an fba from a back up from Nov 2018. Pi3b+ stock speeds. Fresh 4.5.1 no updates. SF3-2i WS: Depends on the stage. Alex stage FB-Neo (latest I think) 54-55fps. 57-58fps with FB Alpha v0.2.97.44 63bf16d.

barbudreadmon

@Darksavior It all started with the rowscroll implementation from 2018-09-28 in https://github.com/libretro/fbalpha/commits/master/src/burn/drv/cps3/cps3run.cpp, there is no way around this though, except if you don't mind having totally broken jojoba emulation (no combo meter for P2, no animation on the P1 combo meter), iirc other games from the driver are using this stuff in a less noticeable way, so i still think using latest fbneo with frameskip is better than using older fbalpha with bugs.

GreenHawk84

Last night I removed fbneo and re-applied from Source. Immediately, I noticed the same issues upon starting SF3. I tried Turtles in Time arcade and it runs at 60fps. I will try other games on fbneo to see what kind of performance I have. So far FBA2012 appears to run SF3 very smoothly.

lostless

@GreenHawk84 cps3 games require more processing power than turtles in time. I think the pi is just on the cusp of perfect performance of running cps3 games. And the more accurate the emulator gets, the pi will be less able to handle those games.

GreenHawk84

I am going to try some experiments using commands found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/amqqpq/is_your_pi_throttling_without_telling_you_this/

Just to ensure I am not losing my mind thinking I have a perfectly normal setup.

Riverstorm

@GreenHawk84 - If it helps troubleshooting here's a small script that outputs the speed in a more user friendly format i.e. 900 MHz with CPU/GPU temps like 65°C. I use it with watch if I suspect throttling by the governor, heat, power, etc.

I open a Putty session on my PC and run watch and whatever the script is named so I can monitor the speed and temp in real time while playing on another monitor/TV. It does require an extra device and connectivity but it's helped me a few times.

#!/bin/bash
cpuSpeed0=$(cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_cur_freq)
cpuSpeed1=$(($cpuSpeed0/1000))

cpuTemp0=$(cat /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp)
cpuTemp1=$(($cpuTemp0/1000))
cpuTemp2=$(($cpuTemp0/100))
cpuTempM=$(($cpuTemp2 % $cpuTemp1))

gpuTemp0=$(/opt/vc/bin/vcgencmd measure_temp)
gpuTemp0=${gpuTemp0//\'/°}
gpuTemp0=${gpuTemp0//temp=/}

echo
echo CPU Speed: $cpuSpeed1" MHz"
echo
echo CPU Temp: $cpuTemp1"."$cpuTempM"°C"
echo GPU Temp: $gpuTemp0