Low framerate on main EmulationStation menu - Pi 4

rilight

Hmm, I'd really like to avoid overclocking if at all possible - I plan on making this a portable build and that would reduce battery life, as well as the warranty issue you mentioned. Besides, the 4B should be able to handle this without overclocking and since other people are having the issue I think it would be good to find the root cause instead of getting around it with OC. That said, I'll keep it in mind as a backup option.

roslof

@rilight I'm suggesting adjusting the throttle force_turbo=1. I this is not classified as overclocking provided you don't use it in conjunction with over_voltage . If you don't want to overclock, steer away from the chunk I pasted in 'code' format.

Here is the write-up from the Raspberry Pi crew:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/config-txt/overclocking.md

Specifically regarding force_turbo:
Forces turbo mode frequencies even when the ARM cores are not busy. Enabling this may set the warranty bit if over_voltage_ is also set.*

rilight

Oh, okay. Given what it says, ("forces maximum frequencies even when the ARM cores are not busy"), this could still decrease battery life though right? I'll give it a try and see how ES performs.

roslof

@rilight said in Low framerate on main EmulationStation menu - Pi 4:

Oh, okay. Given what it says, ("forces maximum frequencies even when the ARM cores are not busy"), this could still decrease battery life though right? I'll give it a try and see how ES performs.

Not sure what you mean by battery life. I've been running force_turbo since the Pi4B first came out and I haven't experienced any wear-and-tear or issues. Always keeping my Pi cool. Never had any warnings...

rilight

I mean in a portable build, without being always plugged into a power socket 😄 As for the effects of the option, setting force_turbo=1 did increase performance on the main ES menu, making it workable in Carbon and pixel-metadata, but the metapixel theme still struggles during movement between some screens. It's an okay workaround for now, but I still feel like it shouldn't be necessary...

rilight

Update: Even having force_turbo=1, I'm still getting tearing in Gambette randomly. I'll record a video.

rilight

It doesn't look like I have permission to upload videos on the forum, unless there's another way to do it?

mitu

@rilight Yes, we limit the size of attachments so I guess a video is too large for the limit.

rilight

Makes sense, how large is the limit? I just scaled the video to a terrifyingly low resolution and it still wouldn't upload

rilight

Never mind, I just uploaded it to imgur instead:
video

dankcushions

please provide a verbose log for that game: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Runcommand/#launch-with-verbose-logging

rilight

@dankcushions Sure, here you go: https://termbin.com/fk91
(I know they can decrease performance, but while shaders are enabled on startup the video I recorded above is with them completely disabled.)

rilight

I just discovered that the 30fps problem on the ES main menu only happens when the UI transition style is set to "Fade". Using "Slide" or "Instant" it stays around 57 - 60fps according to the framerate display, although opening the start menu still causes it to drop to 30fps instantly. This also still doesn't fix my issues with screen tearing in-game.

rilight

@GreenHawk84 has confirmed this is a problem out of the box on a fresh install: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/27377/inconsistent-es-menu-speed-with-pi4/

GreenHawk84

@Krakatoa bumping up VRAM as in ES menu>Other Settings>VRAM Limit? I bumped it to 500Mb and the carousel is still slowing down to ~30fps on fade randomly.

rilight

@GreenHawk84 I tried the same thing a few days back in this thread and didn't have any luck either :/

GreenHawk84

I can confirm the menu speed improves after a game is loaded.

rilight

Interesting, it doesn't really seem to help me but that might be because my theme displays more than the default carbon theme.

stoo

I'm having exactly the same issue. ES just decides to drop to 30fps at random times, and I'm seeing screen tearing in games.

Brand new Pi4B 8GB
Not overclocked.
Absolutely stock settings.
Official Pi4 image downloaded from this site.

It's really frustrating that in some ways the Pi4 performance seems worse than my Pi3B+. There is something amiss here.

stoo

Wait, what's the recommended gfx driver to run on the Pi4 at the moment?

I haven't modified by my config.txt since I installed RetroPie on this SD card from a freshly downloaded image about a week ago, and it's showing:

dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d

Is the fake KMS driver the one I should be using? Because performance seems dire in most emulators and in ES.

N.B.: That's where the tearing is coming from: the driver is just that freaking slow that it's not able to maintain 60fps.