Getting the best PSX experience on a Pi 4
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One of the popular and very useful post at the moment is the one with the same title, but for N64, from @George-Spiggott. Thx to him and many contributors, we are now many to be able to play most games on this hard to emulate console with Pi4 and Retropie 4.6 image.
Even though the PSX is not at all as hard to set up, as a new Pi owner who just finished building his PSX collection, I was wondering if people would like to share the specific settings they changed from the default to get the best experience with the PSX games.
Of course, I am talking about the lr-pcsx-rearmed emulator. My Pi is overclocked as per my signature, but it's not a requirement to share some good tweakings that you are happy you made.
Which Bios is more useful to have?
What retroarch options you consider pertinent for most games?
How to you obtain the best image without compromising to much on game speed and stability?
Thanks in advance for your time!
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I have everything with base settings, except for having enhanced graphics enabled, with the following exceptions.
Worms Armageddon, Worms World Party, Rayman, Doom & Final Doom - Enhanced graphics is disabled.
Crash Team Racing - Dynarec is disabled and frame skip is set to 1.
Everything I have runs at full speed (or very close to). For reference my Pi is overclocked as per my sig. IIRC only overclocking the CPU benefits PS1.
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For bios i change from SCPH1001 to PSXONPSP660. I reading that It has been improved from the Sony and it is better from the old one. I don't know if it is true, i haven't test it enough to come to safe conclusions.
I change also recently, from the RetroArch menu, the psx cpu clock from 57 to 78 and i saw big improvements to many games like Dynasty Warriors, Gran Turimso 2 , Driver 2, Tekken 3. The games running smoother and the input lag is lower. I don't know why the default value is 57, but from my tests so far and with every reservation is not the correct value.
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I’ve set the cpu clock to 100, and haven’t noticed any issues so far across a variety of games - although I admittedly haven’t done a scientific study. 57 is too low for a few games, like Wipeout, Rage Racer, and Gran Turismo 1 & 2, and I have yet to see any ill effects from putting it higher (although there must be a few games that break when it’s set so high).
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Yet again, thx for sharing @George-Spiggott
@George-Spiggott said in Getting the best PSX experience on a Pi 4:
For reference my Pi is overclocked as per my sig. IIRC only overclocking the CPU benefits PS1.
Good to know; exactly the opposite of N64! :P
Thx @windg I'll make sure to get those Bios files.
As for the cpu clock setting, I was told that it would necessarily crash at those values... So, I am glad you shared this. I probably never would have tested it!
And to get the best resolution, you guys activate the highres option and the speed hack to compensate on each games?
PI4B 8GRAM (Canakit Extreme) - Retropie 4.6.7 (my first Pi ever : september 2020)
OC : arm=2k, v3d=830, hdmi4kp60=1, turbo=1, OV=6 -
The CPU clock setting is a bit mysterious. If the recommended is 57, then running it at nearly double that should cause problems, but it’s been fine so far. Games don’t really seem any faster or smoother either, but it does mean that some games don’t suffer from slowdown.
I thought Tomb Raider 1 was running too quickly when the CPU clock was set that high, but I suspect that I’m just used to the PAL version.
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And to get the best resolution, you guys activate the highres option and the speed hack to compensate on each games?
I don't use the enhanced resolution, i am trying to stay to the original experience. I have enable only the smooth video.
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Well, PSX performance has been solid under normal conditions. Only when I try to enhance the graphics do I see slowdown.
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I haven't noticed any slowdown on my Pi4 when using the enhanced resolution option. My Pi is overclocked (the CPU is set to 2Ghz), but games seem to play fine even using the slower enhanced resolution option.
To be honest, I tend to play with it off, as I prefer the grungy, low-res look - I find that games tend to look better, as the lower resolution hides a multitude of sins. They were mostly, after all, designed to be seen that way.
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@Ka said in Getting the best PSX experience on a Pi 4:
I’ve set the cpu clock to 100, and haven’t noticed any issues so far across a variety of games
Try Moto Racer 1 ... it plays too fast with cpu clock 100
But, for most other PS1 racers i've tried ... cpu clock 100 works great !
I quite like Colin McRae Rally 2.0 Arcade Mode and it plays so much better, smoother, faster with clock 100
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@Ka said in Getting the best PSX experience on a Pi 4:
Games don’t really seem any faster or smoother either,
It depends on the game. I've played a fair bit of Colin McRae Rally 2.0 with the 57 clock speed .. when changing it to 100 i noticed a definite improvement in the speed, smoother gameplay when drifting around corners
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When i upgraded to the PI4 i backed up my entire physical collection of 218 games and compressed them on the highest settings.
I have yet to find a game that does not work out of the box with enhanced resolution enabled.On the PI3 the only game i remember giving issues was Metal Gear Solid during cut scenes, but that problem's gone too now with the 4
Worth noting that my games are stored on a network drive.
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@ReadyPlayaWon that’s interesting, thanks. Not too bothered about trying Moto Racer, but I think I’ve got CM2.0 lying around somewhere - I’ll give it a try.
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@george-spiggott said in Getting the best PSX experience on a Pi 4:
Crash Team Racing - Dynarec is disabled and frame skip is set to 1.
I am trying to get CTR to work correctly as well, but am having the issue that the characters disappear as soon as they move away from my position a little (so the smaller characters don't show, I can only see their wheels).
May I ask, where exactly you changed these settings (dynarec and frame skip)? I tried editing /opt/retropie/configs/psx/retroarch.cfg from the console, but there is no Dynarec or frame skip entry where I could change a value.
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@cagusch Retroarch core options screen (hotkey and X on your joypad) from within the game. I still use PCSX Rearmed as I get better speed at 2x resolution than with Duckstation.
Frameskip 1 gives an framerate buff with no penalties as CTR runs at 30FPS. Fun fact, so does CTR Nitro-Fueled for the Switch.
No idea about your invisible characters option, I hope you find a solution.
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@george-spiggott said in Getting the best PSX experience on a Pi 4:
No idea about your invisible characters option, I hope you find a solution.
Thank you, I found the options, but they didn't solve the invisible characters problem.
However, I discovered that it only exists in two player mode. If you start a two player split-screen race, do the characters also disappear once they move a bit further from your view (so you can only see the wheels)?
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@cagusch said in Getting the best PSX experience on a Pi 4:
having the issue that the characters disappear as soon as they move away from my position a little (so the smaller characters don't show, I can only see their wheels)
I had that problem with Crash Team Racing as well. I was able to fix it by disabling the "speed hack" option and just keeping enhanced resolution activated. Hopefully this works for you if you have not already found a solution.
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I also found that enabling both the high resolution tweak and the speed hack would result in odd graphical glitches in some games - for example, in Metal Gear Solid when you go under water (right at the beginning of the game) the underwater part is completely black, but turning off the speed hack fixes this.
It may be worth having a game override setting for some of these tweaks, as having both enabled clearly makes a difference on some games - for the better - but are a detriment to others.
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@raspberrycoulis i think almost every game exhibits some kind of visual bug with the speed hack on, hence the note in: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Playstation-1/#video-double-internal-resolution - actually even without the speedhack some games can break with double resolution (doom is an example)
a blacklist for the games that are unplayable with it on is not a bad idea - could be implemented in a similar way to mupen64plus.sh
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