Overloaded CPU/GPU: How to spot when I've gone too far?

busywait

When I'm experimenting with settings, and combinations of settings, I would like to be able have a very obvious indication that the core has overloaded, in case I don't notice brief glitches in gameplay.

What monitoring or logging can I use to show that the audio, CPU, GPU or any other resource was overloaded?

For example, shaders, run-ahead, non-threaded video, and other core options all require additional resources - how can I know when I've gone too far with a particular combination?

mitu

For monitoring/logging, you can't go wrong with bcmstat:

Simple Raspberry Pi command line monitoring tool:

CPU fequencies (ARM, Core, H264, V3D, ISP)

Temperature (current and peak) for Core and/or PMIC

IRQ/s

Network Rx/Tx

System utilisation (percentage user, nice, idle etc.)

CPU load (including individual cores when available)

GPU mem usage

RAM usage (with/without swap)

Memory leak detection (D/A options - instantaneous and accumulated memory deltas)

Undervoltage, ARM frequency cap and temperature throttle event monitoring

If the emulator supports showing a FPS counter (RetroArch does), turn it on to monitor it during gameplay.

dankcushions

@busywait if you run with verbose logging with most* retroarch cores it will output performance data. eg

RetroArch [INFO] :: Threaded video stats: Frames pushed: 461, Frames dropped: 0.

any dropped frames imply you've hit some kind of hardware bottleneck, or need to disable shaders/any non-default settings.

*: i assume you need threaded video for this to happen, and on some cores they seem to not output any data regardless - eg mupen64plus-next, last time i checked.

Clyde

Just for completeness, these commands monitor your Pi's clock speed and SoC temperature without any additional software:

watch -n 1 vcgencmd measure_clock arm

watch -n 1 vcgencmd measure_temp

They will keep updating the output until you press Ctrl+c.

See https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/raspbian/applications/vcgencmd.md for descriptions of these and other vcgencmd commands.

busywait

Thanks all! One more option:
I discovered the RetroArch OSD statistics in RGUI > Settings > On Screen Display > On Screen Notifications > Display Statistics

@dankcushions said in Overloaded CPU/GPU: How to spot when I've gone to far?:

if you run with verbose logging with most* retroarch cores it will output performance data. eg
RetroArch [INFO] :: Threaded video stats: Frames pushed: 461, Frames dropped: 0.
*: i assume you need threaded video for this to happen, and on some cores they seem to not output any data regardless - eg mupen64plus-next, last time i checked.

Interesting to need Threaded Video, because it took me a little while to work out that Display Statistics only displays if Threaded Video = OFF

[Edit: I guess Threaded video stats is just showing that the video thread is able to keep up?]

Diplay Statistics in action (I had to make the bezel slightly transparent/reduced opacity):
alt text

Clyde

@busywait said in Overloaded CPU/GPU: How to spot when I've gone to far?:

I discovered the RetroArch OSD statistics in RGUI > Settings > On Screen Display > On Screen Notifications > Display Statistics

Good find, I didn't know this even after 2½ years with RetroPie. 😅

busywait

I found another option for getting performance information logged - RetroArch performance counters: https://docs.libretro.com/guides/generating-retroarch-logs/

I haven't seen anything useful logged yet though :/