Emulation Station Display Issue

[StriderTR]

I was running an old Pi 1 B+ emulating NES and Gameboy games for a long time, quite a while back I moved to the 3B+ and 4B, and the Pi 1 got shelved. I recently hooked it back up and updated RetroPie, all was well. It was still working great.

A couple weeks ago I ordered a 5 inch HDMI display for a project, and decided to test it out using the old Pi 1, in the process I had to change the resolution to support the screen (800x480). Again, no issues. Pi, RetroPie, and screen worked great.

The problem came when I went to put the Pi 1 back and change the display back to default, to use the displays preferred resolution. Everything is fine until I Emulation Station gets done loading. I get this...

Everything else displays properly.

If I SSH in and force 1080P, does the same thing.
If I force a lower resolution, like 720P, then it displays correctly.
It does the same thing on every display I own, including my TV.

I have never seen this issue before and can't for the life of me figure out what's going on. Not sure what changed.

Any ideas?

Thank you in advance! :)

[mitu]

@stridertr said in Emulation Station Display Issue:

If I SSH in and force 1080P, does the same thing.
If I force a lower resolution, like 720P, then it displays correctly

The Pi1 may not have enough VRAM to handle 1080p - how much memory is allocated to the GPU ? How much VRAM does EmulationStation have allocated ?

[StriderTR]

@mitu There is 64MB allocated. I never changed it.

The odd part is it's been working great for years, the issue came about after trying to change the resolution back to default (always been 1080) after lowering it for the 5 inch display.

It's only emulating NES and Gameboy, and it's always been overclocked to the "high" preset. 950/250/450. It's actively cooled with a fan and heatsinks.

I will try and allocate more and see what happens.

Thanks!

EDIT: I bumped it to 128MB, back to displaying correctly at 1080P. Very odd since I know I never did that prior to today. Still, it worked, I would not have thought of it becasue it was never an issue, so thank you. :)

Just wish I knew what caused the issue to begin with.

[mitu]

@stridertr Newer version of ES may need more GPU memory. I don't know how it was configured on your Pi1 before the update, but newer RetroPie images set the GPU memory to at least 128Mb in config.txt - see https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Memory-Split/.

EDIT: and by 'newer' I mean at least the last 2 years, but it may have been like that for quite some time.

[StriderTR]

@mitu Thanks for the info!

The image was created about a year ago(I think), and updated a few weeks ago, so perhaps it was at 128, and something I did moving it to the small lower res display dropped it to 64.

I just don't know since that was clearly the issue and it's fine now.

Again, thank you for pointing me in the right direction. It's appreciated.

[StriderTR]

FYI/UPDATE : For future browsers who may purchase and use this, or a similar, screen on their Pi.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07S82CN57 - Longruner Raspberry Pi Touch Screen

It turns out the driver for the LCD set the GPU RAM to 64MB upon installation. I tried it on 2 other 3B+ units I had running RetroPie because it was bugging me, and it did the same on both of them.

Just to confirm, I set it back to 128, reinstalled the driver, and it went back to 64 each time.

So if you use this screen, or maybe one similar to it, check your GPU RAM allocation after you install the drivers, it may have changed. Especially if you move the Pi back to a higher resolution display.

Edit: To be more specific, running "sudo ./LCD-hdmi" will set it to 64 every time. In my case, and probably others, if you move back to a "standard" HDMI display and do not run this, you will not have audio at all, no matter what you set in the Raspberry Pi/RetroPie. So if you use this or any similar LCD, and you notice you lost audio when moving to something else, don't forget to run this. Then check your GPU RAM allocation.

:)