VICE Performance Decrease since 2.4 -> 2.4.30

BuZz

BTW, if you are talking about performance with resid sid emulation on - it will be significantly slower. use the fast sid emulation for performance.

BuZz

BTW which crack intro is it ? (So I can test) - The Nostalgia crack or another ?

BuZz

2 of the demos I tested with http://csdb.dk/release/?id=133934 / http://csdb.dk/release/?id=72550

vbs

It is by group REMEMBER. It shows big blue letters with a green bar moving up and and down.
I mean the option "SidEngine". Was fast in 2.4 with value "1" and now it seems slow with same setting.

I will test this again tomorrow more systematically ;)

BuZz

If you are talking about the Resid engine - I think they switched to using resid-fp which is slower (and more accurate).

the remember intro on my rpi3 with the resid engine on uses 80% cpu and sounds lovely.

the other thing that changed in the retropie config is default frequency on rpi2/3 from 22050 to 44100 (rpi1 still has a default of 22050). But the fast sid engine is still default on rpi.

AmigaGamer

@vbs check in your sound settings to see what the output driver is set to.
If its SDL change it to ALSA and see how you get on.

I had big slowdowns with the SDL driver, with alsa my RPI3 hasnt gone over 30% on that cracktro

vbs

@BuZz
Yesterday I thought the option SidEngine was a bool value but it turns out that it selects different engines. And you are right, it seems to be related to RESID which has gotten significantly slower it seems. With FASTSID the different is only subtle.

@AmigaGamer
Yes, thank you, but alsa was the default for me.

BuZz

@vbs the intro you mentioned is still full speed here on rpi3 though - so on top of the resid engine being slower you may have another issue.

BuZz

@AmigaGamer it's 30% with fast Sid emulation. 80% with resid here on rpi3. More complicated demos seem to hover at around 80% too, so I might change the engine to resid on rpi3 by default as it sounds a lot nicer than the fast sid emulation.

AmigaGamer

@buzz Agree on both the above points. The cracktro with resid is sitting comfortably at 77% for me.

A switch to resid on rpi3 undoubtebly sounds better/more authentic. I just wonder if the increased cpu overhead will affect in other areas.
Eg load times/warp mode performance.
Ill be staying with REsid for a while and see how i get on.
FWIW my opinion right now is FASTsid is the safer bet for the default install. The support forum is less likely to fill up with questions about audio fidelity than it is for slowdowns/buffer overflow errors!

@vbs only other things i can think of are check the following
sound buffer 100 msec
fragment size medium
frequency 44100

in system/sid settings make sure you dont have an "extra" sid enabled

vbs

Guys, sorry I probably was not clear: I currently don't have a real problem or at least I think it runs normally for me. I just noticed that decrease in performance. When I set SidEngine to 1 then for me also it runs smooth with about 80% CPU.
But the performance decrease is explainable if they changed something in the SidEngine which is more costly now.
But in the end it means it won't be possible to have RESID and the CRT effect at the same time, right?

AmigaGamer

@vbs makes sense that you had slowdown now you mention the CRT filters. The filters adding approx 20% load so combined with resid thats going to cause slowdown. Testing the Edge of Disgrace demo with both switched on is causing stuttering/frame drop to 40fps