Lr-bsnes has poor performance on a fresh setup of Retropie 4.8

vic-viper-001

Pi Model or other hardware: 4B
Power Supply used: Canakit Pi4 Power Supply
RetroPie Version Used: 4.8
Built From: retropie-buster-4.8-rpi4_400.img.gz
Controller used: 8bitdo sn30pro+
Emulator: lr-bsnes 1.10.0 (115)
How to replicate the problem: Play any game.

My RetroPie setup has always been an unpredictable barely-working jumbled mess, so I finally decided to do a fresh updated install of Retropie 4.8. It wasn't too hard to get my ports and everything working the way I like them, but unfortunately lr-bsnes doesn't work as good as it used to.

It worked well on my old setup. Usually 60fps with very few minor stutters. On my fresh 4.8 install I'm getting 40fps or lower, even on less demanding games such as ALTTP or SMW. The music and sound are unaffected, but every game feels stuttery and painful to play. It’s like frameskip is enabled, even though there’s no option for it.

I’m forcing 1080p in raspi-config to make sure I'm not outputting 4k video. I'm using the same Pi4 and micro sd, the same version of lr-bsnes 1.10.0 (115), I have the quickmenu options at the untouched default setting. I use overclock settings, but they're the same as my previous setup. I’m not using PAL games. All the variables are the same, the only difference is that I'm using Retropie 4.8 instead of 4.7.1

I use lr-bsnes for a small handful of games so it's not the end of the world if I CAN’T use it, but there’s gotta be a way to make it run normally.

Verbose log:
https://pastebin.com/EPKaxTTm

retroarch cfg snes:
https://pastebin.com/t5d21LtZ

Retroarch cfg all:
https://pastebin.com/8JTXybBD

Overclock settings used:
over_voltage=4
arm_freq=1950
gpu_freq=600
v3d_freq=750

windg

You are using resolution 1920x1080, can you try 1280x720 from runcommand and test again ?

vic-viper-001

@windg
I tried switching to 720p 60hz in the run command menu, but every game I play still runs at 35-43fps

windg

I test mine (RetroPie 4.8.1, no overclocking, no shaders/overlays, 720p) and i don't have these issues. Also i don't have so many frame drops like you. From 8342 frames only 6 are droped. I don't know if overlocking can create slowdowns. Check your temps also.

Darksavior

Lr-bsnes doesn't work as good as it used to? It has never been full speed on the pi. Are you confusing it with lr-snes9x? That is the recommended emulator for the pi4.

vic-viper-001

@windg Removing the overclock did actually make it run a little smoother. 60fps, though with a lot of dips still. Average temperature is around 47c which isn't too bad. I have an argon-one case that would cool it off if it ever got too warm. Since I need the overclock for other consoles, I'll just stick to snes9x. Thanks for the suggestions.

vic-viper-001

@Darksavior Nah I'm definitely not confusing it with snes9x. I remember setting Starfox to run using Bsnes since it actually ran the game properly without everything going crazy fast. I also remember playing Chrono Trigger using Bsnes to fix some weird stuttering issue when starting battles. My favorite Earthbound romhack also required Bsnes or it would just open to a black screen.

On my older pi setup, The only real indicator that Bsnes was running poorly was that you might hear the audio crackle a little... otherwise games would at least "appear" to run at 60fps.

Oh well, It's not really worth going back. I'll stick with snes9x from now on.

mitu

I tested with F-Zero and didn't notice any slowdowns (I'm not using 1080p, but that may not be an issue).

You have a global shader set, you may want to try without it. Try also configuring runcommand to start with the Performance CPU governor (see here) and see if that's making any difference.

Darksavior

@vic-viper-001 I can only test on my setup that's unsupported. Pi4 over_voltage=6 arm_freq=2000
v3d_freq=750 64bit bullseye-lite at 1440p crt-pi shader. lr-bsnes installed from source. Stock emulator settings.

ALTTP and SMW weren't a constant 60fps but it didn't dip below 59fps.

vic-viper-001

@mitu thanks for the reply. I turned off my shader preset to see what would happen, and it does improve performance to "mostly" 60fps. The global shader I use is just "sharp-bilinear-2x-prescale" which afaik isn't supposed to be demanding at all, so I'm surprised performance tanks so badly with it on.

Unfortunately I've screwed up the video settings for all the snes cores by attempting to remove the global shader preset from bsnes, while keeping it in place for snes9x. Shaders don't work at all for snes anymore, and different resolutions in the runcommand menu aren't even working... I don't know why that happened.

Bsnes is causing me too much trouble, so i'm just gonna uninstall it once I restore my backup...