Retropi running on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS x86 Flavor with intel gizmo2 board will not make emulationstation.

leejsmith

I now have retropie running on my intel gizmo2 board with ubuntu. The problem was lack of memory during the compiling of emulationstation core files. I made a swapfile before running the retropie install script and it works.

Twitch0815

@leejsmith
Question what graphics driver did you install.

Did you specifically downloaded the newest Radeon driver for your model.
And how is testing going?

leejsmith

@Twitch0815 HI, So far I just wanted to get it working and I have not checked what graphics driver ubuntu is using. As it stands it runs close to a PI 3 when I tested mario kart 64 the audio was choppy and the 3d was jerky. I need to change the power button script to shutdown instead of bring up the options for shutdown, suspend ect.

Twitch0815

Just wondering if there was an updated Radeon driver you could install then what is included with Kernel I talked to super about it he seems to think the only one is the ubuntu provided one with default. On my INtel Nuc the default driver sucked and I did not see a boost in performance till installing the factory downloaded driver.

leejsmith

@Twitch0815 It does look like amd have drivers for it and I found a guide on this page.

https://www.element14.com/community/community/designcenter/single-board-computers/blog/2015/07/30/building-a-digital-pcb-inspection-microscope-with-the-gizmo-2

I will give this a try later today.

Twitch0815

Awesome let me know what kind of results you get.

vbs

In case you are compiling using "-j" flag to compile multiple files in parallel: you can try to remove that option to reduce memory footprint.

BuZz

on PC it is assumed that you have reasonable amount of free ram - by default it will use the number of cpu cores for the -j option. can be overridden with sudo MAKEFLAGS=-j1 ./retropie-setup.sh etc

leejsmith

@Twitch0815 That looks a few levels above what I am prepared to do for a few extra fps.

Twitch0815

@leejsmith
at least with my experience with an Intel Nuc I would say the performance gains I saw from having a fully up to date driver were night and day. I saw abysmal performance on an Intel Nuc old generation. Some emulators did not even start at all.
Testing after installing the manufacturer driver saw huge increases all emulators launching properly. I was even able to run a ps2 game at about 3/4 speed.
Just food for thought.

BuZz

@Zanoryt Please see https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first BTW and format your posts when posting logs (or use an external pastebin site)

suprjami

@leejsmith @Twitch0815

The AMD driver download at http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/embedded?os=Linux x86_64 will not work on Ubuntu 16.04

AMD's proprietary Catalyst driver (called fglrx) is not compatible with the Xorg shipped in Ubuntu 16.04 or later. AMD are no longer updating Catalyst for Linux so this proprietary driver is no longer an option.

The only option available is to use the open source driver (called radeon) which is already included.

There is a newer AMD driver framework upstream (called amdgpu) which has both open source and proprietary options, but it does not support the older HD8000-series in the Gizmo 2 (nor does it support the HD6870 I'm running in my desktop PC).

The free radeon driver used to be fairly terrible, but it's quite good these days. Current performance on the Gizmo 2 (and my PC) is as good as it's going to get on Ubuntu 16.04 onwards.

The only way I can see to maybe get better performance is use Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and the proprietary embedded driver linked above, but I don't know if that's possible with the Gizmo 2, nor if RetroPie will still compile on older Ubuntu releases.