Lowest overclocking settings to get n64 fullspeed at pi3?
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@Tao I should add that several people have achieved good results with many games by lowing the screen resolution down to the N64 default. I'm not willing to do this however, because it looks awful on my plasma screen, so I stick with games I can achieve good performance in with HD resolutions.
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@drake999 said in Lowest overclocking settings to get n64 fullspeed at pi3?:
@Tao I should add that several people have achieved good results with many games by lowing the screen resolution down to the N64 default. I'm not willing to do this however, because it looks awful on my plasma screen, so I stick with games I can achieve good performance in with HD resolutions.
The newer versions of the N64 emulator plugins are outputting at 640x480 now in an attempt to get better resolution. I actually find that the HiRes plugins look pretty close to the emulation on Xbox One Rare Replay (I haven't loaded any of the texture packs).
The problem is the N64 emulation is ugly and many developers used their own microcode rather than the poor default microcode offered by Nintendo. This essentially means that games have to be reverse-engineered by developer (often each game on it's own as developers mad improvements from game to game) rather than developing for an overall architecture like the Playstation 1.
It made game development on the N64 a chore in it's day and makes emulation a monumental tak even today.
Some games will run okay, but most have at least some glitches (then again, even Nintendo VC releases have issues). Overclocking doesn't really solve the issue because it's not one of performance, but an issue of difficulty emulating games properly.
When I went from a Pi2 to a Pi3, I didn't see any major improvement in N64 games. Heck, my Pi3 was still running the Pi2 "overclock" of 1000MHz at first and going from that to 1350Mhz didn't really affect N64 performance.
Now, with that all said, I am running the following on the Pi3 to get "playable" performance out of some Dreamcast games and PSP games:
-Processor: 1350 Mhz
-Memory: 500Mhz
-Core: 500 Mhz
-Overvolt: 5If I pop the top of the case, it runs cool enough for most systems, put if I want to run PSP, I turn on a fan or else the Pi3 will overheat after a few minutes. Experiments with just running a desk fan pointed at the Pi3 open top case kept it below 60 C and my McGuyvered Fan from an old PC power directly on top of the Pi3 case keeps it closer to 50 C even in Full on PSP games.
I might try pushing to 1400 Mhz again, but it got too hot on other systems without a fan and performance difference was negligible.
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@mrbwa1 That's basically what I was saying as well, but your response is certainly more fleshed out than mine. Yeah I got the same overclock settings as you but my system is stable with an overvolt of 4, so I figure I might as well leave it there as it will reduce heat. I actually use the GPU setting rather than Core, in hopes that the 3D block is also overclocked, but I suspect it isn't without force turbo (which I am unwilling to do). I actually use active cooling. I got a case off of amazon with a fan included which has worked wonders. To be honest I did not notice any considerable performance improvement bumping it up to 1350 MHz though, which is why i didn't mention it initially. The way I use the system, either the emulators didn't utilize a single ARM core fully at 1200 MHz anyway, or they were GPU intensive, which for obvious reasons also wouldn't benefit from a CPU overclock.
Regarding your information on microcode. Obviously there is a reason for this that I just don't understand or the problem would no doubt be resolved already. It just doesn't make sense to me because aren't you essentially creating a virtual copy of the N64 CPU to run this microcode? Saying that shouldn't the microcode included in the ROM run well on the virtual CPU? Is this custom microcode you refer to more GPU oriented and essentially has to be translated to OpenGL? I know it's not that simple and there are details I'm missing, but would love for someone to fill me in on it.
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@drake999 said in Lowest overclocking settings to get n64 fullspeed at pi3?:
aren't you essentially creating a virtual copy of the N64 CPU to run this microcode?
More or less you're right. As I understand it, the previous attempts at N64 emulation are just not accurate enough to do the job perfectly. Most N64 emulators have traditionally been developed with the decision to sacrifice accuracy for speed in order to be playable on a wider array of hardware. However, it seems there are a new crop of N64 emulators on the rise that are concentrating on emulation accuracy as their primary goal in an attempt to solve the game compatibility issues. Sadly, that level of accuracy will likely mean that these new emulators will be unable to run on low-end devices like the Raspberry Pi.
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@mediamogul Ok you've peaked my interest lol. Do you have any names for this new crop of N64 emulators by any chance?
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The most immediate is the low-level emulation work being done by the LibRetro team. Their 'paraLLEl' emulator is currently in pre-alpha and as it's tied to RetroArch, it should see availability in the x86 version of RetroPie without too much issue. It's usability will depend on your hardware of course.
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@mediamogul Ok thanks.
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With a wider interest in all things retro, it's a great time for emulation development. You're even starting to see dedicated news articles on IGN regarding emulation advancements. I subscribe to Simply Austin on YouTube and his weekly 'EMU-NATION' news segments are also very insightful and well produced. I recommend them highly for anyone interested.
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@mediamogul That uses a Vulkan rendering engine, so we'll never see it on the Raspberry Pi.
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Exactly right. If this were ever integrated into RetroPie it would have to be the x86 version.
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