Retropie Lag on Pi Zero

PetroRie

@dsfrancis You can use the RPi3 but you need to desolder a couple connectors. It should work the same way, I never understood why no one did this. You can desolder for an example the USB connector and use a connector which comes on the cartridge, but you still need to solder the wires from the pcb to the connectors. That is how I could do it.

dsfrancis

@PetroRie Yeah, I'll probably do that for my next build. I had just seen so many people claiming that the Pi Zero's could still handle the 8/16 bit games well and I thought I could do a quick and dirty build without the need for any real modifications/soldering.

davej

@dsfrancis said in Retropie Lag on Pi Zero:

@PetroRie I am building a Retropie system into an old NES cartridge as a gift for a friend - thus I am using a Pi Zero. I've been reading up on a bunch of potential solutions and I've found that it may be getting hot and throttling down - which goes with the performance I have been seeing. Sometimes it almost plays normally, but it seems to slow down/speed up from time to time.

I've had good results with a Pi1B when overclocked to the raspi-config Turbo setting. It won't speed up the CPU (both are 1000Mhz) but the speed ups to memory and core help - particularly if you are using shaders. Also, in the Retroarch settings, set the Audio Resampler Driver to "nearest" - it's less CPU intensive than the default one.

davej

@columboscoat said in Retropie Lag on Pi Zero:

@dankcushions IPC is all relative I suppose... The 30 year old SNES ran at ~20 odd MHz... Yeah emulation is hard...

Emulating CPUs is relatively easy. Emulating all the custom graphics and audio hardware is another matter - particularly as you have to get all the bits you're emulating running in sync and at the speed they would on the original console.

Your memory split suggestions are way off. I did most of the performance testing when developing the crt-pi shader using a 256M Pi1B. I just leave it as the default (64M).

dsfrancis

At least the pi Zero was cheap. I am not happy with it at all. I opened up the case so that the air could circulate more freely and tried to slightly overclock it. It may have slightly improved performance, but now it crashes a lot. I was pretty modest with the overclocking. I may go back and re-image the SD and start from scratch. These are my overclock settings:

arm_freq=1050
gpu_freq=500
core_freq=500
sdram_freq=500
sdram_schmoo=0x02000020
over_voltage=2
sdram_over_voltage=2

edmaul69

@dsfrancis 2.5a is good. Problem is phone chargers. 2.5a Phone chargers fluxuate their power because of how it rapid charges phones. You need to get a power supply made for the pi.

davej

@dsfrancis said in Retropie Lag on Pi Zero:

At least the pi Zero was cheap. I am not happy with it at all. I opened up the case so that the air could circulate more freely and tried to slightly overclock it. It may have slightly improved performance, but now it crashes a lot. I was pretty modest with the overclocking. I may go back and re-image the SD and start from scratch. These are my overclock settings:

arm_freq=1050
gpu_freq=500
core_freq=500
sdram_freq=500
sdram_schmoo=0x02000020
over_voltage=2
sdram_over_voltage=2

From my overclocking tests on my Pi1 when writing the crt-pi shader, overclocking the gpu_freq was the thing that most increased the temperature - which makes sense as it's the majority of the chip. It was unstable at 450MHz with an open case. As a result, I targeted crt-pi at the default gpu_freq (250MHz) because I new people would want to put Pis in small cases with little ventilation.

The default gpu_freq for a Pi0 is 300MHz - by running it at 500MHz you're actually massively overclocking it.

My overclock settings on my Pi1 are:

arm_freq=1000
core_freq=500
sdram_freq=600
over_voltage=6

I suggest you try these settings and see how they work for you.

dsfrancis

@davej Those settings seem to be working a bit better for me. My games are playing a bit smoother and I'm not crashing anymore. It's nowhere near as nice as playing on my pi2, but it is at least serviceable now.

dsfrancis

Update. My NES/Genesis games are running OK, but the SNES games are still laggy. For instance, I can run Mortal Kombat II for the Genesis without any issues, but if I run it via SNES, if is so laggy, it is unplayable. I can manage to play things like Mario Kart or Super Mario World, but they seem to be running a tad slow and occasionally hiccup. Is there anything that I can do to get the SNES working properly?

BuZz

@dsfrancis which emulator?

dsfrancis

@BuZz I was using lr-snes9x2002, but this morning I installed PiSNES and that seems to be working much better, but I can't figure out how to configure my controllers for the new emulator (USB SNES controllers). I have started up a few games and they are running noticibly better during the demo - full speed with no distorted audio. I think I'm on the right track, as long as I can figure out the configuration for my controllers.

dsfrancis

@dsfrancis got my controllers configured. Now I just need to apply my shaders and I'm set.