PSX stuttering in some 3D games

pjft · 3 Apr 2017, 21:43

Hi all,

Apologies for the trouble. I hate being the one asking questions, but trust me I've searched and tried quite a bit without success for the past 8 months or so, so I'm just sanity checking others' experiences with this, just to check whether there's anything I'm missing.

I'm running a RPi3, no particular overclock or accelerated graphics option turned on.

I find that some games, namely some racing games like Ridge Racer Type 4, Colin McRae 1 or 2, or even ISS Pro Evolution Soccer 2 will have the odd stutter in sound, leading to the whole game halting for a split second or so every now and then. Actually, maybe that is the reason, which leads to the audio stutter - and not the other way around. The Wipeout series run fine, though.

I'm running my ROMS from a USB drive. It's a USB 2.0 one. I also tried with a USB 3.0 but I believe the RPi ports are only 2.0. I tried bin/cue as well as eboot format. Behavior is exactly the same.

So I'm turning to you: does anyone else experience this? That'd be reassuring, at least. And have you been able to do anything about it? Any pointers - or just a "that's the way it is" would be quite helpful.

Thanks in advance.

Wulf · 3 Apr 2017, 22:25

I sincerely doubt that it has anything to do with running the games from USB. According to this page: https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Running-ROMs-from-a-USB-drive USB transfer speeds can be faster than SD transfer speeds.

It could be that the emulator has some small issues running those games with the pi 3'a capabilities. You could try overclocking or using another ps1 emulator. If you decide to overclock, I'd suggest reading this link: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Overclocking/ and of course, do so at your own risk.

Not having any experience running those games, that's all that I can think of to help, good luck.

TMNTturtlguy · 3 Apr 2017, 23:24

@pjft I have similar experience on racing and high speed games in psx. I have the same settings as you and get 59-60 fps, but then get the random 1/2 second freeze.

edmaul69 · 4 Apr 2017, 01:25

@Wulf a harddrive could be slower. Dosbox is many times faster running from an sd card as apposed to a hard drive. Installing windows 95 on the sd card take about 10 minutes. Doing it on the hard drive it takes about 6 hours. I cant play any dosbox games on a hard drive because it is too slow. I havent played enough of the playstion games to see if those ones lag on my hard drive. I definitely need to test those games.

Darksavior · 4 Apr 2017, 01:46

No issues here with Ridge Racer Type 4 pbp. Pi 2 Oc'd to 1Ghz. I'm loading my games from a 128GB usb2.0 flash drive. I'm fully updated on retropie 4.2.

Wulf · 4 Apr 2017, 01:46

edmaul69, He said USB drive, not hard drive. I linked a source that was talking about running roms from USB drives and mentioned that USB transfer speeds can be faster than SD cards. If he was talking about hard drives, that'd be a different matter. Hard drives have to read the information from a platter before transferring data (unless solid state). I haven't looked much at the transfer speeds of hard drives, but it would make sense that you are right about them being slower.

edmaul69 · 4 Apr 2017, 01:57

@Wulf yeah he mentions 2.0 and 3.0 So that is what made me think there might be a possibility of being a hard drive. I do understand thumbdrives come in 3.0. I have a 1tb 3.0 hard drive hooked up. I have these games so i do want to test to see how they work on it with a powered usb hub.

pjft · 4 Apr 2017, 02:05

Thanks all for the replies. Sorry for not making it clear: it is indeed a thumb drive. And you're both right, of course, as the speed of a USB drive can vary and at occasion be worse or better than the SD card, depending on the types of cards and drives we're using, as well as the type of operation (sequential vs random access, read vs write).

@Darksavior interesting. That's good to know. What file format (ISO, bin/cue, reboot) and version are you running (pal/NTSC)?

And what's the refresh rate of your TV, if you may check when you have the chance? You can check it by running

tvservice -s

Thanks.

Darksavior · 4 Apr 2017, 03:20

@pjft .pbp format, as I already mentioned. NTSC/US version, 60hz refresh. I don't remember the cluster size I used for the flash drive.

pjft · 4 Apr 2017, 02:21

@Darksavior thanks. I'll try to compare the pal vs NTSC version of the same game and see if it makes a difference, good call.

edmaul69 · 4 Apr 2017, 02:27

@pjft are you using the matching bios for the rom versions you are using?

Darksavior · 4 Apr 2017, 04:15

@pjft Just checked.Usb drive is 32k clusters. I don't think 64k was readable on a pi.
edit: If it matters, I'm using the scph7502.bin bios.

Wulf · 4 Apr 2017, 03:11

@edmaul69 I'm definitely not an expert, just looking at documentation from the pi that leads me to believe it's not the USB speeds. Of course I could be wrong. Also, I'm surprised that your hard drive takes so much longer than than the SD card. Looking online, it seems that hard drives have comparable or better speeds than USB drives (of course there is a lot of variation). There are probably a lot of factors involved that I'm not aware of.

edmaul69 · 4 Apr 2017, 03:24

@Wulf dosbox is the only thing i have noticed an issue with. However i want to test the psx games mentioned and i am going to try ape escape on the psp as well because it has a random hiccup exactly like described on these games on my hard drive.

pjft · 4 Apr 2017, 08:10

First of all, thank you all very much for your inputs in trying to help me troubleshoot this, and for the interesting angles to explore.

I hadn't thought of looking into whether the problem could be related to the BIOS, nor disk cluster size.

So, here are my findings so far:

I tested the PAL and NTSC versions of Colin McRae (for practical purposes, as it's where I can most easily reproduce the problem) and both behave the same. I tested both eboot and bin/cue. So, for the time being, I'm excluding "file format" and "region" as being a factor here.
My TV is PAL, meaning it's running at 50Hz. Unfortunately, there was no noticeable difference between PAL or NTSC in terms of stuttering.
@Darksavior I checked and it seems my USB drive's cluster size is 512 bytes. Theory would suggest that this could be a factor in regards to performance, though surprisingly the first web result I found with some benchmarks seems to suggest that for random or sequential reads (which would be the case here, I suspect) the performance is not that worse than your 32k sectors, which defies my expectations. I will likely try to test larger clusters - but not at the moment, as formatting a 64GB drive and copying everything back again is somewhat time consuming so I'd rather avoid it if possible. Still, I will go after this if I can't achieve better results any other way.
@Wulf I haven't yet tested running the games from the SD card, but I may just for getting that hypothesis out of the way. As you state, I'd also expect it to be faster reading from the USB drive, but given that it's a high speed card and (perhaps) the RPi's card reader is faster than the performance we're getting from the USB drive. Still, if that turns out to be true, there's likely little I'll do about that as I can't fit my games in the card, and I'd rather keep the game collection on the USB drive. I'll test it out, though!

@edmaul69 The BIOS thing is the most intriguing to me, though. So far, I (think I) had been using the recommended BIOS, named SCPH1001.BIN . For the sake of testing, I copied over scph7502.bin, and renamed it to all caps (what's the filename for yours, Darksavior?). I wasn't sure that was the right thing to do, as that's not mentioned in the wiki page as being the right filename.

Now, the big issue, though, is that lr-pcsx-rearmed (that's the emulator I'm using, by the way - I'm assuming you're all using that one as well?) has a "very capable Internal HLE BIOS that can run many games without problems". For the sake of testing, I actually renamed the BIOS to a name that wouldn't be accepted (SCPH750__2.BIN and SCPH100__1.BIN) and lo and behold, the games still launched, and behaved exactly like before.

So, a question now is whether there is a way to check what BIOS is being used in each game session. I imagine that information might be available somewhere in the RetroArch menu, will need to check later in the day, as my workday is just starting.

So that's where I am so far.

Thanks all for the help, data points and insights. Truly helpful!

Have a great day.

edmaul69 · 4 Apr 2017, 08:32

@pjft some games can play without the bios. As far as renaming the bios, i believe whichever one you choose to use has to be named SCPH1001.BIN. i am going to try to remember to test tomorrow with my external hard drive and sd card. I only have samsung cards in my pi's now as they performed far better for me than the several other popular brands of cards. i will even try a thumb drive for fun. I will be testing ape escape for the psp as well as it had the same issue back when i first added it and tested it. i should hopefully be able to find the best solution in my case which might be helpful to you.

Darksavior · 4 Apr 2017, 10:09

@pjft Mine is scph7502.bin. Lower case. No complaints from pcsx. I think its a PAL bios too, though it loads anything I throw at it at 60hz np. I've used this bios for over 15yrs in other emulators so I'll use my own experience over a wiki saying 1001 is the only choice.
Also, get a random usb stick and format it to 32k to test one game with it, heh.

pjft · 4 Apr 2017, 09:13

@Darksavior Oh, I perfectly get that and fully agree with you.

My question is whether the emulator is actually using it - i.e. if you actually remove the file from the folder, do your games stop working - or if it's using its internal BIOS.

Darksavior · 4 Apr 2017, 10:16

@pjft If there's no bios, you'll get some message in yellow text on bottom left saying it found no bios, and to expect errors.

I swear someone had a similar problem to yours, but with nes. PAL tv, but skipping games. Not sure how he fixed it. It was in this forum.

dankcushions · 4 Apr 2017, 09:20

@pjft said in PSX stuttering in some 3D games:

My TV is PAL, meaning it's running at 50Hz. Unfortunately, there was no noticeable difference between PAL or NTSC in terms of stuttering.

it's a CRT? because modern HDTVs should all run at 60hz fine, unless you've set retropie to use a weird video mode. this might be the root of your problem.

i do see some very small blips in tekken 3 and i'm sure they exist in other games, it's just tekken 3 is one i'm most familiar with on the psx so they stick out to me. i'm not sure what causes it.