USB instead of microSD for the operating system causing overheating
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I m not so technically advanced but I am quite confident that your assumptions seem to be more relevant to raspberry's architecture than the emulators themselves.
Either way we can all enjoy raspberries, either by gaming and projects or torturing ourselves causing troubles and searching for solutions and optimizations .
It's in human nature after all. -
@NastyButtler322 said in USB instead of microSD for the operating system causing overheating:
@dankcushions all of it is compiled as 32 bit, because the operating system is 32 bit. But the games are compiled to be ran on a system using a 64 bit processor, and memory management scheme in mind. A 64 bit emulator can not do the memory management, that's the operating system, and the operating system is 32 bit. If the operating system were 64 bit, a 32 bit emulator would not make a difference, but at least a 64 bit emulator can be used in its place in that case, and if both are 64 bit, then the memory management can implement a larger segmented paging scheme, and those larger processes can be pushed from the table into each core. A faster I/O secondary memory helps relieve the problem of small ram that the pi 3 has that people complain about all the time.
the whole emulator and rom is in RAM the whole time and nothing much gets transferred to/from the drive (SD or USB) once the game is running. the pi 3's 1GB is LOADS more than N64 uses.
linux provides ample facilities to monitor disk i/o, so don't take my word for it. here's the output of
vmstat 5whilst mario 64 is playing:procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ------cpu----- r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa st 2 0 0 509540 18316 102016 0 0 0 0 3730 4756 11 1 88 0 0 1 0 0 509416 18316 102016 0 0 0 0 5022 5952 11 3 85 0 0 1 0 0 509324 18316 102016 0 0 0 0 2838 3791 10 1 89 0 0 1 0 0 508952 18316 102016 0 0 0 0 2593 3690 8 1 90 0 0 0 0 0 508828 18324 102016 0 0 0 7 2962 4801 9 3 89 0 0 0 0 0 508548 18324 102016 0 0 0 0 2433 3127 7 1 92 0 0 1 0 0 508084 18324 102016 0 0 0 0 2305 3377 7 1 92 0 0 1 0 0 508052 18324 102016 0 0 0 0 2260 3139 14 1 85 0 0 1 0 0 508052 18324 102016 0 0 0 0 6360 11882 13 3 84 0 0 1 0 0 507960 18324 102016 0 0 0 0 5093 9343 15 1 84 0 0 0 0 0 507960 18332 102008 0 0 0 9 3454 5932 15 1 83 1 0 0 0 0 507928 18332 102016 0 0 0 0 2650 4781 14 2 84 0 0 0 0 0 554672 18332 102016 0 0 0 3 2431 4020 12 1 87 0 0 0 0 0 554704 18340 102008 0 0 0 6 3041 4038 7 2 92 0 0see, no swp use, loads of memory free. not much cpu either. GPU is the bottleneck for the most part.
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@dankcushions just saw your reply to me talking about memory management. I believe that I already said that I know its in ram already. The problem is not related to swap space either. I'm not even sure if swap space is implemented in raspbian. Its the other operations executing when the game is interrupted more frequently than it would as a 64 bit segment scheme. Those other processes, not the game, are accessed from and to the card at times while the game waits on them. Mario ran fine for me in the first place. If you do not want to try everything from the USB including the operating system then dont. I'm not going to point some things out to try to add credibility that I know what I'm talking about, but its you that's barking up the wrong tree. The experiment is simple, if you don't want to try running the operating system and games from the USB card to see what the difference is with both the operating system and games from the USB, then don't. But I'm not writing an entire text book about operating systems on a forum, if you want that than I recommend ' Operating Systems Internals and Design Principles 6th edition, by William Stallings' . And I'm saying that because if you don't put the time in to learn a subject, then parts of an explanation are just going to be misunderstood, forgotten, and the whole point is missed in the end. I'm currently taking 6 classes, and about to do homework. I was wanting to see if someone would be interested to try because performance does increase from USB 2.0, and I thought that someone would be interested in working that kink out. If you want to prove me wrong then the way to do it is by replicating what I said I did, running the operating system and games from USB, and compare the playability of the n64 games between the USB setup and the microSD set up. But not the microSD for the operating system and the USB for the games. Its a simple experiment that anyone can do. Its a noticeable difference. Its more to it then "the game is in ram". If you really want to know what is going on, which I doubt, then read and study that book I recommended. Its not as simple as a game sitting in ram.
Anyway, I solved the over heating problem. The vram needs to be lowered to 90mb or below.
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The experiment is simple, if you don't want to try running the operating system and games from the USB card to see what the difference is with both the operating system and games from the USB, then don't. But I'm not writing an entire text book about operating systems on a forum, if you want that than I recommend ' Operating Systems Internals and Design Principles 6th edition, by William Stallings' . And I'm saying that because if you don't put the time in to learn a subject, then parts of an explanation are just going to be misunderstood, forgotten, and the whole point is missed in the end. I'm currently taking 6 classes, and about to do homework
i'm a computer science BSc (hons) graduate. good luck with your homework..
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Has anyone looked into the potential benefits of ball bearings?
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@dankcushions Yeah? Hons? That's cool. The picture of the linux application along with your response of the game being in ram made no sense as a response to what I said in the quote. I'm not saying that you are lying, but I have a very strong suspicion that you are. I could sort of understand if you typed that and missed something I said, and did not include that quote. But the quote with what you said tells me that you have absolutely no idea what I was saying, which should be very easy if you remembered your Operating Systems class, along with about 5 other classes that are in the BS curriculum and all involve basic things about processes, memory management, page sizes, and process sizes. Considering that you were in no way trying to help with the problem of over heating due to my choice in the secondary storage device, and instead trying to badly argue a point that you never made other than "I'm barking up the wrong tree"; I think you like pretending to know things that you do not. I think that you like pretending to know more than people that you didn't know before hand actually know what is going on. I do not think you have a BS in computer science (with hons), but I do think you're full of BS about computer science.
So good luck feeling like you're some one that you're not. Its not like you can't actually learn what you're pretending to know. This is what happens when you decide to call people out on stuff that you're the faker about.
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@NastyButtler322 i'm not about to get my degree certificate from the attic just to win an argument online (although i'm slightly tempted now!). you'll find you encounter some resistance if you make bold claims about n64 tweaks you've made, especially without any supporting evidence (the plugins can show fps, and linux can measure realtime IO in a variety of ways) or details about your testing process. make a wiki page about it, even. isn't that part of the fun?
i absolutely encourage experimentation and theories, but with n64 emulation the bottlenecks are demonstrable and they're not anything to do with the storage device. my
vmstatoutput literally proves that. look into whatbi,boandwaindicate.also, this isn't the place for name-calling and bad attitudes, but i don't want to put you off experimenting. running everything directly from USB should provide several benefits in retropie. i encourage you, or anyone, to think of some good ways to benchmark it.
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@NastyButtler322 I'm guessing running n64 must reach the temps near its throttling limit and the extra heat caused by a usb stick might just put it over. Those little heatsinks do little to prevent overheating. USB sticks do generate heat, some brands producing more heat than others. The case can also add to the heat. Tried a case that acts like a heatsink?
How about you provide before and after temps to actually see what's going on and not just assuming what the cause of the problem is.
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@dankcushion you already won. You've got BS hons.
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@Darksavior said in USB instead of microSD for the operating system causing overheating:
@NastyButtler322 I'm guessing running n64 must reach the temps near its throttling limit and the extra heat caused by a usb stick might just put it over. Those little heatsinks do little to prevent overheating. USB sticks do generate heat, some brands producing more heat than others. The case can also add to the heat. Tried a case that acts like a heatsink?
How about you provide before and after temps to actually see what's going on and not just assuming what the cause of the problem is.
Seems like the problem solved when I lowered the vram in emulation station to 90MB. But I haven't tested it much since then. It was doing it with every system that I tried to use shaders on. The N64 game play was running great, and did not cause over heating since I did not bother trying to use shaders for that system. I just mentioned that N64 plays well this way to give a reason to people so that they may want to try it and possibly have more help solving the problem, but it is solved well enough for me now.
Any cases you would recommend that act like a heatsink?
Also, do you know if there are any ammonia, hydrogen, and water filled heat sinks?
Wazzz up
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@NastyButtler322 apologies, no. I don't have a pi3. I'm using a pi2. If I do get a pi3 in the future I will consider cutting one up like this guy:
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@NastyButtler322 I've seen someone in these forums mention the flirc case for heat dissipation. The top portion of the case is aluminum and it has a small area sitting over the processor. This essentially turns your case into a heatsink with a large area to dissipate heat from.
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@NastyButtler322 Speaking of water cooling, I like how this costs 4-5 times as much as the Pi itself:
https://modmymods.com/modmymods-raspberry-pi-mini-water-cooling-kit-mod-0171.html
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