@BrockBoyts said in Active vs Passive Cooling:
@dankcushions
I was hoping that overclocking would fix any subtle lag issues. This has mostly been noticeable in games that require accuracy.
well, overclocking can potentially improve framerates on CPU-bound games, but 'lag' can mean many things. if you mean input lag, well that can potentially just be a problem with the emulator or emulated hardware, or your controller, or your tv, etc. overclocking won't help here.
Examples:
Galaga on Lr-Mame2003 without shaders and overlays plays super smooth. If I turn on the overlay and shaders (CRT effect) there is a subtle lag.
this sounds like GPU being your bottleneck, or possibly RAM being the bottleneck. you'd need to experiment with overclocking both to resolve this (or perhaps use lr-fba-next and see if that does better with this game)
Metal Slug 1 on Lr-Mame2003 when two people are playing and there are a bunch of sprites are on the screen there is noticeable lag.
this is probably just what the original hardware would do. there are other solutions - see https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/2305/metal-slug-slowdowns-rpi3
Mega Man Zero games on GBA have a lag too and those games need accurate response times to play.
no experience with this.
I am only considering a cooling solution because the inside of the cabinet gets pretty warm and may contribute to the pi overheating if I overclock. If I do not overclock the Pi I have no concern for the heat.
the pi is pretty good at protecting itself from heat and will let you know when it's temperature throttling via on-screen symbols. IMO if you still want to overclock, just do it and then work out if cooling is required from how it reacts.
