@cyperghost thanks for the confirmation, I guess I'll have to screw around with it some more.

@Dwarfboysim said in Upgrading from 3B to 3B +:

What are OC’s?

Overclocking.

@jste84 If you are using "lr" emulators - your controllers are already configures for arcade play right now.

@dankcushions said in Memory Split Does What? Increase or leave alone?:

oh sure, but i would hope they would also upgrade the bus before slapping in faster memory, otherwise it would just have to be downclocked :)

It was more of a compatibility thought when I read that DDR3 would definitely help or maybe it was just a quick wishful thinking of faster memory and a better gaming experience! :)

Is the memory DDR3 (LPDDR3?) compatible with the ARM8 and they used slower memory to keep a price point. Basically is it possible to upgrade the RAM architecture only.

I would assume if the ARM8 supports faster memory (DDR3) and it was a pricing decision then no "bus" modifications would be needed or even downclocking the RAM as the CPU is able to waste clock cycles (idle time) waiting for slower RAM or another way to look at it is the CPU will dictate the clock speed it receives data regardless of RAM clock speed be it faster or slower but not the other way around.

My thought keeps going back to the SoC also. It seems like it's the "traffic cop" (component communication) and would dictate speed/type or at least need to sync the speed between components. Maybe it's just a bridge and works at backplane speeds (thinking like a switch here) leaving clock speeds to the components themselves.

Some CPU's can use both memory types (DDR3 or DDR4) but it's the chipset (i.e.-motherboard) that forces you to use one or the other.

You don't see memory overclocked as frequently it seems. In most cases but not all the returns are minimal vs. saying a quick tweak to the FSB multiplier but some squeeze every percent they can out of their PC and that includes memory.

When you buy a new mobo most times you're also buying a new CPU & memory due to the socket type and memory architecture differences. Your basically forklifting your PC. Possibly reusing the power supply and few peripherals like the CR-ROM & maybe your case, fans, possibly the graphics card, etc. I build all mine from scratch.

BUT when doing large compiles you can easily max out the system ram, and then it uses slower, SD card-killing swap. this is why people shouldn't raise the GPU split. helpful for nothing.. unhelpful for something!

Good point! That seems like a very solid reason for keeping the default allocation split as it will be helpful in certain compiles of some of the emulators or most? I know some apps will leverage every single byte you give it.

@edmaul69 great, please do and let me know how it goes!

This should remove all dithering effects that the emulator explicitly added - but obviously keeping any that the games had originally.

I had a what the heck moment and decided to try Rpix86 with this game last night. I was blown away by the performance improvement this emulator has over DosBox. I estimate I observed a 2-3 times speed increase over DosBox on the same Pi, bringing it into Pentium territory, which I totally did not expect because all material such as documentation and forum discussion suggest it operates at the speed of a "~20 MHz 486". The emulator is not without its problems, the cursor moved really choppily in the menu's, almost as if the emulator wasn't receiving input consistently while in menu's. Also the music did not work, only the sound effects, which is a big problem for me because I love the chip tunes in this game. Finally the game actually crashed on me once during my brief play session (taking me back to the days when I was running the same game on actual hardware, lol) I chalk this up to the likely conclusion that the Rpix86 emulator is not nearly as "complete" as DosBox. This still showed me what kind of performance with DOS emulation is actually possible on a RISC architecture like ARM and I sincerely hope this emulator is developed further (or a more optimized DosBox derivative is released). I noticed there hasn't been a new release of Rpix86 in a year or so.

Does anyone have any insight on how to possibly resolve the problems above? I'm most concerned about the music not playing, the other issues are secondary (but would still be nice to fix).

@caver01 Your link actually dropped me off at the most recent post and I scrolled back from there. While the last picture I see is definitely more scanline than the first screenshots, the second to last still shows a lot of pixel separation.

I guess I'd have to see ut in action on my own television before I can tell if it's really more enjoyable than the current setup of crt + smoothing (yes @BobHarris, I do that too now), which is why I figured I'd just try it if it ever got into a RetroPie update.