Most consoles emulators games are now slow, help please !!

darthlink

Hello, Everything was working ok but somehow most of my emulators are now so laggy that games are unplayable. ( PSP, SNES, NDS, ) just to name a few because i have not tried my other ones. I have tryed on psp little big planet ( wich was working great ) and is now unplayable because it is way to laggy.

I dont think it is a memory problem because i have given 256MB to the GPU.

I was able to play regular nintendo games but not much else.

I have tried to do a SHIFT + INSERT or CTRL + INSERT ( with ssh ) to copy the result of the command top ou free to copy it here but it does not seem to work.

Can it be because all my roms are on an external HDD that is accessed through network?

Or maybe because i have installed Drastic and it did something in my emulationstation ?

Thank you again for your help in advance.

dankcushions

@darthlink power supply? bad overclocking? can you post your /boot/config.txt ?

mediamogul

@darthlink

If you're using a Pi, which model is it? Also, which emulators for PSP, SNES, NDS are you using? Have you updated your system recently, or made other big changes in any way?

Can it be because all my roms are on an external HDD that is accessed through network?

Try accessing some games locally to rule it out as an issue.

darthlink

@dankcushions said in Most consoles emulators games are now slow, help please !!:

@darthlink power supply? bad overclocking? can you post your /boot/config.txt ?

I am using the powersupply that came with the canakit and that is plugged into a powerbar. I cant overclock my Pi because when i tried before to just go into that menu, i received the message that this raspberry pi cannot be overclocked.

There is my config.txt file:

# For more options and information see
# http://rpf.io/configtxtreadme
# Some settings may impact device functionality. See link above for details

# uncomment if you get no picture on HDMI for a default "safe" mode
#hdmi_safe=1

# uncomment this if your display has a black border of unused pixels visible
# and your display can output without overscan
#disable_overscan=1

# uncomment the following to adjust overscan. Use positive numbers if console
# goes off screen, and negative if there is too much border
#overscan_left=16
#overscan_right=16
#overscan_top=16
#overscan_bottom=16

# uncomment to force a console size. By default it will be display's size minus
# overscan.
#framebuffer_width=1280
#framebuffer_height=720

# uncomment if hdmi display is not detected and composite is being output
#hdmi_force_hotplug=1

# uncomment to force a specific HDMI mode (this will force VGA)
#hdmi_group=1
#hdmi_mode=1

# uncomment to force a HDMI mode rather than DVI. This can make audio work in
# DMT (computer monitor) modes
#hdmi_drive=2

# uncomment to increase signal to HDMI, if you have interference, blanking, or
# no display
#config_hdmi_boost=4

# uncomment for composite PAL
#sdtv_mode=2

#uncomment to overclock the arm. 700 MHz is the default.
#arm_freq=800

# Uncomment some or all of these to enable the optional hardware interfaces
#dtparam=i2c_arm=on
#dtparam=i2s=on
#dtparam=spi=on

# Uncomment this to enable the lirc-rpi module
#dtoverlay=lirc-rpi

# Additional overlays and parameters are documented /boot/overlays/README

# Enable audio (loads snd_bcm2835)
dtparam=audio=on
start_x=0
gpu_mem=256
#gpu_mem_256=128
#gpu_mem_512=256
#gpu_mem_1024=256
overscan_scale=1

darthlink

@mediamogul said in Most consoles emulators games are now slow, help please !!:

Try accessing some games locally to rule it out as an issue.

Yes i have just thought about that too this morming, i will try it this evening as soon as i get home. I will try with little big planet because i know this one was working perfectly before.

I will let you know if that works bettor or not. Thx ;)

For the psp, i am using lr-ppsspp, for nds i am using drastic and for snes it is the default one because i have never installked any emulators for this one, i had only add the roms in the snes forlder within the RetroPis/roms folder and it is the same for the default emulators. The only one i have installed manually was lr-ppsspp and drastic because there was no folders in the roms folder by default.

edmaul69

@darthlink

Can i ask why you did this?

gpu_mem=256
#gpu_mem_256=128
#gpu_mem_512=256
#gpu_mem_1024=256

Having it like this was correct

gpu_mem_256=128
gpu_mem_512=256
gpu_mem_1024=256

darthlink

@edmaul69 said in Most consoles emulators games are now slow, help please !!:

@darthlink

Can i ask why you did this?
gpu_mem=256
#gpu_mem_256=128
#gpu_mem_512=256
#gpu_mem_1024=256
Having it like this was correct
gpu_mem_256=128
gpu_mem_512=256
gpu_mem_1024=256

I have never manually changed that file, it probably change automatically when i go into raspi-config then i changed the GPU from the default 64MB to 256MB.

Should i remove the line gpu_mem=256 though ?

edmaul69

@darthlink yes. you should also remove the hashtags from the others as well. I dont think raspi config is the correct way to overclock a pi 3. I think it should have told you that too.

darthlink

@edmaul69 said in Most consoles emulators games are now slow, help please !!:

@darthlink yes. you should also remove the hashtags from the others as well. I dont think raspi config is the correct way to overclock a pi 3. I think it should have told you that too.

Well i wanted to go in the overclock menu but i cant even do that since ( like i said in my post ) i get an error message telling me that: this raspberry pi cannot be overclocked

I never went to raspi-config to only overclocke, it is also where i setup the right zone location for the time and the language and change the default Pi password etc....

thx, i will remove that line and uncomment the other 3 line and will test that when i get home this evening. thx ;)

TMNTturtlguy

what is shown is just the memory split that is set through the retropie menu. All this is doing is telling the retropie to always use 256, it basically just overrides gpu_mem_256=128 and forces it to use 256. This should not have any adverse affects on the game play for the roms, and nothing is necessarily wrong with this setting. This was used more before the white screen of death fix to give the front end more memory for themes. This is also not an overclock

As for overclock @darthlink i assume you have a pi3, if you read the documents, overclocking through the menu is not supported. that is why you are getting the error. Read on how to manually overclock. I suggest you avoid any overclock setting until you figure out what is wrong with your system.

mediamogul

@darthlink

Also, everyone is operating on a certain amount of guesswork here. Please always remember to post as much information about your setup as possible. The necessary information is detailed at https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first.

darthlink

@TMNTturtlguy said in Most consoles emulators games are now slow, help please !!:

As for overclock @darthlink i assume you have a pi3, if you read the documents, overclocking through the menu is not supported. that is why you are getting the error. Read on how to manually overclock. I suggest you avoid any overclock setting until you figure out what is wrong with your system.

Actually i dont really want to overclock, i was just curious to see it through the menu.

Right now, i just would like to have everything working great before i make a third backup of my pi. It is almost at exactly the point on where i would like it to be ( althought i may still make changes in the futur ) loll . It does not look like it ( because i dont know enough linux commands ) but i am a computer tech loll still thx for all your help, you guys are awesome ;)

dankcushions

@TMNTturtlguy said in Most consoles emulators games are now slow, help please !!:

what is shown is just the memory split that is set through the retropie menu. All this is doing is telling the retropie to always use 256, it basically just overrides gpu_mem_256=128 and forces it to use 256.

pedants' corner: it doesn't override anything since the rest are commented out :)

if they weren't, on a pi3 gpu_mem_1024 would override gpu_mem. see http://elinux.org/RPiconfig

so, as far as i can tell

gpu_mem=256
#gpu_mem_256=128
#gpu_mem_512=256
#gpu_mem_1024=256

and

gpu_mem=256
gpu_mem_256=128
gpu_mem_512=256
gpu_mem_1024=256

and

gpu_mem_256=128
gpu_mem_512=256
gpu_mem_1024=256

would all give a gpu memory split of 256MB on a pi3.

/pedants' corner :)

but yeah, either way the change seems pointless.

TMNTturtlguy

@dankcushions Just for my own clarity, and maybe because of my poor communication skills above, when you set a gpu_mem= setting of any amount, it will comment out all of the standard settings, meaning they will all be ignored and everything will run at your new setting. In this case everything will run at gpu_mem=256. So no matter what, you always will run 256......Since the standard settings are 256 for everything except for gpu_mem_256=128, the only thing you are really doing by having this memory split is overriding the 256=128 setting. All other settings are already running at 256 by default anyways. Correct?

dankcushions

@TMNTturtlguy said in Most consoles emulators games are now slow, help please !!:

@dankcushions Just for my own clarity, and maybe because of my poor communication skills above, when you set a gpu_mem= setting of any amount, it will comment out all of the standard settings, meaning they will all be ignored and everything will run at your new setting.

have you tested this? i mean, if you edit the file (in nano or whatever - not via raspi-config, as who knows what that does! plus i think i gets updated every so often and we might not have the latest), and add gpu_mem=blah, reboot, the system comments out those other lines? if so, you're right and they should update their docs!

In this case everything will run at gpu_mem=256. So no matter what, you always will run 256......Since the standard settings are 256 for everything except for gpu_mem_256=128, the only thing you are really doing by having this memory split is overriding the 256=128 setting. All other settings are already running at 256 by default anyways. Correct?

gpu_mem_256=128 should only ever apply to the original raspberry pi 1 which had 256MB, as far as i understand it. those mem_256/512/1024 settings apply to pis with these respective amounts of RAM.

darthlink

@dankcushions said in Most consoles emulators games are now slow, help please !!:

gpu_mem_256=128

I have a question though, since gpu_mem_256=128 and i want to give 256 to the GPU, does this mean that in the file config.txt i have to set it to 512 in order to have 256 for the GPU because gpu_mem_512=256 ???

TMNTturtlguy

@darthlink No, it means you should leave the settings alone. The gpu override you set wasn't really doing anything, but you don't want to mess with those settings.

darthlink

@TMNTturtlguy

ok thx ;)

Sano

Nope, gpu_mem_xxx defines the GPU memory in relation to the quantity of RAM available.
If the Pi has 256 MB of RAM, then 128 MB are reserved for the GPU.
For 1 GB the GPU memory reservation is 256 MB.

darthlink

@Sano said in Most consoles emulators games are now slow, help please !!:

Nope, gpu_mem_xxx defines the GPU memory in relation to the quantity of RAM available.
If the Pi has 256 MB of RAM, then 128 MB are reserved for the GPU.
For 1 GB the GPU memory reservation is 256 MB.

haaaa ok so since i have the Pi3 and 1GB of RAM, it means that by default it reserve 256MB for the GPU ?

So why is there even a memory split setting ? Just curious ;)