How to use Overclock and Mupen Core Options to significantly increase 64 game playability, quality, and stability

Riverstorm

Great post, the play looks great. I will be trying the N64 emulator again with these new tweaks. Have you tried Castlevania? The last time I played around with it the opening screen had some "tiling" problems and the transparent overlay to choose your character was black. Game play had some lag.

Just to verify the options settings above are for the lr version and not the standalone?

karimi

HEy Guys, does this also works wih the Pi 2 B+?!?

Hyell

Hello,

I have test your configuration today.
It's look good for a lot of rom, but I always have a realy bad sound with Wave Race.

Have you do something for this? Or it's just on my Pi?

I'm using a raspberry PI 3, with retropie 3.6 (install with a SD-card image)

If someone has an idea... :)

Twitch0815

@Riverstorm
Did you try the 4 diff emulator plugins via run command
I remember trying ti once did not seem bad at all I can mess around with a bit i am working with hi res texture packs right now releasing another video shortly.

The hardware overclocks are for any raspi 3

The tweaks above in the file apply to libretro version but for the life of me even though it sould seem ti improve performance on mupen64plus
So if you see that same thing let me know something that I am trying to determine if it is a placebo effect or not.

Ill update everyone as I finish my tweaking.

Twitch0815

@karimi
The hardware overclock would not work on a pi2.
If you check https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Overclocking the first top half details settings and steps to modify your pi 2

But if you want results like in the video you are going to need a pi 3.

Overclocking a 2 can get some games to work but not as well or as many as the pi 3.

Twitch0815

@Hyell
Have you tried hitting x and switching to a few different plugins?

What overclock settings are you using?

Hyell

@Twitch0815
Hello,

Yes I have try different plugins. It's a little better with Gles2 but not as good as your video ^^.

I use the same overclocking setting as you. I will testing other setting today and I will see if I can get a good results :)

Riverstorm

@Twitch0815

Where did you get your case? I see you have some standoffs on the bottom plate so you have enough room to add a heatsink. The bottom is the memory chip and the top of the Pi is the GPU?

Twitch0815

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00SH6DBY6/ref=s9_simh_gw_g147_i1_r?ie=UTF8&fpl=fresh&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=desktop-1&pf_rd_r=1ZWVYP5R6KTSE6GTE017&pf_rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=2437869742&pf_rd_i=desktop

Just search around on amazon

The 2 chips on the top are the CPU the bigger one and the USB/Nic Controlling chip
Bottom chip is the shared memory GPU
As I understand.

Riverstorm

@Twitch0815

Thanks Twitch, I appreciate the link. I like the looks of that "case". I will get one ordered today. Looking forward to your next video.

Hyell

Hello,

Wave race sound still working bad for me.
Maybe a connectivity problem or just my old TV...

In another style, I test 1080° and it's great.
Just a little overclock setting :
arm_freq=1300
over_voltage=6
temp_limit=80
core_freq=500

and use Glide.
I don't see this game on your video, you can have a lot of fun with it :)

Twitch0815

@Hyell

Try adding these two
gpu_mem=450
v3d_freq=500
and make sure wave rice is using glide and resolution

you can see how it is running on my setup in this video

Starting around the 1 minute mark
Both stock and with the high res texture package enabled

Hyell

Thanks,
I will test it tonight :)

karimi

@Twitch0815 said in How to use Overclock and Mupen Core Options to significantly increase 64 game playability, quality, and stability:

@karimi
The hardware overclock would not work on a pi2.
If you check https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Overclocking the first top half details settings and steps to modify your pi 2

But if you want results like in the video you are going to need a pi 3.

Overclocking a 2 can get some games to work but not as well or as many as the pi 3.

thanks for that. I got also a Pi3 but nt configured right now. I want just to solve the MarioKart 64 Sound issue on the pi2. everytime when the sound scrap the game is also a little bit stocking...and that sucks

Hyell

@Twitch0815
I just test, and it's really better, thank you very much :)
(Wave race sound issues)

Samwise

@Twitch0815 yet another awesome post making all of this optimisation stuff easier for Luddites like me - thanks a lot Twitch - have been travelling recently but looking to try out your PSP settings tonight and will report back.

Really looking forward to the dreamcast post too!!

Prindle19

Wow, really nice performance boost!

How do you get the hotkeys working in mupen64plus without running the libreto / retroarch config'ed version?

(For exit, save, load state, etc.?)

senkun

@Twitch0815 said:

Stay tuned to separate videos on Dreamcast, NDS, and PSP

@Twitch0815 Lookin' forward to NDS and PSP, I have a ton of games yet to be finished on those. Would be a blast to play em on a Pi output to the big screen.

Riverstorm

@dankcushions said in How to use Overclock and Mupen Core Options to significantly increase 64 game playability, quality, and stability:

@Twitch0815 said:

@dankcushions Then why am I seeing such noticeable differences upon changing options? and the documentation I read showed mupen64-gfxplugin-accuracy = "high" was directly tied to Glide exclusively.

it is. both standalone and lr can use the GLideN64 plugin, but they're controlled by different config files:

the mupen64plus-GLideN64 (standalone) version of mupen64plus has its GLideN64 settings in opt/retropie/configs/n64/mupen64plus.cfg

the lr- version has it's GLideN64 settings in the retroarch-core-config.cfg file you are editing.

you must be mistaken about what you're running via the runcommand as there's no way that the standalone (ie, none-lr) version cares about what is in retroarch-core-options.cfg. it doesn't read that file and wouldn't understand it if it could :)

Twitch did you get to the bottom of this by chance? Dank any thoughts? He made a good point that has me curious. I did some testing over the weekend.

The overclock was helpful. I could only get to 1350 on a 5v 1A power supply with passive cooling. Will try a better power supply with active cooling but I need to dig through the "parts" box.

Setting the resolution definitely was an improvement. At the default options it was dragging but bumping it down(?) to 640x480 was very noticeable as the biggest improvement for me.

So are setting the retroarch core options in vain if you're running the standalone Glide or are you using the retroarch core with the Glide plug-in in the options or just scrap that whole part as the placebo effect?

If nothing else it has me playing around and testing more N64 games! :)

Twitch0815

@Riverstorm
Still looking into it, actually have spent a few days on HD Texture packs for N64 and again iI'm finding funny behaviors with setting configs and expecting one result but getting another, i opened a github issue but still need to do some more testing.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems most are ready to dismiss 64 altogether because it was so frustrating on the 2 combined with some of the larger youtube people putting up testing 64 videos with default settings showing little to no improvement. Not to mention dreamcast and psp which I have gotten really great results with.

I found this in my research https://github.com/ricrpi/mupen64plus-rpi/wiki/Performance and it suggests that cpu priority can be increased to mupen64 but this is incrdibly difficult to test because it is all subjective.
Testing the vire_refresh is incredibly difficult because I have not been able to load a fps show when anything but standalone has used. All the testing is being done by feel and on tons of different configs.

There are tons of options in mupen64plus.cfg that I am working with and more to test.

I also truly believe that the pi 3 can hold to a better overclock then 1400 and I mean I think it can be pushed to 2000 but I need to get a 5.1 v 3000 or 3500 ma power supply and the only ones I have found are in china and shipping is going to take 2-3 weeks till I have one in my hand unless I try to build one from scratch. Heat just has not been a problem with proper heatsinks applied properly and active fan cooling.