Looking for a better machine to run RetroPie

edmaul69

@latreides have you looked into an odroid xu4? I hear the run really well.

mitu

@latreides From what I've seen, looking in the same category (SBC), Odroid-XU4 or Tinkerboard are more powerful than a RPI 3, but the software support is not - yet - on par with Raspbian.
RetroPie has support for the Odroid-XU4 and perhaps in the future will support also the Tinkerboard. Look them up and see other opinions.
Having said that, I have to agree with @edmaul69 - I didn't notice any problems running SNES emulation on a Raspberry PI (3) system. Most people wanting a speed bump usually aim for better N64 emulation with the increase in speed and performance.

latreides

@edmaul69 @jonnykesh
I have given up on trying to squeeze performance out of the RPi3. I spent months trying to get it to be able to play SNES games at full speed and gave up. If I increase the resolution to something more reasonable, or apply a filter (or both), then the performance tanks. Its "mostly" playable if I have a low resolution and no filters. I must have run though a couple dozen how-to's and walkthroughs trying to squeeze just a little bit more out of the RPi3 to make it an enjoyable experience, couldn't do it. Easier to just upgrade the hardware.

@edmaul69
That was the device on the top of my list, but the few benchmarks that I have seen didn't show enough of a boost to justify the upgrade, it is also difficult to find at the moment. It is definitely the closest to "double RPi3" that I have seen. Do you know more about how well this works with RetroPie? Does anyone here use one?

@mitu Don't really care about N64 emulation, though PS1 would be pretty nice.

Beldar

@latreides What do you mean by increasing tje resolution to something reasonable? The graphics you see produced by an SNES game are limited by the data of the original artwork. The gains you will see by increasing the resolution of 2d games is going to give extremely rapidly diminishing returns. Your average SNES rom is only a couple megabytes of data. Less data than a single modern high resolution image file.

It can certainly make a difference with PS1 games. But I am running most PS1 games at double standard resolution along with a light shader at 55-60fps on a non-overclocked Pi 3B. So, I'm honestly confused about what you are trying to achieve.

dankcushions

definite 'filter' ? because the pi can run several filters at full speed, 1080p., but you have to pick the right ones

latreides

@beldar I know how resolution works. If I increase the resolution to a reasonable resolution (something you can actually see on an HDTV) then it just slows to a crawl. What I am trying to achieve is playing SNES games scaled to at least 720p with at least a single decent filter, at full speed (no frame skips) on a non-overclocked RPi3. I cannot even get halfway there.

@dankcushions Without any filters on at all, I can't get anywhere near that resolution. I would have to boot it up again to check the exact numbers, but last I recall there was noticeable performance impact from anything higher than double the native SNES resolution.

Rascas

Take a look at the odroid xu4/xu4q. I bought one xu4 more than 1 year ago to offer my father, for him to use as PC/NAS and Kodi on one of his TVs, and of course for me to tinker with it a little, but I never tried gaming emulation on it since it was not one of the objectives. I can confirm that it is much faster than the Pi, you can easily notice it browsing the web with chromium. Theoretically, if a program/emulator/whatever is able to use its 8 cores it should be at least 4 times faster! It costed me around 100 euros from Germany by the time. I am not much into new SBCs, but since it now has RetroPie support I think it would be a good option for you, take a look at it.
PS: the tinkerboard processing power, which is the most important thing for emulation, is only a bit faster than the RPi 3, odroid xu4 is much faster than both.

latreides

Ok, I ordered an ODROID XU4! Lets hope my RetroPie adventures go more smoothly with this new box!

Darksavior

@latreides Most snes games run fullspeed with the default emulator snes9x-2010 at 1080p with pi3 stock speeds. Oc to 1300 might be needed to get those special chip games running fullspeed. The optional lr-snes9x emulator is another matter and that's much slower. PS1 is also fullspeed. I play at 1080p with the crt-pi shader,though I need to try that faster shader that just came out..

If those systems are not running fullspeed then it's on you. Something's wrong on your end. A 3rd party image, messing around with configs to those "optimal" settings random fools on youtube and sites tell you, or a crappy ac adapter. The official retropie image is already optimized for the best settings. I just alter it with the crt-pi shader and output to 1080p. Most shaders are not optimized for the pi so there's that. I know for a fact it's a problem on your end since my pi2 can run most snes and ps1 games at fullspeed at 1080p without a shader.

While the odroid looks interesting, I prefer a platform where retropie gets concentrated support and that's where the rest of the devices fail at.

Keigan

I've never had a single issue running SNES on my stock RPi3. I run mine at 1024 x 896 with an overlay around it, 4x default size. It's never lagged, stuttered, anything. You may want to start from scratch and get a base RetroPie install and note all changes you make.

mediamogul

@keigan said in Looking for a better machine to run RetroPie:

It's never lagged, stuttered, anything.

Not even 'DOOM'? That's unusual for such an intensive port. I've had issues in the past with the obvious SuperFX/2 titles, but you'd be surprised at the games that have some slow down in odd places deep into game play. The Pi3 is right at the line of acceptable performance for SNES emulation. However, I've found that running lr-snes9x2010 with a framebuffer render of 800x600 keeps everything running at a smooth 60 fps. Also, seeing as how that 800x600 resolution is integer scaled to 1080p as it would be anywhere else, there's no difference in the image quality.

latreides

@Darksavior @Keigan I have the exact opposite experience, or I would not be here. I struggle to get basic SNES games like Super Mario World to run at full speed. I have to make a lot of sacrifices (like no filters and low resolution) to even make this happen.

I have already tried reinstalling RetroPie multiple times. I have tried stock settings, I have tried various walk throughs that highlight the best settings to tweak for optimal speed, and I have also tried just looking at all of the settings and making educated guesses based on the outcome I want. None of these provided a noticeable performance increase.

@Darksavior I use the official images (always), I start with stock settings, and when those don't work, I find dozens of walkthroughs on how to optimize speed. I have gone through many of them, but only after default settings were not sufficient.

I am hoping that the extra power in the ODROID XU4 will let RetroPie stretch its legs and finally get a tiny SNES box.

herb_fargus

@latreides said in Looking for a better machine to run RetroPie:

I have to make a lot of sacrifices (like no filters and low resolution

Seeing as the native res is hardly 240p I don't see the troubles, I've always found the concept of upscaling 2d games with a small native res to 1080p laughable. Only time it makes sense is if it's 3d then there are gains to be had.

As far as filters I've always been of the opinion that if I want a CRT look I'll get a CRT though I know many here feel differently.

Darksavior

@latreides said in Looking for a better machine to run RetroPie:

@Darksavior
I have tried various walk throughs that highlight the best settings to tweak for optimal speed, and I have also tried just looking at all of the settings and making educated guesses based on the outcome I want. None of these provided a noticeable performance increase.

Try a fresh image without tweaking anything. As I said, random people recommending their optimal settings are just fooling you. If you get the lightning bolt icon then it's a power issue.

dankcushions

@latreides said in Looking for a better machine to run RetroPie:

@Darksavior @Keigan I have the exact opposite experience, or I would not be here. I struggle to get basic SNES games like Super Mario World to run at full speed. I have to make a lot of sacrifices (like no filters and low resolution) to even make this happen.

this is definitely an issue with your setup. retropie defaults to 1080p for snes on a pi2, even. the ONLY snes games that will drop from 60fps at that resolution will be later levels of yoshi’s island, and apparently star fox 2.

i suspect it’s a PSU or temperature issue. do you see any symbols in the top right when these slowdowns occur?

dankcushions

@mediamogul said in Looking for a better machine to run RetroPie:

Not even 'DOOM'? That's unusual for such an intensive port. I've had issues in the past with the obvious SuperFX/2 titles, but you'd be surprised at the games that have some slow down in odd places deep into game play. The Pi3 is right at the line of acceptable performance for SNES emulation.

doom would slow down to a crawl on real hardware - that’s a seperate issue :)

However, I've found that running lr-snes9x2010 with a framebuffer render of 800x600 keeps everything > running at a smooth 60 fps. Also, seeing as how that 800x600 resolution is integer scaled to 1080p as it would be anywhere else, there's no difference in the image quality.

1080/600 = 1.8? that’s not integer scaled, so if you send an 800x600 image to a 1080p tv it will be at the mercy of a (usually terrible) scaler which will have to blur the image.

AndersHP

@latreides said in Looking for a better machine to run RetroPie:

@edmaul69 @jonnykesh
I have given up on trying to squeeze performance out of the RPi3. I spent months trying to get it to be able to play SNES games at full speed and gave up.

Can you make a shortlist of games that you have issues with? Just to doublecheck how they run on my Pi? Have a fresh install, but haven't tinkered much with SNES on it yet.

mediamogul

@dankcushions said in Looking for a better machine to run RetroPie:

doom would slow down to a crawl on real hardware - that’s a seperate issue :)

I can actually get the optimal performance of a sustained 60 fps out of 'DOOM' on lr-snes9x2010. It's just that at full frame rate it still seems to drag across the floor due to it's inherent issues. However, if I raise the framebuffer render past 800x600, the frame rate drops to 48-51 fps in lr-snes9x2010 and even lower in the later cores.

Beldar

I am not trying to be rude at all, but I am struggling to understand the problem. I have never once had a problem running a SNES game on a Pi 3B. I have built 4 Retropies from the official stock image. The only tweaking I do is to aspect ratio, applying a simple border overlay, and sometimes a scanline/gamma shader, biliniar filtering, color pallet, etc.

I have never once had a single game go under about 58fps for SNES unless I was playing with a shader that was just too much for the Pi to handle. I haven't run Doom or Starfox 2 as mentioned above, so maybe those are specific cases I haven't run into.

So, what are you trying to do? Force the emulator to output an extremely high resolution via integer scaling? If you are, you are doing it wrong. Set the aspect ratio that you want, set your preference for overscan display, and then let the core upscale the output to 1080p or 720p. If you have a 4k TV, it will upscale the image further, not much you can do about that but it is not a Pi problem.

You will not, I repeat, you will not get a higher quality image by forcing a high resolution out of the core so there is no point. We are dealing uber tiny res base files. It will not look better than just letting the core upscale the image for virtually no performance hit.

As far as shaders go, yes you are limited on the Pi 3B. But you can work within the limits of the Pi 3B and get a really nice image that is more than playable. You aren't going to get anything better unless you emulate on a modest PC and even then, it really isn't going to be that much of a difference.

dankcushions

@mediamogul said in Looking for a better machine to run RetroPie:

@dankcushions said in Looking for a better machine to run RetroPie:

doom would slow down to a crawl on real hardware - that’s a seperate issue :)

I can actually get the optimal performance of a sustained 60 fps out of 'DOOM' on lr-snes9x2010. It's just that at full frame rate it still seems to drag across the floor due to it's inherent issues. However, if I raise the framebuffer render past 800x600, the frame rate drops to 48-51 fps in lr-snes9x2010 and even lower in the later cores.

i confess i've never tried doom on my pi, but yes this makes sense actually, since it's a super fx 2 game (i though it was just regular super fx). my theory is that every super fx 2 game (there are 4 - winter gold, star fox 2, yoshi's island, doom) will have frame drops on a pi, due to the unique emulation requirements.

at the same time, i am confident that EVERY other snes game will run full speed on a stock pi3 at default retropie settings (ie, 1080p upscale, no shader, lr-snes9x2010).