Curious, why is snes9x 2010 the default?

Beldar

So, I just noticed that it's actually the 2010 release of snes9x and not the newest release that is used by default. I know that 9x has become slower and slower as it becomes more accurate, but the lb-snes9x core seems to work fine at 60fps on a stock pi 3b. Was there a particular reason to go with the older version? Perhaps there are games that are too slow that I just haven't come across?

dankcushions

@beldar i believe if you try super fx games like yoshi's island 2 you will get slowdown in snes9x.

lostless

@dankcushions snes9x2010 from my
Point of view seems to run most games just fine. And as @dankcushions said, for beginners if they try to run super fx games, they will be disappointed if lr-snes9x was the default as most wont understand that you need a different emulator to run those.

Beldar

That does make sense and I trust that decision was the correct one to make. However, I love to tinker so I decided to play around a little to see what would happen.

I tested Star Fox and Super Mario World 2 as they use Super FX chip models one and two respectively.

First I used snes9x 2010 on a complete stock Retropie install (current version on a 3b). I olayes through the first two areas on each game. Both played and looked very close to the original (except for the flat panel display naturally). FPS held out at 59.9 to 60.2. Absolutely playable (I had to pull myself away from Star Fox to continue testing.)

Then I tested both games in the same exact manner but with the current snes9x core. FPS varied between 55.1 to 60.1 with barley any noticeable effect. It was still completely playable, but some times took about a 5fps hit. Just for kicks I overclocked to 20mhz on the FX chip emulation in Star Fox which had a noticeable and positive effect on gameplay (which is to say faster and smoother than the original hardware.) Overclocking the FX chip dropped FPS down to about 54.

Of course I didn't stop there! I put a fairly tame overclock on the Raspberry Pi. I upped the CPU to 1.3Ghz, the GPU and Core to 500mhz, the RAM to 500mhz, and upped their voltages each by 2 factors. I then tried out both games again with the current snes9x core including the FX chip 20mhz overclock. Both games ran at a perfectly smooth 60+ fps.

So, it would seem that the current Pi model is just a hair away from perfectly using the current core in its default state. I wish the bsnes-mercury cores were in the optional packages so I could fiddle with those, but I doubt even the performance version would run smoothly.

fabio78

@beldar can you really overclock the SuperFX chip to 20MHz with the latest snes9x? The 2010 only allows from 40mhz onwards (with fixed 20 steps till 100), but even 40 is too fast. I seems that 20mhz would be a good compromise of better framerate at a playable pace, though it didn’t even occur to me to try a different core. Gonna check it later.

Beldar

@fabio78 Yep, I was just doing it earlier with the lb-snes9x core. It starts out at the default 10 but wasn't the original hardware slightly faster? Anyway, it bumps up by units of 10 after that. 20 worked really nicely. Overclocking the Pi itself seems optional, but it would get you back to a perfect 60fps or close to it.