Overclock pi3 for lr _flycast

[tackett1980]

So I finally was able to install lr_flycast. I currently have my pi3 overclocked with the following settings:

gpu_mem=400
arm_freq=1450
over_voltage=6
sdram_freq=500
core_freq=500
gpu_freq=400

All I want to play from Dreamcast is mvc2. Thats all.

Still, this runs like a wet turd. I would try reicast but I can never get my controls mapped, for some reason it won’t save them.

Currently I’m getting no temp warnings. Can I go higher? What would the community suggest the overclock settings to be to run this smoothly if even at this point my temps are not a problem. Or is it just simply not possible.

I have that huge ice tower fan/sink unit on it.

[rejesterd]

@tackett1980 said in Overclock pi3 for lr _flycast:

All I want to play from Dreamcast is mvc2. Thats all.

For that, you might wanna try reicast. I played that game on reicast with no issues before I even installed flycast. On a pi4, but not overclocked at the time (so similar to your settings).

[quicksilver]

@tackett1980 said in Overclock pi3 for lr _flycast:

Can I go higher? What would the community suggest the overclock settings to be to run this smoothly if even at this point my temps are not a problem. Or is it just simply not possible.

Maximum stable overclock is unique to each and every pi. You cant ask other people for overclock settings. It just doesn't work like that. Excessive heat isn't really the main blocker when it comes to achieving maximum overclock on a pi, each pi simply has a limit to how fast it can stably operate. My 3b+ is overclocked higher than yours and it just isn't enough to make flycast very viable on the pi 3. Reicast kinda works for some games but really you need a pi 4 if you want smoother Dreamcast emulation.

[tackett1980]

@quicksilver

I guess my question wasn’t really worded very good.

I wasn’t really wanting anyone else’s settings, I was more asking for opinions on what I could change within the overclock settings I posted to increase the performance even more. I don’t really know what I’m doing with it I basically just copied what eta prime had posted and did some tweaking on my own based on some random internet threads.

So what would I have to put in these settings to increase the Dreamcast performance?

Oh and I finally freaking finally got rei cast working after hours and hours of attempts.

Turns out that mapping the controls with a usb encoder through the retropie options menu doesn’t actually do anything. I plugged up a usb controller and was able to go to the actual reicast settings and map the encoders there.

I do still have an issue with that method though. For some reason it will only map my sticks to x and y of the analogue stick and it won’t let me map them to the D Pad.

What results is a control scheme that’s about 99% and does some mildly janky stuff at times.

I also went through and tweaked all the Audio and video settings and actually got mvc2 running pretty decent. It’ll lag down to about 23fps at times but for the most part stays around 40, so it’s very playable and the Audio no longer glitches.

The sprites do kind of look bad, they have lines through them and the movement isn’t the smoothest thing in the universe but it’s at least playable now, which is more than I could say before.

I have the following settings:

Video:
Rendering options: All off
Scaling: 100
H. Stretching: 100
Frame skipping: 0
Copy to vram: Off
Render to texture up scaling: 1
Texture up scaling: 1
Upscale texture max size 8
Max threads 1
Load custom textures Off

Audio:
Omg backend
Enable dsp On
All else off

Advanced:
CPU mode dynarec
Safe mode off
Unstable optimizations on
Idle skip on
Smc checks full
All else off

[rejesterd]

@tackett1980 - Try using /opt/retropie/emulators/reicast/bin/reicast-joyconfig to configure the controller. That's the best tool I've found to do the mapping for reicast. Copy/paste the output of reicast-joyconfig to ~/.reicast/mappings/generic_controller.cfg, and remove all other .cfg files from ~/.reicast/mappings/. 'controller_generic.cfg' is the fallback configuration that reicast will look to when it doesn't find any configuration file in ~/.reicast/mappings/ whose name matches the device name of your controller. That name is stored under /sys/class/input/event<ID>/name. In my case, the event name is "8Bitdo SN30 Pro", so I named my configuration exactly '8Bitdo SN30 Pro.cfg'. If I remove that .cfg file, reicast falls back to 'generic_controller.cfg'. Right now, only those names seem to work for me.. doesn't matter what the mapping_name property in the file itself is set to.

I think if you can get it playable in flycast, it might be a little better in reicast. You can also try adding frame skipping as a workaround in flycast. That makes some games playable when they otherwise wouldn't be.. it can fix a lot of jittering/sound issues at the expense of a slight loss in smoothness. Setting it to 1 or 2 could help. But it seems you're approaching the limits of the pi3 with respect to game emulation.

[tackett1980]

@rejesterd

The “playable” state I now have it in is being produced through reicast not flycast. Sorry if I did not make that clear.

I will try your control mapping suggestions. And yes I think I’ve got the pi3 about maxed out.