Current general Pi 4 Emulation performance and future updates?

Deltatash

Hi,

I have been using the beta image of Retropie for the Pi 4 for a few weeks now and quite happy with it! It's worked well and havent had too many issues when getting it set up to my preferences. I was wondering though, maybe the developers or someone who knows more than me check these forums and would be like to answer this question that's probably obvious and I'm overthinking it and it's pointless to ask? lol

I assume the current performance of emulation on the pi 4 isn't as good as it gets? I assume since it's beta there are still some optimisations/tweaks to be made to improve the emulation performance which we'll likely get in future updates and this should all be automatic when we update? Or would it be likely we would need to make some changes ourselves to tweak the emulators after receiving updates for any performance gains.

Would be nice also to hear from other Pi 4 users what they think of the beta image so far and what gains they've noticed from their previous pi to the pi 4 :)

I upgraded from the pi 2 and noticed I'm able to run the games at a much higher resolution than before and be full screen with a much smoother experience. The two games I've tested most so far are Crash team Racing and Super Mario Kart on the N64. If I remember right I have them both set to 1080p resolution and in retroarch I set the aspect ratio to 16:9 which seemed to have worked to make my games fill the screen :) I did notice however that both games have a little bit of stutter at the beginning of the race which lasts until a few seconds after the race starts, then it smoothes out. However it feels CTR sometimes skips a few frames during the race (Both these games are being played multiplayer btw). Disney's hercules on PSX seems to work ok so far also, however it feels there could be some input lag, which I'm hoping future updates/optimisations would fix, or I guess I could just lower the resolution or something for this game. (Some games I know even natively seemed a bit slow/clunky though in the past, can't remember if this was one of them or not).

With the Pi 4 i've also been trying the Dreamcast Emulator. Never tried this on my pi 2 I was under the impression the pi 2 couldnt emulate the dreamcast so never tried to be honest. I'm impressed with the dreamcast emulator performance also so far However I only tried two games so far, quite enjoying Virtua Tennis right now which is playing really smooth for me at 1080P on my 4K screen.

So yeah! So far I'm pretty impressed with the pi 4 and it's current performance! I'm playing at a much more comfortable resolution on my 4K screen and filling the screen, where was my previous pi had the same sort of stuttering at the beggining on a much lower resolution. If there is more performance to be squeezed out of this with future updates I'm feeling confident we'll get an almost near perfect experience in most games :D

Hope everyone involved in the retropie project also see this and know that many people (myself included) Are thankful for their work on this project! For me this OS itself is what makes the Pi worth having! :) Good job everyone!

dankcushions

@Deltatash said in Current general Pi 4 Emulation performance and future updates?:

I assume the current performance of emulation on the pi 4 isn't as good as it gets? I assume since it's beta there are still some optimisations/tweaks to be made to improve the emulation performance which we'll likely get in future updates and this should all be automatic when we update? Or would it be likely we would need to make some changes ourselves to tweak the emulators after receiving updates for any performance gains.

i think it depends. some changes involve adjusting defaults, which won't apply to any pre-existing installs. for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroPie/comments/gc83sc/n64_mupen64plusgliden64_performance_fix/

thanks for the kind words! i personally feel confident that the pi4 will get to smooth performance on 90% of n64 and dreamcast games, however it will take time.

Deltatash

Hi dankcussions,

Thanks for the answer!

Ok I see, That reddit post is from 17 days ago, so I guess if I use that emulator and want the performance I should apply that fix. Might help the N64 stutter I experienced at the beginning of a race :)

So, I was just wondering now. For these type of improvements that become default in future updates but must be made manually to improve performance on current installs, is there a place that keeps a track of these for people with current installs to read what to do? Should I keep an eye on the "News" section on the site for new versions with improvements etc? Or just check the Retropie Reddit after each update etc?

Would uninstalling an emulator and installing it again apply any new defaults by the way? Such as the one in your reddit link once an update is released that makes that the default setting (Providing I've updated my system). In that case I guess I could just uninstall the emulator and re-install it if after installing updates if I had any performance issues before updating.

Sorry for the additional questions lol and thanks again.

dankcushions

@Deltatash said in Current general Pi 4 Emulation performance and future updates?:

So, I was just wondering now. For these type of improvements that become default in future updates but must be made manually to improve performance on current installs, is there a place that keeps a track of these for people with current installs to read what to do? Should I keep an eye on the "News" section on the site for new versions with improvements etc? Or just check the Retropie Reddit after each update etc?

it's tricky as normally i probably wouldn't announce such things. best to just follow ("watch") the github project = https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup

Would uninstalling an emulator and installing it again apply any new defaults by the way? Such as the one in your reddit link once an update is released that makes that the default setting (Providing I've updated my system). In that case I guess I could just uninstall the emulator and re-install it if after installing updates if I had any performance issues before updating.

that wouldn't work as uninstalling or reinstalling does not remove your old config files. i have put in a request for a 'reset config' setting at some point.

Deltatash

@dankcushions Ok Thanks! I'll keep my eye on the github project you linked and hopefully catch anything manual I'd need to do after any updates.

Ohh ok, so my old config files would be the issue. But yeah if a "reset config" option enables the user to re-install a emulator or just use the new optimised defaults without a re-install of the emulator after some updates then that would be greatly appreciated! :D

Thanks again for the info! :)

George Spiggott

Should we see some enhancements to N64, Dreamcast and PSP when the Pi 4 gets Vulcan support?

steeeb

@George-Spiggott There should be, yes. Although I think (I may well be wrong) only Angrylion via Parallel N64 is the only vulkan N64 video plugin, redream and ppsspp should be fine using vulkan.

There will also likely be some performance gain for using KMS over the current 'fake' KMS once those issues have been ironed out and would happen before Vulkan (if it ever happens!).