Videos of N64 on Pi 4 with Kernel 5.4

George Spiggott

I came across these videos on Youtube. They claim to show N64 on a Pi 4 with the new 5.4 Kernel running at up to 1080p at high speed. I thought they would be of interest here.

saccublenda

I tried running lr-mupen64plus-next with the 5.4 kernel and the full KMS driver. Indeed it runs much better.
I will however wait for an official kernel release since I have some problems with the overscan, and Kodi 18 doesn't work with KMS.

George Spiggott

I have a spare SD card so I decided to have a go with it. I've added a few choice N64, PSP and Dreamcast games to see how well it runs. I've run into the well documented sound and overscan issues which I will have a crack at resolving tonight.

I can't really tell if it any faster until I can get the sound working.

AdamBeGood

Sorry for being a complete idiot here, but what does the 5.4 refer to? Is that a new version of RetroPie or something else?

mitu

@AdamBeGood It refers to the Linux kernel version running on your system.

dankcushions

what a weird selection of games to showcase...

i've not seen any major improvements in the previous bottlenecks i was aware of (eg, goldeneye intro, first level flyover). however there were plenty of n64 games that ran fine at 1080p before on standalone (1x native resolution). -next isn't worth bothering with until we get native resolution figured out, which is imminent..

George Spiggott

Well I managed to fix the issues I was having (sort of). The screen regularly goes blank and the sound cuts in and out at random. As I write this the screen is completely frozen.

I got good results with lr-PPSSSPP. Tomb Raider: Anniversary runs very smoothly with little slowdown in 1088p with frameskip 2. SotE on N64 and Soulcalibur seem to run well but I can't tell if the breaks in audio are caused by slowdown or some other issue.

I'll try a few more games then go back to my old SD card. I'll look in again when there's another update. I also want to experiment with Dolphin again to see how this affects Game Cube games.

AdamBeGood

@mitu How do I update my build when 5.4 proper comes out? I've got no idea what Linux I'm on. Is it something that can be updated without wiping the SD card or can it be done without too much effort (a terminal command perhaps?).

mitu

@AdamBeGood Right now the 5.4 kernel version is still in beta for Raspbian. When it will be deemed stable, you'd be able to upgrade automatically by updating the OS/packages, you won't have to re-install.

AdamBeGood

@mitu Excellent, that is a relief then. If it was going to improve N64 performance, I'd go through the re-install if needed but very glad to be told I don't need to!

George Spiggott

Having gone back to my old pre 5.4 build Retropie I found I needed to downgrade my Kernel due to glitching graphics. Since I have done this I am convinced that Retropie, especially N64 is still running slightly smoother than it did before.