Overclocking with retropie
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Thank you for that information rr. It seems a very good in depth guide on what to do. On another note. I've seen some configs which include a sdram config with schmoo after it. Can somebody explain what this is and is it important?
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@vinylash I'm not sure I understand 'schmoo' (perhaps an autocorrect issue?)- can you post an example from the config?
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I'm no expert by any means but the schmoo setting according to one of the many guides is part of the ram overclock enabling higher clock speed along with the three ram over volt settings .
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@cooky069 ah, interesting - thanks. I can never get a stable overclock for the memory, but I have never tried the voltage settings specific to the SD ram.
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There's also a explanation of the different overclock settings on raspberrypi.org in the documentation on boot config.txt , it's about 2/3 of the way down the page
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Thank you all for taking the time to respond. I will have a look at playing with the settings. And I'll have a go at stress testing too and post my findings. :-)
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@cooky069 said in Overclocking with retropie:
Hi there's a section in the retropie wiki to do with overclocking and does have some specific settings for a pi3. One thing I have found through my own overclocking is not to underestimate with the power supply . Most of the posts I've read about it say use a 2.5a supply , I found this is simply insufficient. I would get constant crashing and odd behaviour so went and found myself a nice beefy 5v 10a power supply. I can now run a stable 1400mhz overclock , usb hub , cooling fan and another externally powered usb socket inside my case as well as an led anti vandal switch without any problems.
Do you have a link to the anti vandal switch? I've been trying to find one that uses a 2v LED (powerblock...)
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bear in mind that overclocking the CPU probably won't make any difference to dreamcast emulation, which is GPU-bound. you want to overclock gpu_v3d and possible the memory speed.
IMO overclocking the CPU is pretty meaningless on a pi3, with the emulators in retropie.
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@dankcushions interesting point regarding reicast, thanks.
In general I found that overclocking on the Pi 3 really only helps lr-pcsx_rearmed with enhanced resolution under some circumstances (Gran Turismo 2 really pushes the hardware), but is generally useful for n64 emulation. It also really helps when recording audio/video from retroarch.
I use my Pi 3 also as a lightweight Linux PC with the Raspbian lxde desktop, where overclocking really helps, especially web browsing (chromium), compiling code, ffmpeg transcoding, any graphics work.
That said, I agree that the Pi 3 at a stock 1200mhz is plenty fast ernough for the majority of RetroPie emulators.
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Here are a few tips for overclocking the PI 3 using a passive Heatsink.
Here is a little more extreme cooling using water.
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@RetroResolution said in Overclocking with retropie:
@dankcushions interesting point regarding reicast, thanks.
In general I found that overclocking on the Pi 3 really only helps lr-pcsx_rearmed with enhanced resolution under some circumstances (Gran Turismo 2 really pushes the hardware), but is generally useful for n64 emulation. It also really helps when recording audio/video from retroarch.
I use my Pi 3 also as a lightweight Linux PC with the Raspbian lxde desktop, where overclocking really helps, especially web browsing (chromium), compiling code, ffmpeg transcoding, any graphics work.
That said, I agree that the Pi 3 at a stock 1200mhz is plenty fast ernough for the majority of RetroPie emulators.
What about PPSSPP? Does anyone have insight as to the bottleneck for that emulator? That is, CPU vs GPU...
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@Rion some impressive heatsinks there - water cooling a Pi, now that is an extreme approach!
[Edit] Really interesting videos - 30 degrees Celsius temp drop with the large passive custom copper heatsink is amazing - all four cores at 100% at a sustained 50 degrees Celsius - no thermal throttling. I'd love that!
I wish someone would make a kit comprising a custom case, a large copper heatsink, and a little thermal compound...
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@dankcushions
Would this explain why I'm getting hang ups and freezes on code veronica? I did read cv is very graphics intensive -
@vinylash said in Overclocking with retropie:
@dankcushions
Would this explain why I'm getting hang ups and freezes on code veronica? I did read cv is very graphics intensivei don't think there's a single dreamcast game that runs without some sort of severe issue on the pi 3. GPU just isn't up to it.
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@dankcushions I'm still soak-testing after removing the GPU overclock; was interested to read just now that the core_freq entry which sets GPU frequency also controls the L2 cache speed, which would explain why the GPU setting could theoretically trigger freezing even in a command-line bench test.
[Edit - seems this information applies only to the Pi 1 - details, below]
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RetroResolution.com - Adventures in retro gaming on original hardware and via emulation with RetroPie on the Raspberry Pi.
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Thanks for the info guys. Some really helpful stuff. I've also seen that you can oveclock the sd card slot to 100mhz. Would this improve performance on retropie? My card I'm using is a SanDisk extreme 32gb.
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@dankcushions although I haven't used any of my 3 (!) Dreamcasts in a long while, it seems to me that Reicast is rendering at a higher resolution than the real hardware.
I tried using the runcommand menu to change the render resolution, without any joy. I thought I could reduce the processing burden in the same manner as I do with the non-retroarch mupen64plus...
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RetroResolution.com - Adventures in retro gaming on original hardware and via emulation with RetroPie on the Raspberry Pi.
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@RetroResolution said in Overclocking with retropie:
@dankcushions I'm still soak-testing after removing the GPU overclock; was interested to read just now that the core_freq entry which sets GPU frequency also controls the L2 cache speed, which would explain why the GPU setting could theoretically trigger freezing even in a command-line bench test.
i thought it was gpu_freq that sets GPU frequency. are you thinking of the pi2? even so, v3d_freq is the pertinent one for me. gpu_freq raises the gpu core for all various GPU tasks (h264 encoding etc) - seems irrelevant for emulation!
that said, corefreq may help with ram transfers i guess.
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@vinylash most emulators run entirely in-process, loading everything in to ram. I recall reading that the PSP emulator uses SD card access, but I don't use it so can't be sure.
As a rule I personally leave the SD card frequency alone for fear of card corruption (as per the bad old days of early model 1 PiS and firmware) -
@RetroResolution
This is interesting. It would explain why reicast is so power hungry. My primary objective is to get reicast running better. Although as you say the gpu may not be up to the job.
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