What Should I do With Saturn on Pie?

AlphaBetaPie

Actually, I'm trying to get the standalone version installed but I'm hitting a wall. Anyone who knows anything about it, would appreciate an assist here.

AlphaBetaPie

UPDATE:

After experimenting with the standalone version, I had to circle back to the Retroarch core. I have to keep it core-based, because I need access to many of the customization options that are very specific to Retroarch and make my theme work.

So at this point, I'm looking to optimize the core the absolute best I can, without leaving Retroarch. I have frame skip on, so can anyone recommend anything else? I know there is a glass ceiling on performance now, due to limitations of the core. But I'd like to tweak it as much as possible.

Or is overclocking the only thing that'll give me a bump beyond what I already have?

Zering

@alphabetapie Overclocking might give you a slight boost but don't expect much. It might make a few frames of difference but not much beyond that I don't think.
The only way you'll get significantly better performance with Saturn on the Pi is with the standalone core.

AlphaBetaPie

@zering said in What Should I do With Saturn on Pie?:

@alphabetapie Overclocking might give you a slight boost but don't expect much. It might make a few frames of difference but not much beyond that I don't think.
The only way you'll get significantly better performance with Saturn on the Pi is with the standalone core.

I figured as much. Thanks. Is overclocking a pain? Also, I already have a small case fan, and heat sinks on both my CPU and GPU. Would I need more than that?

AdamBeGood

@alphabetapie It's really easy to overclock, it's just editing a text file - /boot/config.txt

If you Google, you'll find how to do it easily. You shouldn't need more than the cooling solutions you already have.

AlphaBetaPie

@adambegood Thanks, I'll take a look and see what I can come up with.

I also have one Pie 4 version I could go higher. I have the middle one, which I believe is the 4GB. But far as I know, going higher (and more expensive with the 8GB version), won't help with emulation, just multi-tasking for things like themes? Or do I not have that correct?

AdamBeGood

@alphabetapie said in What Should I do With Saturn on Pie?:

@adambegood Thanks, I'll take a look and see what I can come up with.

I also have one Pie 4 version I could go higher. I have the middle one, which I believe is the 4GB. But far as I know, going higher (and more expensive with the 8GB version), won't help with emulation, just multi-tasking for things like themes? Or do I not have that correct?

Yep, 100%. Overclocking will give you a little bit of gain, the extra GB RAM will not do anything.

AlphaBetaPie

@adambegood said in What Should I do With Saturn on Pie?:

@alphabetapie said in What Should I do With Saturn on Pie?:

@adambegood Thanks, I'll take a look and see what I can come up with.

I also have one Pie 4 version I could go higher. I have the middle one, which I believe is the 4GB. But far as I know, going higher (and more expensive with the 8GB version), won't help with emulation, just multi-tasking for things like themes? Or do I not have that correct?

Yep, 100%. Overclocking will give you a little bit of gain, the extra GB RAM will not do anything.

Thanks for the info. One more quick question I just thought of. Is overclocking a permanent hardware change? Or is it inherit in the image of the sd card? I'm about to redo mine, and if I overclock before I reimage, will the settings persist? Or do I need to do that each time? I know there are many tweaks I can do on my motherboard of my desktop that are unaffected by changing the OS.

quicksilver

@alphabetapie any time you reimage you'll need to redo anything you customized including overclock settings. The pi has no internal memory or bios.

AdamBeGood

@alphabetapie Overclocking takes hardly any time though, in the scheme of things it isn't anything to worry about so far as having to do it twice goes. It's a few lines of text in a config file.