Pi Zero poor emulation performance & stutter
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@gerry69 you can tell if it's a power issue as you'll get a lighting bolt in the corner of the screen. It does sound odd though, I use a pi zero w with a retroflag GPI and it is comfortably able to run SNES (on pisnes) and megadrive/Sega cd with no issues. Is Emulationstation choppy as well? Or just the retroarch emulators?
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@retropieuser555 Thanks for your reply! No, I don't have any lightning bolt symbol as far as I can see - should that be visible on boot screen or emulation? Emulationstation runs absolutely smoothly, only the emulators stutter. Some SMS games run okay, but never without issues. Mega Drive and C64 are unusable. Do you have any suggestion for optimal vram setting? Thanks again!
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@gerry69 maybe you've already tried this but sometimes it's worth lowering the screen resolution in RasPi-Config for a performance boost
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@lister-of-smeg Thanks, I tried it but it didn't change anything - not even a bit. Did even a complete reinstall on a different SD card. Didn't help. Maybe I should try a hammer ;)
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@gerry69 very odd?
a clean install and changing the default emulator to lr-picodrive should give good results with master/mega games
your case shouldn't affect anything but it's easy to eliminate - just take the pi out (static can cause weirdness but i've never seen it with a pi) -
@gerry69 said in Pi Zero poor emulation performance & stutter:
I have tried different sound and video drivers and different emulators - all with the same result
the default are optimal.
Maybe the vram-setting has to be adjusted?
the vram setting in emulationstation is nothing to do with emulation, only emulationstation. the memory split documentation is here: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Memory-Split/ (on an official retropie image it doesn't need adjusting)
to fully diagnose issues please provide all the information requested here, including verbose log of (say) badly performing megadrive game: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first
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@lister-of-smeg Tjanks, I'll check that to exclude static problems.
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@dankcushions Thank you for your reply and for reassuring me that the default drivers are not the problem and that the shared RAM needn't be shifted in either direction - was worried that 512 MB might be a bit short.
I will try to post the verbose log later this day. Thanks again for your help! -
@gerry69 Just did a 3rd fresh reinstall and to my surprise Seg Mega worked quite well -with very little stuttering. BUT after I ran the setup - keyboard language, filesystem expand, WiFi, updates, additional emulators - the heavy stuttering was back. Turning off WiFi and BT doesn't help. I don't understand this. So the only solution is probably go with another fresh install, although that means no z-code adventure games and no C64, which is shit. :(
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@gerry69 Is your keyboard Bluetooth by any chance? I wonder if that's causing the slowdown
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@gerry69 again, without a verbose log we'd be guessing. please supply one.
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@retropieuser555 no, it's USB
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@gerry69 Conclusion:
I thank you all for trying to help me!
As I was about to reinstall again (!) I discovered Recalbox as an alternative distro and thought I'd give it a try (forgive me). While on Retropie Vice refused to install, and lr-Vice had to be compiled 3 hours for stuttering results and Sega Mega Drive was unplayable with both emulators, in Recalbox EVERYTHING works perfectly smooth without even the need of setting up or installing anything.
So I hope you all understand that at this point - after at least 20 hours of trying to get Retropie going - I give up and go happily with Recalbox.
Thanks again anyway - cheers!
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