EmulationStation and Game Slowdown

b3k

I'm experiencing significant slowdowns in both EmulationStation and in games. I can click through the menus in EmulationStation and the 'click' sound is significantly delayed. I can get 3-4 items down before a 'click' sound. Games are slow in overall gameplay, I would guess half speed.
This is not an input lag issue.

I initially installed a RetroPie image on the Pi, but I use it for other apps as well. This summer I think it was only really used for karaoke, no gaming.

I made an image of the current state and put it on a barely used SD card and the problem persists.

Any suggestions on what to check for issues? It may be that the karaoke app changed settings, but I'm fairly confident I played games after it was installed without issue.

Pi Model or other hardware: 3B
Power Supply used: 3A
RetroPie Version Used: 4.19.66 v7
Built From: Pre made SD Image on RetroPie website
USB Devices connected: Wireless keyboard dongle

dankcushions

@b3k please supply a verbose log of a game that is slowing down (ideally a simple NES/SNES era game that you'd expect to be fullspeed): https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Runcommand/#launch-with-verbose-logging

also please supply your /boot/config.txt

b3k

/boot/config.txt
https://pastebin.com/raw/4nkChb6Y
One thing I tried is dropping the GPU memory to 64Mb, it was at 354Mb; no observable change

verbose log
https://pastebin.com/raw/1dLtSwKV

dankcushions

@b3k said in EmulationStation and Game Slowdown:

/boot/config.txt
https://pastebin.com/raw/4nkChb6Y
One thing I tried is dropping the GPU memory to 64Mb, it was at 354Mb; no observable change

it should be at the defaults. see https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Memory-Split/#raspberry-pi-0-3

i would also remove your overclock

v3d_freq=400

it may be unstable.

verbose log
https://pastebin.com/raw/1dLtSwKV

it looks ok

[INFO] Threaded video stats: Frames pushed: 1111, Frames dropped: 0.

this shows you're not slowing down at all. perhaps your display mode is 30hz? not sure

b3k

@dankcushions, thanks for taking a look and making recommendations. I changed the GPU memory setting and commented out the overclock. Unfortunately, no change.
I've also changed power supplies and tried the SD card on a different Raspberry Pi and got the same results.

I did play a game long enough (>2 minute) that it actually went back to normal until I ended the gaming session. Issues restarted once back in EmulationStation. I thought this pointed to something hogging the CPU. I checked top in a remote session and while in EmulationStation it was showing a >100% CPU if clicking through a menu. When I ran a game retroarch was running at 20-30%, and didn't change much when the game speed came back to normal. But nothing else stood out as being a resource drain as far as CPU or memory usage.

Maybe I chalk this up to a life lesson to make backups more often. I think I'm going to work on building from scratch so I can get the gaming back for now and build it back better.

mitu

@b3k What theme are you using with EmulationStation ?

b3k

@mitu the default, no frills just with cover art image and description