Very high FPS in games on Pi Zero 2W

JekelSkaz

Hello. I installed retropie-buster-4.8-rpi2_3_zero2w.img on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W which I use along with a 3.5inch DPI LCD screen from waveshare (https://www.waveshare.com/wiki/3.5inch_DPI_LCD).
I added it to config.txt

gpio=0-9=a2
gpio=12-17=a2
gpio=20-25=a2
dtoverlay=dpi18
enable_dpi_lcd=1
display_default_lcd=1
extra_transpose_buffer=2
dpi_group=2
dpi_mode=87
dpi_output_format=0x6f006
hdmi_timings=640 0 20 10 10 480 0 10 5 5 0 0 0 60 0 60000000 1
dtoverlay=waveshare-35dpi-3b-4b
dtoverlay=waveshare-35dpi-3b
dtoverlay=waveshare-35dpi-4b

Full config.txt file

As a result, I get very high FPS in games in all emulators. For example, in NES I get about 147 frames per second, while Vsync is enabled in the retroarch settings. The games play very quickly and are unplayable. I tried to connect a 3.2inch RPi LCD screen (B) - and got a normal FPS of around 60.

Here's a video demonstration:

Please help me solve the problem. Thank you!

mitu

RetroPie can't do much here, since the driver for the display and the OS itself (Raspbian) are responsible for the video output.

Can you post a verbose log (on pastebin.com) from running one of these cores ?
Are you sure you're not accidentally keeping the fast forward hotkey button pressed and the games are just sped up by RetroArch ? Does the same issue happens with other non-libretro emulators (like the standalone N64 emulator) ?

JekelSkaz

@mitu I posted runcommand.log https://pastebin.com/KQ8mp1qC
No buttons are pressed, I tried disconnecting the gamepad. I also tried to install a port of Doom (lzdoom) and I got a playable speed, I couldn't see the frame counter but it felt like a maximum of 60 fps (here is lzdoom runcommand.log https://pastebin.com/z9E94ieY).
Yes, I now understand that the problem is not in RetroPie, but maybe someone knows what to do) Thank you very much!

mitu

Hm, the only errors I see are the ones related to audio:

[INFO] [Joypad]: Found joypad driver: "udev".
[INFO] [Video]: Found display server: "null".
ALSA lib confmisc.c:767:(parse_card) cannot find card '0'
ALSA lib conf.c:4568:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
ALSA lib conf.c:4568:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1246:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
ALSA lib conf.c:4568:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib conf.c:5047:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib pcm.c:2565:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default
[ERROR] ALSA: Failed to initialize...

This looks like a bad configuration file - $HOME/.asoundrc or /etc/alsa/asound.conf. Lack of sound may be driving the emulation too fast resulting in your issue.
Did you manually configure the audio on the system or ran the audio configuration before attaching the screen ?
Try clearing up the ALSA configuration file and check again the speed and the log file for issues.

JekelSkaz

@mitu At the moment I'm testing without sound, and as I wrote above, everything works well with a different screen. I think there is a problem with the DPI screen settings, which I was never able to do properly.

JekelSkaz

I installed weekly build retropie-bullseye-4.8.5-rpi3_zero2w (24-Mar-2024 05:10) and added it to config.txt:

dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d
dtoverlay=vc4-kms-DPI-35inch
dtoverlay=waveshare-35dpi-3b-4b
dtoverlay=waveshare-35dpi-3b
dtoverlay=waveshare-35dpi-4b
dtoverlay=waveshare-35dpi
dtoverlay=waveshare-touch-35dpi

And I got a normal FPS!