SNES Bio-Metal slow-down (throttling?)
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Hello all. I am a pi3 owner who has been using Retropie since early spring. I have had really great performance from my pi3 on SNES games, even Star Fox and Yoshi's Island I can play with no noticeable problems. (I use both pocketsnes and snes9x-next).
However, last night I was playing Bio-Metal (a non Super-FX game) but I got all kinds of slow-down when there was a lot happening on screen. And it was very obvious slowing, but kind of smoothly slow, not choppy-slow. So my question is, is the slowdown happening because of my pi, or did the game actually choke like this on a real SNES sometimes, and I'm just seeing accurate emulation? And how would I know the difference?
Also, I notice that some on here post that they see colored boxes on screen when their pi is over-heating or throttling. Is that a feature that needs to be turned on somewhere, or has my pi just never over-heated before?
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@Lyle_JP SNES shooters were notorious for slowdown.
As far as the Pi telling you when it's overheating, it's on by default. You have to explicitly turn that off.
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What colour box did you get ? If you get a rainbow box, it means your RPI has insufficient power and has underclocked. This can affect stability and performance.
If you see that on a rpi3 it likely means your power supply or usb cable is insufficient.
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For what it's worth, I just tried the game on my Pi 3 and it seemed stable. Then again, "a lot happening on screen" is subjective.
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@obsidianspider said in SNES Bio-Metal slow-down (throttling?):
"a lot happening on screen" is subjective.
I was fighting three medium sized ships with a lot of missiles while all three were giving me "bullet hell". That's when the tempo on everything dropped substantially.
@BuZz said in SNES Bio-Metal slow-down (throttling?):
What colour box did you get ?
I've never gotten a box. That's why I was asking about them. I guess I've never really abused my pi yet.
@obsidianspider said in SNES Bio-Metal slow-down (throttling?):
@Lyle_JP SNES shooters were notorious for slowdown.
As far as the Pi telling you when it's overheating, it's on by default. You have to explicitly turn that off.
Both good things to know. For what it's worth, I haven't been able to duplicate the exact conditions that caused the profound slowdown. But I still see minor slowing here and there in the game. I'll chalk it up to "typical Mode 7 SNES shooter" issues and not worry about it.
Thanks for everyone's input.
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