Rom storage and cpu governor

ashpi

Hi there everyone. I'm new to the forum so please go easy lol.
I've been using retropie on a pi3b and it's a joy to use rekindling old memories of 80s and 90s games. But im after some advice.
1.I've set up a modest overclock to run dreamcast and psp games a bit better (i've got heatsinks and a fan fitted). But im trying to get the speeds to be consistent. I've read that setting the cpu governor to performance will keeps speeds higher and get better performance. Does this do pretty much the same as setting force_turbo? And how would I go about changing the governor permanently to run performance when I boot an emulator?

I'm currently using a SanDisk extreme 32gb sd card which is overclocked to 100mhz. And although I'm getting good speeds from it I've read that storing and running the roms from a good quality usb stick can increase speeds on heavier games. Is this true and has anyone had any good experience from doing this?

Thanks in advance for any advice or suggestions. :-)

obsidianspider

I've not timed it, but I'm running games from a 256GB USB drive and it works very well. If for no other reason than storage space I'd recommend it.

ashpi

Thank you for your reply. How did u get the pi to read the roms from usb? And if you don't mind me asking, what make of usb stick are you using?
Thanks again

obsidianspider

I followed the instructions in the RetroPie documentation. This is the USB drive I'm using in two Pi projects.

obsidianspider

Thanks for asking about this. I see that the USB drives are on sale for cheaper than when I bought them. I'll be heading to Best Buy for a price adjustment! :)

ashpi

Haha no problem. I like the idea of doing this. It was just question as whether I would get any improvement in speed. Looking at some benchmarks, my SanDisk extreme sd card is a pretty good performer. But as I don't have the time to do extensive tests or benchmarks myself, I was wondering what other people had experienced in terms of read speed. Thank you for the links by the way.