Emulator perfomrance issues?

[slaeshjag]

After playing around woth my pandora for a little more than a week, I can't seem to get the emulator performance one might expect after watching EvilDragons one-video-per-day videos.


N64 is pretty sluggish. Super Mario 64 needs overclock to about 800MHz to run full speed. Banjo Kazooie is pretty stuttery even at 800MHz, and totally unplayable at 500MHz


I'm not sure about PSX, so let's skip that for now.


SNES does seem to run faster on my pandora than on my dingoo, but the audio is terrible and still have a few glitches at 800MHz.


Those are the emulators I've used so far, am I missing some secret configuration that makes it all go better?

 

[craigix]

After playing around woth my pandora for a little more than a week, I can't seem to get the emulator performance one might expect after watching EvilDragons one-video-per-day videos.


N64 is pretty sluggish. Super Mario 64 needs overclock to about 800MHz to run full speed. Banjo Kazooie is pretty stuttery even at 800MHz, and totally unplayable at 500MHz


I'm not sure about PSX, so let's skip that for now.


SNES does seem to run faster on my pandora than on my dingoo, but the audio is terrible and still have a few glitches at 800MHz.


Those are the emulators I've used so far, am I missing some secret configuration that makes it all go better?

Enable frame skip in N64. (note that due to a quirk of the emulation, frameskip 2 is actually frame skip 1).


SNES - I've never had anything but 60fps in everything I've tried.


PSX - PSX again seems pretty much spot on with Notazs psxReArmed.


I don't get to use the Pandora as much as I'd like though, so someone else can probably do more checks with you.

 

[mvickers03]

With the n64 emulator to reach full speed with sound you need to use Notaz's sound plugin as is much lighter on resources, you can find it buried in this thread somewhere, sorry I don't have time to find it but it is definitely in there.


I have never had a problem with SNES I use the emu ported by Skeezix try it out here here


Also PSX is amazing working full speed with every game I own (about 30+) except Skullmonkeys (which just doesn't work) at 900mhz most are fine at 700mhz,


Hope your enjoying your new toy

 

[slaeshjag]

Activating frameskip did make N64 run close to what I've seen in EvilDragons videos, but now the framerate is pretty horrible... Might be that I also set the vsyc-divider to 2 (30Hz), will try setting that to one later.


PSX does have some audio streaming issues, the music can't make up its mind if it's going to be too fast or too slow.


As for SNES, I'm pretty sure that's the one I'm using. I've not yet tried the new release (that was released yesterday iirc), but Chrono Trigger needs around 800 to run full speed. Dunno how horrible it is with frameskip (but with frameskip, it wouldn't really be the upgrade from my Dingoo that I hoped for...)

 

[mvickers03]

Have you tried using Notaz's sound plugin? Mario 64 is fullspeed using that alongside mupen64. Just using the default plugin will not be anyway near as fast.


Also be sure your using PCSX Rearmed for Pandora and not PSX4Pandora as the later sucks.


As for SNES I tried the emulator I linked to with many games and all worked full speed, I didn't try Chrono trigger though. also that emulator is an unoptimized port and will run on lower clock speeds in the future for now OC'ing to 800 will suffice for me

 

[doragasu]

I didn't try Chrono Trigger, but I have tried other SNES games at 600 MHz and them all run fullspeed without frameskip. If I get some time, I'll test CT and post the results.

 

[slaeshjag]

Have you tried using Notaz's sound plugin? Mario 64 is fullspeed using that alongside mupen64. Just using the default plugin will not be anyway near as fast.


Also be sure your using PCSX Rearmed for Pandora and not PSX4Pandora as the later sucks.


As for SNES I tried the emulator I linked to with many games and all worked full speed, I didn't try Chrono trigger though. also that emulator is an unoptimized port and will run on lower clock speeds in the future for now OC'ing to 800 will suffice for me

I use "Notaz OSS Sound plugin r2", that ships comes with the emulator, is there a different one around that works better?


Yes, I use PCSX4Pandora, haven't tried PSX4Pandora yet.


Yeah, 800 seems to give pretty much fullspeed SNES emulation, just a few audio problems. But setting frameskip to auto seems to solve it, if I'm not fooling myself.

 

[Alpha2]

I find that some PSx games run better on one emulator and not so much in the other, so your best bet is to keep both on your card and switch to the one that plays the game you want to play best. Also some games require more over clocking than others, for instance some 2d games work fine at 600mhz (are at least playable) but some need to be as high as 800 or more to totally eliminate slowdown or sound issues. And some still dont work at all despite the quality found in others.

 

[Coldbird]

I find that some PSx games run better on one emulator and not so much in the other, so your best bet is to keep both on your card and switch to the one that plays the game you want to play best. Also some games require more over clocking than others, for instance some 2d games work fine at 600mhz (are at least playable) but some need to be as high as 800 or more to totally eliminate slowdown or sound issues. And some still dont work at all despite the quality found in others.

That is absolutely right. Just to give the threads op a good hint at what he should expect...


Bust A Move : works no matter what


Arc the Lad : eight hundred mhz


Legend of Dragoon : overvolt and oberclock to one ghz

 

[ivanovic]

Yeah, 800 seems to give pretty much fullspeed SNES emulation, just a few audio problems. But setting frameskip to auto seems to solve it, if I'm not fooling myself.

Setting frameskip to auto will give (on the emulator side) first priority to audio calculations and can, because of this, lead to lower framerates. But yeah, audio should basically be perfect when setting frameskip to auto. One negative sideeffect of doing this is that you will lose vsync. Vsync only works with frameskip set to '1' (meaning "no frameskip").

 

[SirDregan]

Huh :blink:


I have to say I've only tried Mario 64 (works fullspeed withouth overclocking at all)


and Mario Kart 64 which runs slow, but I haven't tried that with more than 500Mhz as well.


Should give it a try at 800Mhz.


And all my SNES games run amazing at 600Mhz.


Maybe I have a rare pandora gold chocobo edition?

 

[Coldbird]

Huh :blink:


I have to say I've only tried Mario 64 (works fullspeed withouth overclocking at all)


and Mario Kart 64 which runs slow, but I haven't tried that with more than 500Mhz as well.


Should give it a try at 800Mhz.


And all my SNES games run amazing at 600Mhz.


Maybe I have a rare pandora gold chocobo edition?

You wish, lol. Mine behaves just the same way. Mario 64 runs fine no matter what.

 

[Aimless E]

slaeshjag; have you tried reloading the firmware for your unit? The symptoms sound like a video driver issue. That would explain the low framerates and possibly some of the sound issues (the main cpu is having to do everything). Download the latest firmware and flash your unit and see what happens.

 

[slaeshjag]

slaeshjag; have you tried reloading the firmware for your unit? The symptoms sound like a video driver issue. That would explain the low framerates and possibly some of the sound issues (the main cpu is having to do everything). Download the latest firmware and flash your unit and see what happens.

The videodriver itself seems to work, at least "good enough". Got a lot of stuff set up on my NAND, so I need more motivation for a reflash.

 

[slaeshjag]

slaeshjag; have you tried reloading the firmware for your unit? The symptoms sound like a video driver issue. That would explain the low framerates and possibly some of the sound issues (the main cpu is having to do everything). Download the latest firmware and flash your unit and see what happens.

The videodriver itself seems to work, at least "good enough". Got a lot of stuff set up on my NAND, so I need more motivation for a reflash.

Now I got more motivation to reflash. It did help a little, SM64 is *almost* full speed now. Close enough anyway.