The N64 situation

[craigix]

This has been brought up in many threads now, so I think we need a dedicated topic for it.


Now, I don't have a 1Ghz Pandora as we sent all of them out to customers, so we shall need your help.


The issue is this: Performance on various versions of the N64 emulator vary and many people comment about how


they have it running faster on their Pandora or that the user isn't optimising the config.


This was the case 3 years ago when I made the first N64 videos. Actually some of those videos I made are faster than videos


I see in the last year.


I remember I modded the config files to get a significant performance increase.


Also there has been talk of the CPU not being the bottle neck, is this based on anything? Unless the 3D driver is doing


some very strange things I can't imagine the N64 3D hardware taxing it, assuming the emulator does just pass the


triangles over and isn't using a stranger rendering method.


Recent 1Ghz videos clearly show the 1Ghz unit running N64 faster, which at first glance suggests the CPU could be the bottle neck.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/nFcWXLHxTGU?feature=oembed

Now, from what I remember, changing the config to 320*240 resolution speeds things up, you can also set the FPS to 2 - 1 is actually 0. What else can be adjusted in the config?


Can we see if we can get any stats and sort this out once and for all? I've vague memories of us doing this before, but this time it can be stickied.


Side by side videos would crush or support these theories.

 

[Tokiopop]

How playable are most N64 games on the 1GHz pandora? Say you OC it to 1.2, adjust the settings like you did, etc.


If a decent amount of games play at fullspeed I might just keep my 3 year old pre-order

 

[fusion_power]

I also did some short experiments on my CC Pandora (600MHz model) with lowering res to 320x240 stretched, feels a little bit smoother in games like Lylat Wars but of course doesn't look that good without propper Anti Aliasing. I guess 640x480 without AA would be still faster than 320x240 with AA.


Overall, it is clear that all these games run better on an 1GHz Unit, thats no miracle. I guess, that N64 just need some more optimizing or some better plugins or whatever instead of just pumping more MHz into the machine to make stuff run smoother. ^^"


maybe going the Ultra HLE route and just optimize some games or replacing the entire emulation with the "translation" of the games to openGl or whatever, I'm not that pro in this but AFAIK there are some very dirty and "hardcore" tricks to speed up emulation - at the costs of accuracy of course.

 

[Askarus]

We should also try to get more games running.


A lot of games I'd like to play are not usable, and thet's not because of speed.

 

[Exophase]

I also did some short experiments on my CC Pandora (600MHz model) with lowering res to 320x240 stretched, feels a little bit smoother in games like Lylat Wars but of course doesn't look that good without propper Anti Aliasing. I guess 640x480 without AA would be still faster than 320x240 with AA.

320x240 with 4xMSAA should be much cheaper than 640x480 with no AA.

maybe going the Ultra HLE route and just optimize some games or replacing the entire emulation with the "translation" of the games to openGl or whatever, I'm not that pro in this but AFAIK there are some very dirty and "hardcore" tricks to speed up emulation - at the costs of accuracy of course.

The emulator already uses the "UltraHLE approach" in that it emulates ucode engines instead of RSP and RDP. There's no N64 emulator that does special game translations.

 

[NoeleyC]

I've two versions of the PND on my cards, as one older one seemed to run Mario 64 much faster at 640x480 than the newer ones, which I then setup to run at 320x240 instead! Don't have my Pandora with me on holidays so I can't check the exact versions...

 

[mcobit]

I played Ocarina of time on my 256 mb Pandora and I am at Dodongos cavern right now.


I have disabled frameskip and set the graphics to 320x240.


It has a good framerate at 800mhz and just some occasional soundstutter and slowdown. Really playable if you ask me. Also mario 64 runs very smooth and with almost perfect ound wih this settings.


Only downside with zelda is, that here are some graphical glitches and some textures are not rendered in buildings. No dealbreaker thou.

 

[PokeParadox]

The N64 thing is tricky since we have 3 versions of the same graphic plugin... each version has its own experimental tweak, and can perform better in some cases...

 

[Foxgod]

While mupen has come a long way, and the pandora port of it is nothing short of great, mupen is as far as i know not as far yet as Project64.


Project64 got amazing compatibility, but isnt arm compatible.


Mupen will probably become just as good, but it needs some time.


It does run a lot better on the 1ghz unit tho, but the compatibility didnt increase, its not like a more powerful system will make games run more accurate or less glitchy.


The games that already run well on the 600mhz unit, run even better on the 1ghz unit.

 

[fusion_power]

320x240 with 4xMSAA should be much cheaper than 640x480 with no AA.

Really? Cool. I've never expected that. AA usualy is pretty "expencive" I thought, especialy on SGX mobile devices. ^^"


Sadly, there seems to be no AA option available or I just have not found it yet.

Only downside with zelda is, that here are some graphical glitches and some textures are not rendered in buildings. No dealbreaker thou.

When I remember correctly, there are many textures missing inside of buildings, sometimes the entire (2D) background. I also remember that almost NO emulator can render the OOT ingame menu propperly, link often is just some pixel mash.


However. Mario64 plays fine but Starfox64 is not playable, not even at 800MHz. Music stutters, frames are low, just not enough FPS for good Ship movement. Frameskip does not well on this game, I hope it can be played with full FPS some day.

 

[Wally]

Would have been nice with the 1GHZ panda's sound instead of the standard 600mhz

 

[Foxgod]

btw, when i set mupen to 320 x 240 i get a very small screen when i run any roms in mupen.


How do i make the games fullscreen in 320 x 240?

 

[WizardStan]

Also there has been talk of the CPU not being the bottle neck, is this based on anything?

Overclocking beyond 800Mhz doesn't yield any additional frames: the difference between 600 and 800 is significant, the difference between 800 and 1000 is literally nothing. Clocked at 1Ghz, it's only consuming about 70% of my CPU, sometimes less. Itami even mentioned in his thread that running both of his Pandora's at 800Mhz, the new one runs faster.


Notaz could probably explain better, but I suspect it has to do with improvements to the GPU: it's just a better graphics processor. Setting the graphics to "no video" also causes it to run at full speed: I've timed the music and it is perfectly synced to the original hardware. Of course, there's no video then, so it's kind of useless, but at least it's a start.

 

[WizardStan]

btw, when i set mupen to 320 x 240 i get a very small screen when i run any roms in mupen.


How do i make the games fullscreen in 320 x 240?

Set "window width=800" (or 640, puts black bars on either side but maintains aspect ratio) and "window height=480" but "framebuffer width=320" and "framebuffer height=240"


With tweaks, I can almost get MM to run at a reasonable speed on my 600Mhz CC Pandora. I bet the same tweaks would make it perfect on the 1Ghz ones with the better GPU.

 

[Ziz]

320x240 with 4xMSAA should be much cheaper than 640x480 with no AA.

Really? Cool.

How about just stopping posting about things you don't have any idea?

Overall, it is clear that all these games run better on an 1GHz Unit, thats no miracle.

No, it is NOT clear. -_- The most important thing is the GPU, not the CPU. As Craigix mentioned in the first post: The CPU is not the bottleneck.


Ziz

 

[Linux-SWAT]

The most important thing is the *PU.

 

[mcobit]

@Ziz, the gpu is faster in the 1GHz units, too. 200 instead of 110MHz.

 

[Foxgod]

btw, when i set mupen to 320 x 240 i get a very small screen when i run any roms in mupen.


How do i make the games fullscreen in 320 x 240?

Set "window width=800" (or 640, puts black bars on either side but maintains aspect ratio) and "window height=480" but "framebuffer width=320" and "framebuffer height=240"


With tweaks, I can almost get MM to run at a reasonable speed on my 600Mhz CC Pandora. I bet the same tweaks would make it perfect on the 1Ghz ones with the better GPU.

Tnx for the info

 

[elwing]

@Ziz, the gpu is faster in the 1GHz units, too. 200 instead of 110MHz.

lot of people seems to miss that... in fact, the GPU got a bigger bump (edit: in raw freq..) than the CPU...

 

[Letalis Sonus]

IIRC the GPU emulation is very inefficient because every triangle is drawn for itself, causing a huge need of bandwidth and lots of stumbling over the latency. This would mean that the clock of the GPU really does not matter and performance improvements should be minimal, because bandwidth/latency improvements are rather small compared to the huge frequency bump. Been a while since I've read about it the last time, though...