Full speed NES/SNES/GEN?

[ollie]

Just wondering before i buy all the stuff needed (everything)..

How well do the above systems ROMS run on a medium OC? Not really wanting to buy everything to run my games at %98 speed with audio glitches. :P

Edit: Also, are there a scanline filters for the games? If so does it slow everything down?

[ollie]

:(

[Mutex]

Genesis/SNES games run mostly at fullspeed.
But since almost every emulator on the RPi is optimized for speed and not compatibility you are bound to run into problems with obscure roms.

That said, there are roms that bring the speed of the emulators down, especially the current NES emulator. If you don’t want to tinker with your RPi you should better keep your hands off. As you see in this forum you will run into problems setting the hole thing up and you will find the limitations of the system.

I overclocked my RPi to values comparable to the Turbo settings and i’d say:

SNES: 99% (Depending on the game, some games have sound stutter)
Genesis: 100% (Haven’t run into any problems with this one)
NES: 90% (Lots of games run fullspeed but some have serious slowdowns)

[ollie]

Thanks. Exactly what i wanted to know.

[trimmtrabb]

As above, overall you’ll get decent performance. Regarding SNES emulation use PiSNES it is optimised for the Pi and peforms much better than the Retroarch/Libretro core. You can install it via the setup script you just need to edit es_systems.cfg to use it in Emulation Station

[trimmtrabb]

Just to add I think PiSNES is pre installed on the RetroPie image, you just need to edit es_systems.cfg (the command is already in there but commented out)

[ollie]

Thanks trimmtrabb. I think im going to pass on the pi though.

[theinsomniac]

I’m just curious why you are passing on the Pi. I set one up a few weeks ago using RetroPie, and it works perfectly. Since I had everything I needed for the system except for the Pi, itself, and a wifi adapter for initial setup, the whole project cost me less than $50. You can’t beat that.

I’ve only run Nintendo and Super Nintendo games, dozens of them, and I’ve yet to run into a single problem. The only challenging part was getting my Xbox controller buttons configured to work well on both NES and SNES, since Nintendo moved the positions of the A and B buttons somewhat between those systems.

I’ve played FX games on it with no problem, and I can’t imagine Genesis games would require overclocking, either. I’ve never once experienced speed related issues with any game. They play seamlessly, at least all of the ROMs I’ve tried.

My guess is that if people are having problems, they’re probably introducing them by needlessly tinkering. More advanced systems than these might require overclocking, but these do not.

[ollie]

Because i have asked this same question on a few forums and Reddit. A few people say what you have said. “works perfect!”. More people have said “meh, its ok but has problems”.

If the games don’t run as well as a decent emulator on the PC (obviously excluding all the uber accurate emulators being released that require gobs of cpu).. I don’t want to spend any amount of time or money on it. Even if it isn’t that expensive.

[theinsomniac]

So what I’m saying is that it does work perfectly. And when I hear people talking about overclocking, when that is completely unnecessary, it suggests to me that the problems people are having are introduced.

In fact, the games do run just as well as a decent emulator on a PC. Because that’s exactly what RetroPie with EmulationStation on an RPi is. NES and SNES are well within the processing ability of RPi, stock, out of the box, without overclocking.

[cacophony555]

NES and Genesis emulation is flawless. The slowdowns people are referring to occurred with the original hardware, so the emulators are just recreating the experience accurately. I’ve compared current PC emulators and the Pi is every bit as good.

For SNES emulation it’s a different story. It runs at full speed but the audio emulation is way off even on PiSnes. It turns out that accurately emulating the audio chip in the SNES requires a lot of computational power and the Pi is not up to the task, so all the SNES emulators employ simpler but less accurate approximations of the audio. For many games the audio is WAY off. For example in Final Fantasy 3 the wind noise in the beginning sounds like bees.

But the Pi is great at emulating many systems including: nes, master system, genesis, mame, and turbo graphics 16

[ollie]

[quote=6849]NES and Genesis emulation is flawless. The slowdowns people are referring to occurred with the original hardware, so the emulators are just recreating the experience accurately. I’ve compared current PC emulators and the Pi is every bit as good.

For SNES emulation it’s a different story. It runs at full speed but the audio emulation is way off even on PiSnes. It turns out that accurately emulating the audio chip in the SNES requires a lot of computational power and the Pi is not up to the task, so all the SNES emulators employ simpler but less accurate approximations of the audio. For many games the audio is WAY off. For example in Final Fantasy 3 the wind noise in the beginning sounds like bees.

But the Pi is great at emulating many systems including: nes, master system, genesis, mame, and turbo graphics 16
[/quote]

Thanks

[quote=6847]So what I’m saying is that it does work perfectly. And when I hear people talking about overclocking, when that is completely unnecessary, it suggests to me that the problems people are having are introduced.

In fact, the games do run just as well as a decent emulator on a PC. Because that’s exactly what RetroPie with EmulationStation on an RPi is. NES and SNES are well within the processing ability of RPi, stock, out of the box, without overclocking.
[/quote]

My point is that yes, you are saying its perfect BUT more people are saying it is not.

[jakobud]

Using RetroPie on a RPi B. Mike Tysons Punch Out on NES runs kinda bad. The audio is absolutely terrible. Why is that? How come certain SNES and Genesis games run fantastic but something like a NES game runs so bad?

[proxycell]

@jakobud:
wow this is an old thread… I will test out mike tyson’s punch out later tomorrow (i am recompiling everything again on a new memory card)

can you name any other NES games which have issues for you? (or games for other systems even)

[GameRockeR]

[quote=84007]Using RetroPie on a RPi B. Mike Tysons Punch Out on NES runs kinda bad. The audio is absolutely terrible. Why is that? How come certain SNES and Genesis games run fantastic but something like a NES game runs so bad?[/quote]
Hi! Mike Tyson’s Punch Out! is running great for me (RPi Model B, 8 Gb sd card). Maybe your rom is corrupted. The only game I tried and had bad slowdowns was Goal Two! for NES.

[proxycell]

@ vintagamer – i will try goal two as well in a few minutes, i will make a double-post later with the results

[proxycell]

ok i tried both games, both turned out just fine for me. make sure you are overclocking your RPi to TURBO

[scallywag]

n00b here experiencing video/audio/input lag on 8-bit NES games with modified “High” overclock settings below. Games tested include Super Mario, Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, Contra, RBI Baseball.

model B+, caseless, heatsink-less, fan-less, 5V/1A power supply, only 1 bluetooth dongle in a single usb port (via powered usb hub or not):
arm_freq=950
core_freq=250
sdram_freq=450
over_voltage=6
avoid_safe_mode=1
gpu_mem=256
overscan=1

and per proxycell’s suggestions elsewhere on this forum,
hdmi_mode=4
avoid_pwm_pll=1
h264_freq=0
isp_freq=0

I’m surprised overclocking is necessitated for NES, let alone that I’m at the precipice of Turbo. I’ll snag some heatsinks and perhaps a fan, etc if necessary, but I’ve got to be missing something here, right? Would a power source bump to 2A make a difference? Any other suggestions would be beyond appreciated. Thanks.

[petrockblog]

super mario definitely runs at full speed – you could try commenting out video_threaded = true (or setting to false) in /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg (I have read this could cause input lag).

maybe sure you are testing without any fancy shaders running. You can also tweak the “runcommand 4” for nes section in /etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg to “runcommand 1” to launch it in a lower resolution.

BTW probably best to open a new thread when you have issues rather than add to an existing one.

[GameRockeR]

@ proxycell
What region are you using for Goal! Two? I tested a ntsc rom and lags really bad, but today I was playing with the Japanese rom and runs accurately. Btw I overclocked my RPi to 1070 mhz.

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