RPi2 vs RPi3 – Is it even worth it?

[proxycell]

I’m sitting here looking at a bunch of charts, tables and most importantly: some YouTube videos to see if getting the new RPi3 is worth it

So far I am of the mind that it is not yet worth it, at least in terms of what we are all here for: gaming

I know some people will throw out some numbers (along with the above mentioned tables and charts!) but so far I see no real improvements over the previous RPi2 with perhaps the exception of the built-in WiFi which will be of great use for Kodi/streaming/SSH purposes.

The “problem” consoles still retain their title. N64/PSP/Dreamcast – so far they appear to be a bit better but not yet fully playable across a wide selection of games. I am NOT blaming anybody for this. I realize that this stuff is extremely hard to get right and its all provided for free. All I am suggesting is that perhaps people just take their RPi2 and overclock it, save a few bucks. I am not inferring anything else at all.

Some users have been posting questions regarding PSX/32X/SNES/etc performance and I do not believe there were any issues regarding these on the old RPi2 (overclocked at least). Please correct me if I am wrong.

[robertybob]

I agree with you

[herbfargus]

It may be a long while before any of the upper end systems are supported. At the very least will need a RAM bump before we see anything too spectacular but even then I’m not going to hold my breath.

I bought a pi 3. Hasn’t gotten here yet but I just like the idea of onboard wifi I probably could have waited until the pi 4 (or whatever their next release will be) but it gives me an excuse to do another project with my old pi so I don’t mind. I do it for the development, I haven’t played a game in months.

$35 is hardly breaking the bank so that’s how I justify it, but if the board were say $100 for the changes yeah I’d wait for a while til the price felt justified.

[ruckage]

[quote=119492]
Some users have been posting questions regarding PSX/32X/SNES/etc performance and I do not believe there were any issues regarding these on the old RPi2 (overclocked at least). Please correct me if I am wrong.
[/quote]

32X is quite slow on RPI2 (even overclocked) and SNES has problems with games using enhancement chips such as SA1 and Super FX. Not sure about PSX as I haven’t tried it.

I should be getting a RPI3 in a few days and I’m hopeful that it will be just fast enough to play the problematic SNES games at full speed. Not so hopeful about 32X though.
I think it should also be fast enough to play some of the MAME games that struggled a bit on the RPI2.

Tests I’ve seen state an an increase in speed of 60% in single core mode over RPI2 – that is quite a big difference if true.

I have to reserve judgement until I get to do some tests but for me if it’s fast enough to play the problematic SNES games and Mame games it will be worth every penny.

[lilbud]

Super FX games will work better on pocketsnes

[ruckage]

[quote=119508]Super FX games will work better on pocketsnes

[/quote]
Hi lilbud. I have been using that for those games and it’s definately faster but isn’t quite perfect.

[dankcushions]

a few things:
– we don’t have a 64-bit kernel yet. if/when that arrives, there may be some further gains.
– for almost-there cases it’s good. eg, on the pi2 PS1 in enhanced mode (2x resolution), had just enough slowdown to make it not worth it, but is now perfect on the 3. there are a number of mame games that i’ve tried that are now perfect, and weren’t before. 32x, and certain snes games – all perfect now. mario kart 64 and f-zero 64 had small amounts of slowdown in 4 player on the pi2, so i hope that they’re perfect/near perfect on the 3 (with the right plugin).
– n64, dreamcast, etc – i’m not sure these emulators are mature enough to be perfect on any amount of power – all have graphical glitches on the cores we use, and huge system demands for the more accurate ones available on PC.
– i don’t know if i’d say it’s ‘worth it’ – i think these things are so cheap and i like tinkering with them as much as playing games on them, so it’s a new thing to play with :)

[mikeveli20]

@darkcushions: Which MAME games have better performance?

[darkjoy2k2]

if you want to know how “mature” these emulators are, look for a mupen or reicast emulation on NVIDIA SHIELD with tegra processorat youtube . really smooth gameplay!

psx higher resolution is smooth now!
Dreamcast is a “near playable”, but still too slow to enjoy on Rpi3.
N64 is still messy/bad on Rpi3… i bought pi3 causei wanted to play goldeneye but its still too bad to play…

We have to wait till we have 64bit to hit the real performance…

(my Rpi3 is OC to 1400mhz)

[Anonymous]

I’m wondering if the current problem for DC, PSP and N64 really comes from the CPU.

From Pi2 to Pi3 CPU has really been improved but the GPU is still the VC IV (overclocked that’s it) with the same drivers…

My bet is the VC IV doesn’t have enough horsepower and/or the drivers are shit.

If you take a look at what a simple Odroid C1 can do…you realize that it can run DC full speed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPpihqiDWHM

Neither the Pi2 nor the Pi3 can do that…

The Odroid C1 has a quad core A5 at 1.4 Ghz wich is < Pi3 CPU…but the Odroid C1 also has a dual core Mali 450…wich is significantly faster than the Pi VC IV.

N.B.: Hope I didn’t make to much mistakes, English is not my native language (French is…)…

[herbfargus]

Odroid has rubbish community support though. Good luck getting it to do all the stuff the pi does.

[Anonymous]

My point is not doing some advertisement for Odroid. I don’t have any investment in Hardkernel. ;)

Just trying to guess why the Pi3 doesn’t bring that much for emulation purpose (basically we are still stuck to PS1 just like Pi2).

[dankcushions]

[quote=119542]if you want to know how “mature” these emulators are, look for a mupen or reicast emulation on NVIDIA SHIELD with tegra processorat youtube . really smooth gameplay!
[/quote]but then run soul calibur on reicast and it’s glitched. neither reicast, mupen (without LLE or plugins like angrylion, which will struggle on an i7) or PPSSPP are pixel-perfect so are full of games that are glitched or do not work. that’s not “mature” in my eyes.

[quote=119528]@darkcushions: Which MAME games have better performance?
[/quote]i’ve not tested much, but all the cave shooters run full speed for me on the pi3. MK1 is now perfect on mame2003. ninja baseball batman. even some 3d games are playable (eg starblade).

[dankcushions]

also it’s easy to work out if an emulation is CPU or GPU-bound. just run top command in SSH when you’re playing them – if it says ~100% cpu use. it is using 100% of one core (almost no emulators are multithreaded) so likely isn’t GPU-bound. in my experience this was always the case with the pi2, but i’ve not tried it on the pi3.

[windale]

However powerful Raspberry Pi’s get, most people are never satisfied anyway and end up frying it by overclocking to the max ?!? I like to use mine at the stock speed (or retropie safe defaults) the way it was intended when it was built. Any Android TV device, which are very cheap now, can wipe the floor with the Pi on every emulator. For example, ePSXe on Android has almost 100% compatibility. They even ported some of the code to the PC version of ePSXe because it is so good.

I’m not sure why they added a 64-bit compatible processor, there isn’t even a 64-bit operating system yet. I suppose it’s just for future proofing. The Pi wasn’t actually made for emulation, it’s just possible to do.

[joyrider3774]

even mortal kombat 2 3 and umk3 are very playable with lr-mame2003 couldn’t try it before though since i had retropie 1.6 with only mame4all set up before i upgraded to retropie 3.6 with a pi3 now i use both mame4all and lr-mame2003 so i only see the diffrence from pi model b+ to pi3 although i do have a pi2 and one of the things i want to see is how psp ran on the pi2 since (at least for me) it’s not impressive on the pi3 had expected more. But comming from my 1.6 model b+ picade setup to retropie 3.6 pi3 does make a (huge) diffrence for other roms / emulators and i like lr-mame2003 as well it has nice speeds as well lr-mame2010 on the other hand does not but that’s probably because it’s a newer, haven tried the current mame versions from experimental but i doubt it’ll run decent.

Will try to switch my sd card from picade to my pi 2 once and compare a few emulators. i’m wondering about the differences myselve

[Anonymous]

[quote=119579]also it’s easy to work out if an emulation is CPU or GPU-bound. just run top command in SSH when you’re playing them – if it says ~25% cpu use. it is using 100% of one core (almost no emulators are multithreaded) so likely isn’t GPU-bound. in my experience this was always the case with the pi2, but i’ve not tried it on the pi3.

[/quote]
Actually if you run top command and it uses more than 1 full core it shows more than 100% not more than 25%.

Basically the max would be 400%…

[dankcushions]

sorry, yeah, true, daft as it is :)

[joyrider3774]

htop shows cpu usage per core as well (sudo apt-get install htop) although if i remeber correctly not per proces not sure though but cpu load on the cores is visible

[Anonymous]

[quote=119597]sorry, yeah, true, daft as it is

[/quote]
Yeah but that also means that the pi 2 doesn’t struggle for most emulators.

I only had a few emulators/games that where able to make the pi 2 use 100% of one core.

Here are some cases I checked:
lr-snes-9x with super FX games (but easily solved with lr-pocketsnes…)
mame4all with dodonpachi reached 100% but solved with lr-fba-next who never reaches more than 50% without fba overclocking setting* (around 95% with 200 for fba overclocking setting*)
lr-pcsx-reamred doesn’t move from 50% except with few games like some specific magic spells in FF9 or specific parts of Broken Sword 2(but it is emulation glitches IMHO)

For those we are interested in (N64, DC and PPSSPP) I didn’t check actually… would be interesting to verify later today.

*It’s a setting that allows to emulate the original plateforme but overclocked (max 200 wich is 200%). It’s usefull to remove some slowdowns on games that where lagging on the original machine (like the metal slug serie on neogeo for exemple).

[dankcushions]

[quote=119602]

dankcushions wrote:

sorry, yeah, true, daft as it is

Yeah but that also means that the pi 2 doesn’t struggle for most emulators.

I only had a few emulators/games that where able to make the pi 2 use 100% of one core.

Here are some cases I checked:
lr-snes-9x with super FX games (but easily solved with lr-pocketsnes…)
mame4all with dodonpachi reached 100% but solved with lr-fba-next who never reaches more than 50% without fba overclocking setting* (around 95% with 200 for fba overclocking setting*)
lr-pcsx-reamred doesn’t move from 50% except with few games like some specific magic spells in FF9 or specific parts of Broken Sword 2(but it is emulation glitches IMHO)

For those we are interested in (N64, DC and PPSSPP) I didn’t check actually… would be interesting to verify later today.

*It’s a setting that allows to emulate the original plateforme but overclocked (max 200 wich is 200%). It’s usefull to remove some slowdowns on games that where lagging on the original machine (like the metal slug serie on neogeo for exemple).

[/quote]my findings were different – I do understand how top works I was just miss typing. I doubt any emus run at 25% cpu.

pcsx maxes the pi2 cpu at 2x resolution (it renders everything in software) and I’m sure it spikes to 100% at some games like tekken 3 that have brief hitches at regular resolution. I don’t use fba over mame for various reasons, so mame improvements are important to me.it also maxes with 32x games.

mileage may vary …

[meneerjansen]

For more emulators to be compatible w/ a Pi it needs a video card/video chip w/ 3D support (openGL?) first. More RAM and CPU would be overkill. My mobile phone runs PSX and N64 games better than my Pi. And my phone is really cheap!

[machtroid]

I haven’t ordered a Pi3 yet, but for $35 (cheaper than any new game release) I definitely believe it’s worth it. Sign me up for the built in WiFi alone. And a bit of extra performance right off the bat, and likely better gains later as things get optimized. And you can use your Pi2 for a new project or gift it to a friend.

[Anonymous]

I just got my pi 3 yesterday and N64 runs slightly better, Dreamcast runs a lot better (I can play games like UFC that were unplayable on pi2) but still not perfect like psx. The most improved is the psp. I’m using the ppsspp emulator which gives you more options to bust down the graphics than lr-ppsspp. The graphics aren’t quite as sharp as the standard settings but games run perfectly smooth (better than N64).

So considering the performance bump already, and eventual safe overclocking, retropie being made to better suite 64bit, and the build in bluetooth/wifi it was totally worth it for me.

[Anonymous]

[quote=119607]

alucard63 wrote:

dankcushions wrote:

sorry, yeah, true, daft as it is

Yeah but that also means that the pi 2 doesn’t struggle for most emulators.

I only had a few emulators/games that where able to make the pi 2 use 100% of one core.

Here are some cases I checked:
lr-snes-9x with super FX games (but easily solved with lr-pocketsnes…)
mame4all with dodonpachi reached 100% but solved with lr-fba-next who never reaches more than 50% without fba overclocking setting* (around 95% with 200 for fba overclocking setting*)
lr-pcsx-reamred doesn’t move from 50% except with few games like some specific magic spells in FF9 or specific parts of Broken Sword 2(but it is emulation glitches IMHO)

For those we are interested in (N64, DC and PPSSPP) I didn’t check actually… would be interesting to verify later today.

*It’s a setting that allows to emulate the original plateforme but overclocked (max 200 wich is 200%). It’s usefull to remove some slowdowns on games that where lagging on the original machine (like the metal slug serie on neogeo for exemple).

my findings were different – I do understand how top works I was just miss typing. I doubt any emus run at 25% cpu.

pcsx maxes the pi2 cpu at 2x resolution (it renders everything in software) and I’m sure it spikes to 100% at some games like tekken 3 that have brief hitches at regular resolution. I don’t use fba over mame for various reasons, so mame improvements are important to me.it also maxes with 32x games.

mileage may vary …

[/quote]

Indeed, it’s true that you can find games on lr-mame-2003 that are lagging on pi 2.

I remembered trying gunbird 2 on it and it was not good at all. I checked again on my Pi2 today and it was indeed struggling at 100% cpu load.

Still I solved the problem with lr-fba…but I guess you can find some other games that are not compatible with fba and struggle on Pi2…

[zerojay]

64-bit isn’t going to help things, guys. Don’t hold hope for an improvement that won’t becoming anyways as it would only mean less RAM available with no real performance gains even if Raspbian changes their minds about not providing a 64-bit distribution.

[cacophony555]

[quote=119584]However powerful Raspberry Pi’s get, most people are never satisfied anyway and end up frying it by overclocking to the max ?!? I like to use mine at the stock speed (or retropie safe defaults) the way it was intended when it was built. Any Android TV device, which are very cheap now, can wipe the floor with the Pi on every emulator. For example, ePSXe on Android has almost 100% compatibility. They even ported some of the code to the PC version of ePSXe because it is so good.

I’m not sure why they added a 64-bit compatible processor, there isn’t even a 64-bit operating system yet. I suppose it’s just for future proofing. The Pi wasn’t actually made for emulation, it’s just possible to do.
[/quote]

I have an Nvidia Shield TV, which is pretty impressive at emulating more modern consoles. I can get stable framerates in various GameCube (Wind Waker, Twilight Princess) and Wii (New Super Mario Bros) titles with the latest Dolphin emulator, which I never would have guessed considering the PC hardware requirements for those titles.

But I’d still rather use my pi for nes/mastersystem/snes/genesis/tg16/etc emulation. As good as the individual emulators are for Android, I have yet to find a frontend that comes even close to Emulation Station. GameSome is quite lame in comparison. Once you get RetroPie setup it’s a far more satisfying experience, and the community surrounding it is great too.

I haven’t gotten my hands on a pi 3 yet, but I’m looking forward to it, even if the performance improvements are relatively small.

[Anonymous]

[quote=119691]64-bit isn’t going to help things, guys. Don’t hold hope for an improvement that won’t becoming anyways as it would only mean less RAM available with no real performance gains even if Raspbian changes their minds about not providing a 64-bit distribution.

[/quote]

Actually your right and wrong at the same time.

ARM V8 brings 64 bits registers and a set of new instructions for ARM chips.

Your right, introducing 64 bits right now allows only two things:
1) Be able to do marketing (exactly like the shitty marketing of the 64 bits consoles… remember the Jaguar, Hyper Neo Geo 64…)
2) Be able to prepare the software in advance for future devices with more Ram

But…ARM V8 is not just about 64 bits it’s also a new instruction set that brings more performance when the code is compiled for it.

This means ARM V8 optimized code should actually perform better.

[windale]

[quote=119697]

windale wrote:

However powerful Raspberry Pi’s get, most people are never satisfied anyway and end up frying it by overclocking to the max ?!? I like to use mine at the stock speed (or retropie safe defaults) the way it was intended when it was built. Any Android TV device, which are very cheap now, can wipe the floor with the Pi on every emulator. For example, ePSXe on Android has almost 100% compatibility. They even ported some of the code to the PC version of ePSXe because it is so good.

I’m not sure why they added a 64-bit compatible processor, there isn’t even a 64-bit operating system yet. I suppose it’s just for future proofing. The Pi wasn’t actually made for emulation, it’s just possible to do.

I have an Nvidia Shield TV, which is pretty impressive at emulating more modern consoles. I can get stable framerates in various GameCube (Wind Waker, Twilight Princess) and Wii (New Super Mario Bros) titles with the latest Dolphin emulator, which I never would have guessed considering the PC hardware requirements for those titles.

But I’d still rather use my pi for nes/mastersystem/snes/genesis/tg16/etc emulation. As good as the individual emulators are for Android, I have yet to find a frontend that comes even close to Emulation Station. GameSome is quite lame in comparison. Once you get RetroPie setup it’s a far more satisfying experience, and the community surrounding it is great too.

I haven’t gotten my hands on a pi 3 yet, but I’m looking forward to it, even if the performance improvements are relatively small.

[/quote]

You can buy a “MadCatz Mojo” Android TV device for £60 which has a Tegra 4 Graphics chip and a free X-Box 360 style bluetooth joypad ! That’s cheaper than buying a Pi 3 package (with the new case and power supply etc.) and you’d have to use your own joypad. The Pi 3 is nowhere near as powerful. When you hear people trying to run PSP, Dreamcast and N64 on a seriously overclocked Pi and still get choppy framerates it makes you laugh a bit. Someone even asked for a PS2 emulator ! Don’t get me wrong, I still use my Pi (mainly for the Amiga, Atari ST and KODI etc.) because Android runs everything at 60Hz which is crap for PAL computer emulators and watching movies. At the end of the day, the Pi is a great device for the less demanding systems, so far.

Also, I thought EmulationStation was also on Android ? (Don’t quote me on that though).

[meneerjansen]

[quote=119721]
You can buy a “MadCatz Mojo” Android TV device for £60 which has a Tegra 4 Graphics chip and a free X-Box 360 style bluetooth joypad ! That’s cheaper than buying a Pi 3 package (with the new case and power supply etc.) and you’d have to use your own joypad. The Pi 3 is nowhere near as powerful. When you hear people trying to run PSP, Dreamcast and N64 on a seriously overclocked Pi and still get choppy framerates it makes you laugh a bit. Someone even asked for a PS2 emulator ! Don’t get me wrong, I still use my Pi (mainly for the Amiga, Atari ST and KODI etc.) because Android runs everything at 60Hz which is crap for PAL computer emulators and watching movies. At the end of the day, the Pi is a great device for the less demanding systems, so far.

Also, I thought EmulationStation was also on Android ? (Don’t quote me on that though).
[/quote]
Didn’t even know such devices existed! But like someone said on Amazon.com: since those gadgets are Android (4.2 Jelly Bean) based one might even consider buying a (second hand) Chromecast Dongle instaed and streaming to TV using your smartphone. Kodi and game console emulators enough on Google Play. But the reduced price of EUR 77 is a steal for such a device plus controller.

Like Qui Gon Jinn said in ‘Star Wars – The Phantom Menace’: “There’s always a bigger fish.”. ;) There’s always something cheaper and better. The Pi has its pros though: it runs not on Android but a real operating system (I hate Android), if you’re a nerd like me and you’ve got a lot of peripherals lying around (controllers, SD cards, adapters, etc.) there’s no beating its price and it’s great fun to tinker w/ Linux (Android is not).

[dankcushions]

yeah, android is an immediate “no” from me. very limited for what you can do. retroarch on android has a lot of problems, from what i hear. i don’t believe there’s an auto-booting emu front end for android, for example? isn’t it all just apps?

but that said, there’s many x86 or whatever mini PC systems you can get if you want a low-cost and powerful system for emulation, but i think the pi is still the cheapest and most flexible in its class, as long as you manage your expectations. having perfect emulation of the home and arcade 8-32-bit era is plenty to be getting on with!

plus for me i like taking modest hardware and making it do cool stuff, especially knowing that there’s this huge userbase/community that is trying the same. it’s a journey :)

[Anonymous]

[quote=119726]yeah, android is an immediate “no” from me. very limited for what you can do. retroarch on android has a lot of problems, from what i hear. i don’t believe there’s an auto-booting emu front end for android, for example? isn’t it all just apps?

but that said, there’s many x86 or whatever mini PC systems you can get if you want a low-cost and powerful system for emulation, but i think the pi is still the cheapest and most flexible in its class, as long as you manage your expectations. having perfect emulation of the home and arcade 8-32-bit era is plenty to be getting on with!

plus for me i like taking modest hardware and making it do cool stuff, especially knowing that there’s this huge userbase/community that is trying the same. it’s a journey

[/quote]

Actually some Android devices are pretty cool IMHO. Devices like that are really cool and very cheap (the GPD XD is just an example):

For 150$ you can have a portable console with good emulation support from 8 bits to PSP and Dreamcast…

But, for cheap home emulation on my TV I prefer the Pi as it is fully configurable, will have better software support over time and is enough for a lot of consoles.

In any case, as you say, we have to remember that when we were young, we might have killed to have something like retropie at home. ;)

[meneerjansen]

[quote=119727]
Actually some Android devices are pretty cool IMHO. Devices like that are really cool and very cheap (the GPD XD is just an example):

[cut!]

For 150$ you can have a portable console with good emulation support from 8 bits to PSP and Dreamcast…

But, for cheap home emulation on my TV I prefer the Pi as it is fully configurable, will have better software support over time and is enough for a lot of consoles.

In any case, as you say, we have to remember that when we were young, we might have killed to have something like retropie at home. ?
[/quote]
Holy freakalony! I want one!! I owned a Dingoo, which I lost. Never fully recovered from that mentally. I just typed in the term “GPD XD” on Google and ended up on tis site in Dutch: http://www.portable-games.nl. They mentioned that the ‘Coleco Mini Arcades’ might be re-released. I’ve got on of those (Donkey Kong)! Took it out of the basement last summer. Still woks. I want one of those too! Oh, I want soooo many classic gaming gadges. So many gadgets, so little time and money. Where do y’all come up w/ those wonderful gadgets? I never see then in the Toy Stores anymore and Deal Extreme (www.dx.com) is no good source to find little gaming gems anymore…

[proxycell]

@herbfargus: I completely agree with you about this stuff. i understand it requires a lot of development of other software-components to really take advantage of the new hardware capabilities – and there are still emulator/optimization issues that will not be overcome by hardware improvements

the WiFi really is neat to me but I will hold off on the new RPi3 for now – maybe in a year or so it will make better sense for me as right now I would only use it for a router/server

[twitch0815]

Not to take the unpopular position but I have had my Pi 3 for sometime now and with a slight overclock, and taking the time to configure the roms for the correct emulator (There are 4 options and certain ones suit certain games better)
And downscaling the video to 640×480 The Nintendo 64 emulation is just absolutely amazing. I get that people have just put default settings in tested it and been unhappy but man is that unfair to what the Pi 3 can actually do.
Don’t take my word for it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsrxdCtNzLg this was a video I made a few hours of just messing with some N64 settings. I can play Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart at 1080 P in perfect condition. And most every other game at 640×480 and the right emulator is as good or better then the N64 version. 4 Player goldeneye playing like a dream.
Look at the Pi3 tab of the compatibility sheet I have spearheaded and others have begun to work on https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Sn3Ks3Xv8cIx3-LGCozVFF7wGLagpVG0csWybnwFHXk/edit?usp=sharing

74/78 games I have tested have been playable assuming you get the right emulator/video mode overclock mix.

And that is just the gains in N64 I have found numerous games that will play in mame that would not play on a 2 or were listed unplayable in the old compat lists.

We have also had 1 and I mean 1 release that works on a pi3.
The dev’s have not even begun to optimize code to take advantage of the emulators all they did was enable 3.6 to boot on a pi 3 and released it this is the most beta version of the 3.6 software we will ever have. We have had a few people spitball overclock settings and gpumem splits but far from the knowledge and tuning we will have in a few weeks. Just needs time but even just what I have seen out of mine in a few days I am amazed and excited.

[Author]

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