Shaders make the emulation very slow [Retropie v3.00 Final RPi2]

[kommissar]

Hi,

I got a problem when i use shaders with retroarch on lot of cores (i didn’t test all, just SMS, MD, PCE, FBA, GG, SNES).
In the RC 1 or 2 (i don’t remember), when i launched a game with the selected option : “Select RetroArch render res for lr-xxxx” with “output”, i could change shaders ingame and most of them worked perfectly (i usually used “phosphor”) and the game ran full speed (no sound issues too).
In the Final, if i launch a game with these settings :
* Select RetroArch render res for lr-xxxx 640×480, shaders works but are ugly (phosphor is the best example, really ugly), the game runs fine.
* Select RetroArch render res for lr-xxxx output, shaders works (i mean not ugly) BUT the game is unplayable (extremely slow + sound totally broken).

For info, i tried that on several different class10 sd cards from the latest Retropie v.3.00 Final img. Of course i overclocked the Pi. I tried before and after updating retroarch : same result (retropie-setup/5 update emulators/retroarc…)

Does anyone experience the same problem ?

Unfortunately, i didnt keep the RC1-2 image of Retropie to test what is different between the 2 versions.

EDIT :
Solution : (thx to buzz)
Go in emulationstation > Retropie > Retropie-setup
Then choose option 3 : Setup/Configuration (to be used post install)
Then choose option 304 : Edit RetroPie/RetroArch configurations
Then choose option 1 : Change common RetroArch options
Then choose option 0 : all/retroarch.cfg
Then choose option 2 : video_threaded
Put it to true.

Tada !!!

[petrockblog]

did you turn off video smoothing and did you try turning on threaded_video ?

you can do this from retropie-setup -> supplementary menu -> Edit RetroPie/RetroArch configurations -> Change common RetroArch options – then choose all/retroarch.cfg

?

[kommissar]

Oh man !!!!! Thanks a lot !!!!
I had already turned off the smooth options in the all/retroarch.cfg.
But i didn’t change the threaded_video option !!!

threaded_video is now “on” and it works perfectly (like before !!!).
I missed that change between the different retropie versions.

Thx again :D

[petrockblog]

I may consider changing the default again – when I initially tested, I didn’t notice major slowdown, but then I didn’t test full screen shaders etc. The reason it is changed is according to the retroarch documentation, perfect sync is not possible with threaded video, and as I didn’t initially notice any performance decrease on the pi2, it got switched.

It’s simple to change of course with the new editor – no need to manually edit files.

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