The way to max SNES-performance

[fataldiskerror]

Hey there!

I read a lot through this forum (and some google-searches) and i am even more confused on playing SMES-games :-)

What i have so far:
– pi B (no +, no pi 2)
– monitor on hdmi (with sound)
– wired xbox360 pad
– keypoard
– 2.1amp 5volt power supply
– 8gig calss10 intenso-sd-card
– retropie-v2.6.0-rpi2.img.gz
– no oc
– super mario world & mario kart for reference on the 3 different snes-emu-folders

– image: retropie-v2.6.0-rpi2.img.gz
– stock-settings (except mem-split to 256)
– a lot of frameskipping and bad sound

a) What confuses me is that people say that they dont need oc. If i will need it, which one is the best with only a heatsink (no vent)

b) I also wonder if it would be faster to run a “normal” pi-image with a new compiled emu instead of using retroArch.

c) Also would it be better to lower hdmi-resolution?

d) Which emu is the fastes for a pi1b? piSnes?

e) why is my mobile-phone so much faster and has perfect sound? it hat also a arm-cpu and 1 core. ok, it runs at ~1200MHz and has 1 gig ram, but there i have 0 issues with various emus (Snes9x EX+, SNESDroid, spuerGNES, SNESoid)

would be very nice to get some help here :-)

Greez,
Fatal

[cacophony555]

a). For my original Pi setup I absolutely needed an overclock to achieve a decent framerate on snes games. Like you I just had a passive heatsink and I went with the 900 Mhz overclock. There is no way to achieve decent snes sound on the pi 1 as it simply doesn’t have the necessary horsepower. Some people don’t notice but if you try certain games (or know what to listen for) it isn’t even close to passable. You’ll need to upgrade to a Pi 2 if you want decent snes sound emulation.

b & d) For snes on the original pi your best option is the standalone piSnes (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pisnes/). This standalone version is part of retropie though they may have altered the name slightly.

c) In theory you can get slightly better performance by forcing the output resolution to something lower like VGA but I can’t say I’ve noticed a difference.

e) Not sure about this one. What phone are you talking about here? It’s possible that it’s a newer arm architecture that’s more efficient (and hence not directly comparable using just Mhz). It’s also possible that the emulator itself has been optimized more for that platform.

[fataldiskerror]

to e) sry, i was wrong here. it is 1GHz dual-core. it is an galaxy s3 mini.

But anyways: thanks for your reply! It was very helpful to get some clear answers. I will check if i will upgrade to a pi2 or if i will use my mobile for snes-emulation.

Greez,
Fatal

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