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Raspberry Pi 4 (Emulation awesomeness) - with Virtualman's 512GB image

T

Thanati

Member
I've had a Raspberry Pi 3 for quite a few years but recently upgraded to a Pi4. I was also told about Virtualman's 512GB image file for emulation. I downloaded it and holy shit, this thing is amazing! It's got every system you could think of (Playstation, PSP, Dreamcast, Genesis, Genesis 32X, Genesis CD , Amiga, Amiga CD32, Lynx, N64, Mame, etc) and it comes with a TON of games as well. Playstation, for example, has 415 titles included.

If you love your emulation, I highly recommend giving this a try.
 
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Eimran

Eimran

Member
h9nkv8f.jpg
 
captainraincoat

captainraincoat

Banned
Thanati said:
I've had a Raspberry Pi 3 for quite a few years but recently upgraded to a Pi4. I was also told about Virtualman's 512GB image file for emulation. I downloaded it and holy shit, this thing is amazing! It's got every system you could think of (Playstation, PSP, Dreamcast, Genesis, Genesis 32X, Genesis CD , Amiga, Amiga CD32, Lynx, N64, Mame, etc) and it comes with a TON of games as well. Playstation, for example, has 415 titles included.

If you love your emulation, I highly recommend giving this a try.
Click to expand...

Yeah the pi devices can be a little fiddly to setup but are great once you do

There are some windows based small form boxes coming similar to a pi but they look expensive

It’s amazing how far tech has come when you can play a top level arcade game on a potato pc from 20 years ago
 
mango drank

mango drank

Member
You're playing Dreamcast games on that thing? I heard others talking shit, saying a Pi couldn't emulate games newer than ones from the N64 era or so. Are DC games running at their original 640x480, or even up-res'ed? Can it sustain playing a DC game for a long while?

Do you have a custom heat sink on the CPU, or a fan or sth?
 
Spukc

Spukc

always chasing the next thrill
brohmbel said:
You're playing Dreamcast games on that thing? I heard others talking shit, saying a Pi couldn't emulate games newer than ones from the N64 era or so. Are DC games running at their original 640x480, or even up-res'ed? Can it sustain playing a DC game for a long while?

Do you have a custom heat sink on the CPU, or a fan or sth?
Click to expand...
Check ETA PRIME on youtube.
You can run fucking windows 10 on pi4
 
mango drank

mango drank

Member
Spukc said:
Check ETA PRIME on youtube.
Click to expand...
Interesting. He overclocked the CPU from stock 1.5 ghz to 2.1 ghz, and the GPU from 500 mhz to 700 mhz. I'm just scrubbing through his vids mostly, but didn't hear him talk about cooling. Although, he's got another video review of an aftermarket fan, and I found this video by another guy, showing off a case that comes with a fan built in. He also has some impressions of Dreamcast games being emulated on his OC'ed Pi. Here's the DC portion:

 
A

alexross

Neo Member
My biggest gripe with the raspberry sd images is that you can't save your favourites, taking track of the game played. is it solved?
 
Faithless83

Faithless83

Banned
Thanati said:
And? The Pi4 cost me $35.
Click to expand...
Suit yourself, I just have a preference of using real hardware whenever I can. Emulation on some systems like the Dreamcast/N64 and specially sound emulation in general is a bit iffy to my ears.
Besides, my collection (albeit small) is worth a lot more money than I've paid for.

brohmbel said:
Interesting. He overclocked the CPU from stock 1.5 ghz to 2.1 ghz, and the GPU from 500 mhz to 700 mhz. I'm just scrubbing through his vids mostly, but didn't hear him talk about cooling. Although, he's got another video review of an aftermarket fan, and I found this video by another guy, showing off a case that comes with a fan built in. He also has some impressions of Dreamcast games being emulated on his OC'ed Pi. Here's the DC portion:

Click to expand...




"Full speed" - timestamped


Even on overclocked hardware, it still skips frames here and there (listen closely to the audio) .
 
Kuranghi

Kuranghi

Member
When running at 4K and a really really high quality filter I get slowdown/audio problems when using BSNES (Accuracy) in a few games, so I was going to go for something like this but I think I'll stick with desktop emulation for now.
 
nkarafo

nkarafo

Member
Eh, Raspberries are the bottom of the barrel for emulation (even the Pi4). The only thing that is worse are the Pandora boxes and i'm not sure about the newer ones.

It's a weak, cheap device that runs performance related (thus inaccurate) or outdated emulators. MAME version (for instance) is from 2010 at best (it might also be 2003 depending on the setup). SNES9X is also some old version, though Pi4 might have a newer one. But forget abour BSNES or HIGAN. There's also a shitty version of FBA that has all kinds of glitches in many games. Input lag is also awful on the Pi, at least from my experience.

Any mid-range phone has a lot more processing power to be a better emulation device.

The random ROM/ISO images that you can download from the internet are also shit for the most part. Lots of junk, duplicates, bad/wrong roms, missing videos or other media assets, not so good organization, user mistakes, etc.

If you want the cream of the crop when it comes to emulation experience, PCs are the only way. You can use better, accurate, up to date emulators and have your own personal setup (mine is 3TB right now and it's 100% curated and organized by myself).

EDIT: Having said that though, i don't want to ruin it for you. This post comes from someone who is an emulation enthusiast since 1999. I care abut accuracy, low input lag and perfect collections with no gaps on media presentation or errors in metadata. Thus i spend a lot of time with my setup. Most people are more than OK with most Pi setups.
 
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Birdo

Birdo

Banned
I can't wait until there is a Pi powerful enough to be your every day PC (Browsing, Video, photo manip, and so on). The Pi 4 was marketed this way, but it's been proven to not quite be there yet (Especially with Windows).

Hopefully the Pi 5 will be enough to replace my laptop, as both my PC and Emu machine.

(I know Intel NUCs exist. But they are waaay overpriced).
 
T

Thanati

Member
nkarafo said:
Eh, Raspberries are the bottom of the barrel for emulation (even the Pi4). The only thing that is worse are the Pandora boxes and i'm not sure about the newer ones.

It's a weak, cheap device that runs performance related (thus inaccurate) or outdated emulators. MAME version (for instance) is from 2010 at best (it might also be 2003 depending on the setup). SNES9X is also some old version, though Pi4 might have a newer one. But forget abour BSNES or HIGAN. There's also a shitty version of FBA that has all kinds of glitches in many games. Input lag is also awful on the Pi, at least from my experience.

Any mid-range phone has a lot more processing power to be a better emulation device.

The random ROM/ISO images that you can download from the internet are also shit for the most part. Lots of junk, duplicates, bad/wrong roms, missing videos or other media assets, not so good organization, user mistakes, etc.

If you want the cream of the crop when it comes to emulation experience, PCs are the only way. You can use better, accurate, up to date emulators and have your own personal setup (mine is 3TB right now and it's 100% curated and organized by myself).

EDIT: Having said that though, i don't want to ruin it for you. This post comes from someone who is an emulation enthusiast since 1999. I care abut accuracy, low input lag and perfect collections with no gaps on media presentation or errors in metadata. Thus i spend a lot of time with my setup. Most people are more than OK with most Pi setups.
Click to expand...

I disagree with the beginning of your post. I picked up the Pi 3 and turned it to a weather station and picked up the Pi 4 to check it out. It’s $35.

as an emulation kit, it’s awesome. I run the latest builds and they run at full speed with no slowdown.

Is a PC better? For other emulators such as PCSX2 or Cemu, of course as the Pi can’t run those at all. For the rest (up to Dreamcast) I actually prefer the Pi as it’s more portable and I can quickly hook it up to my TV or move it downstairs to the office.

Even a mid-range phone can’t beat it on price.

It’s not my primary gaming device though. That’s my PC and Xbox, but for emulation (running latest retroarch for example) it’s a great deal.
 
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nkarafo

nkarafo

Member
Thanati said:
It’s not my primary gaming device though. That’s my PC and Xbox, but for emulation (running latest retroarch for example) it’s a great deal.
Click to expand...
RetroArch is only the platform/frontend. What matter is what cores you are using?

Having the most up to date SNES9X_2010 or MAME_2010 cores means you are still running old emulators based on 2010 code, they just work well on a modern platform.

That being said, even MAME 2010 will run 90% of the games you want fine.

zeomax said:
And you can get all this for 40€/$ with a nice case that you can place under your TV?
Click to expand...
No but in the case of emulation, what you pay is what you get IMO. It's still great value for someone who doesn't care about accuracy or input lag.
 
T

Thanati

Member
nkarafo said:
RetroArch is only the platform/frontend. What matter is what cores you are using?

Having the most up to date SNES9X_2010 or MAME_2010 cores means you are still running old emulators based on 2010 code, they just work well on a modern platform.

That being said, even MAME 2010 will run 90% of the games you want fine.


No but in the case of emulation, what you pay is what you get IMO. It's still great value for someone who doesn't care about accuracy or input lag.
Click to expand...

Not sure what you mean about the accuracy and input lag. It’s perfectly fine, I see no difference between that or anything else.
 
nkarafo

nkarafo

Member
Thanati said:
Not sure what you mean about the accuracy and input lag. It’s perfectly fine, I see no difference between that or anything else.
Click to expand...
Here's a pretty old 3 page article about BSNES and some examples of games that required it's accuracy.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011...-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator/

Like i said, it's an old article from 2011 but that's still relevant to Pi since it uses SNES9X code from around that era. Not sure if Pi4 has the current, modern code but even if it does, some of the bugs in the article are still there. SNES9X is an excellent emulator (current, 2020 code ofc, older archived versions have too many bugs) but it's still not as accurate as BSNES, even if you compare it with BSNES from 2011. Ofc, no Pi device can run BSNES at full speed, let alone HIGAN (which replaced BSNES a few years ago).

As for input lag, people have different sensitivities to it. I couldn't stand it on Pi3 and it was too weak to have hard GPU sync enabled on some cores (but it was fast enough for others).

Also, is there a Saturn emulator/core at all in Pi4? There isn't one for Pi3 AFAIK.
 
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T

Thanati

Member
brohmbel said:
You're playing Dreamcast games on that thing? I heard others talking shit, saying a Pi couldn't emulate games newer than ones from the N64 era or so. Are DC games running at their original 640x480, or even up-res'ed? Can it sustain playing a DC game for a long while?

Do you have a custom heat sink on the CPU, or a fan or sth?
Click to expand...

Dreamcast games work flawlessly and I’ve had no issues playing for long durations. Was playing Soul Reaver over the weekend for around 2 hours at one go. Flawless.
The DC emulator is up to date.

N64 games are the same. I haven’t had any issues yet. Mind you, it’s still an emulator so I’m sure something will crop up.

I have a cheap heat sink and fan on the CPU which keeps it nice and cool.
 
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T

Thanati

Member
nkarafo said:
Here's a pretty old 3 page article about BSNES and some examples of games that required it's accuracy.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011...-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator/

Like i said, it's an old article from 2011 but that's still relevant to Pi since it uses SNES9X code from around that era. Not sure if Pi4 has the current, modern code but even if it does, some of the bugs in the article are still there. SNES9X is an excellent emulator (current, 2020 code ofc, older archived versions have too many bugs) but it's still not as accurate as BSNES, even if you compare it with BSNES from 2011. Ofc, no Pi device can run BSNES at full speed, let alone HIGAN (which replaced BSNES a few years ago).

As for input lag, people have different sensitivities to it. I couldn't stand it on Pi3 and it was too weak to have hard GPU sync enabled on some cores (but it was fast enough for others).

Also, is there a Saturn emulator/core at all in Pi4? There isn't one for Pi3 AFAIK.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, not sure about Saturn. That’s actually not on the image I had. I’ll check around.
 
Soodanim

Soodanim

Gold Member
Is there really that much of a victory in pointing out that $35 hardware isn't quite as good as a system that at minimum costs 10x as much? If you're typing your post on this forum from a PC, it's automatically better than a Pi. It doesn't make it any less impressive that we can do so much with so little in the consumer space now. Being able to run Dreamcast games with overclocking is incredible. They'll keep iterating the Pi and more will be possible, and that will be interesting.
 
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T

Thanati

Member
I didn't mean to start this thread as a way of trying to say the Pi would compete with PC's etc but simply as a way to show something I came across that could be of use to people.

It's a small, cheap piece of equipment that is portable and perfect for emulation.
 
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T

Thanati

Member
nkarafo said:
RetroArch is only the platform/frontend. What matter is what cores you are using?

Having the most up to date SNES9X_2010 or MAME_2010 cores means you are still running old emulators based on 2010 code, they just work well on a modern platform.

That being said, even MAME 2010 will run 90% of the games you want fine.


No but in the case of emulation, what you pay is what you get IMO. It's still great value for someone who doesn't care about accuracy or input lag.
Click to expand...

In regards to the cores, whenever an update is released, I just download the specific core. Really straightforward and easy to do, which is again a big help.
 
N

njr

Member
Interesting... I haven't messed with emulation since the Pi v3B and I had issues running N64/PS1 games on RetroPie. The 512GB SD card to fit this thing in costs even more than the Pi itself but this looks worth it to me.
 
T

Thanati

Member
njr said:
Interesting... I haven't messed with emulation since the Pi v3B and I had issues running N64/PS1 games on RetroPie. The 512GB SD card to fit this thing in costs even more than the Pi itself but this looks worth it to me.
Click to expand...
True. However there are 128gb and 256gb versions as well.

also, you don’t need to get Virtualman’s build. You could simply just get the emulators yourself and go from there. That way you could easily fit it into a 128gb, for example.
 
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Spukc

Spukc

always chasing the next thrill
SixFourMike said:
Is there really that much of a victory in pointing out that $35 hardware isn't quite as good as a system that at minimum costs 10x as much? If you're typing your post on this forum from a PC, it's automatically better than a Pi. It doesn't make it any less impressive that we can do so much with so little in the consumer space now. Being able to run Dreamcast games with overclocking is incredible. They'll keep iterating the Pi and more will be possible, and that will be interesting.
Click to expand...
I play diablo 2 online with it
 
Dr.Morris79

Dr.Morris79

Gold Member
Well after finally getting stuck in all I can say is it's pretty fucking awsome. Ps4 pad and a wireless keyboard and mouse hooked up, it's marvelous

Even just leaving the screen saver running and letting the synth eighties beats running is a joy

Now, back to it.
 
Manji Uzuki

Manji Uzuki

Member
Got a Pi4 B recently and it works really well for emulating Dreamcast games. I even managed to get Saturn working fairly decent on it :)
 
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