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

Faithless83

Banned
Pi's are solid hardware at their price point. A real bang-for-the-buck.
Depends a lot on how sensitive you are to input lag or lack of accuracy, I know a lot of people don't care.
Mister is a solid alternative though, I bought one a couple of months ago and highly recommend it to people who like accuracy.
 

Quasicat

Member
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).
Thanks for the information. I am waiting to use a Pi with Windows to run a dedicated Plex server. Right now, the Shield does a great job with it, but I still use a Windows PC to make changes to it across the network since it’s faster and more convenient.
 

Hoddi

Member
Honestly, aside from current lack of 32-bit and onward home consoles, MiSTer is the way to go for all around emulation.

I'll give a shoutout to RGB-Pi for any Euros who happen to have an old tube TV lying around. I found myself an old Bang & Olufsen TV last year and coupled it with an RBPi and this SCART cable and it's probably the greatest new toy that I've had in a decade.

Games don't just look accurate but accurate.
 
Yeah, derp. Show me something better for the price.
Get a used PC, even one of the neat sff Lenovo ones.. with a core i7 or even i5 you can get more accurate emulation for the old systems and it will let you emulate something complex like tge PS2 and sega Saturn.

These things with 3rd or 4rt gen Intel CPUs pack way more punch ans give you more options RPI (look up For coinops next, you can even pick packs for extra systems of game types like sega system 2/3 or Naomi).

They are also cheaper than a full rpi4 setup.
 
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alienator

Member
Pi retrogamers always get so upset when u tell them there is a way better lagless solution called the MiSTerFPGA..

Had my shares of Pi's and i always ended up battling with various distros breaking one thing or another and huge amounts of input lag (even on my Pi 240p board outputting to a crt!)
Ive build an arcade cabinet the other month and first had a pi running in it with the fancy frontend stuff.. tried it a few weeks and ultimately put my MisterFPGA in it since i couldnt stomach the lag and delay of the Pi.

Sure, a pi is cheap and emulates more systems (even though PSX and Sega Saturn are on the way to the MisterFPGA!) , has a fancier frontend , but thats about it for me, never going back to them.
Fpga is the future, they are cycle accurate recreations of the original hardware but indeed most people wouldnt know how much lag a pi generates until u put them in a room with the 2 systems next to eachother playing the same game.
I even stopped using retroarch on pc mostly because of my Mister :)
 
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German Hops

GAF's Nicest Lunch Thief
Pi retrogamers always get so upset when u tell them there is a way better lagless solution called the MiSTerFPGA..

Had my shares of Pi's and i always ended up battling with various distros breaking one thing or another and huge amounts of input lag (even on my Pi 240p board outputting to a crt!)
Ive build an arcade cabinet the other month and first had a pi running in it with the fancy frontend stuff.. tried it a few weeks and ultimately put my MisterFPGA in it since i couldnt stomach the lag and delay of the Pi.

Sure, a pi is cheap and emulates more systems (even though PSX and Sega Saturn are on the way to the MisterFPGA!) , has a fancier frontend , but thats about it for me, never going back to them.
Fpga is the future, they are cycle accurate recreations of the original hardware but indeed most people wouldnt know how much lag a pi generates until u put them in a room with the 2 systems next to eachother playing the same game.
I even stopped using retroarch on pc mostly because of my Mister :)
I think the main issue with MistER is its complexity setting up and overall lack of availability.

That said, I also believe FPGA is the future of emulation; it'll just take awhile to get firmly established.
 
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alienator

Member
I think the main issue with MistER is its complexity setting up and overall lack of availability.

That said, I also believe FPGA is the future of emulation; it'll just take awhile to get firmly established.

Its really not harder to setup than a pi.. u format an sd card with an image from the mister wiki and ftp a script to it called Update_all and thats basically it (the script installs everything except gameroms)

Or u buy a pre-build mister ready to go out of the box from one of the vendors in europa or UK (although i went the build your own way, ordering all parts singlehanded, and putting it together.. and im a friggin noob when it comes to these things ;p )

True, the mister is not cheap when u want all parts (around 300euro complete) but still its lightyears ahead of a pi.
 

DGrayson

Mod Team and Bat Team
Staff Member
I'll try to make a quick version for the TLDR people, and nerd out a bit for those who want more details on how the magic happens.
I've been following it for quite a while, but finally bought one around a month ago and I'm having a blast with it.

Sounds great. I contemplated doing a Pi build but currently doing a SSF PC Build dedicated to emulation.
 

Rat Rage

Member
I'll give a shoutout to RGB-Pi for any Euros who happen to have an old tube TV lying around. I found myself an old Bang & Olufsen TV last year and coupled it with an RBPi and this SCART cable and it's probably the greatest new toy that I've had in a decade.

Games don't just look accurate but accurate.

Yes, the RGB-Pi is something I want to get at some point. Does it work with Raspberry Pi 4? Or do you need a Pi 3 for that? I've heard some retro emulation doesn't work well on Pi 4, but that could be outdated information by now. I haven't been in the loop.
 

SpiceRacz

Member
Has there been any improvement in N64 or Saturn emulation on the Pi4?

While we're on the subject, I took an old Lenovo work desktop with a low-end, older graphics card and installed Batocera on it. It's a lot easier to set up and configure than the Raspberry Pi imo. Also much more capable depending on your hardware.

Pi retrogamers always get so upset when u tell them there is a way better lagless solution called the MiSTerFPGA..

Had my shares of Pi's and i always ended up battling with various distros breaking one thing or another and huge amounts of input lag (even on my Pi 240p board outputting to a crt!)
Ive build an arcade cabinet the other month and first had a pi running in it with the fancy frontend stuff.. tried it a few weeks and ultimately put my MisterFPGA in it since i couldnt stomach the lag and delay of the Pi.

Sure, a pi is cheap and emulates more systems (even though PSX and Sega Saturn are on the way to the MisterFPGA!) , has a fancier frontend , but thats about it for me, never going back to them.
Fpga is the future, they are cycle accurate recreations of the original hardware but indeed most people wouldnt know how much lag a pi generates until u put them in a room with the 2 systems next to eachother playing the same game.
I even stopped using retroarch on pc mostly because of my Mister :)

Nah. It's just that people become tribal with this stuff and pop into Pi threads to shit on it. It's pretty fucking stupid.
 
What are you talking about, there is no input lag?


Input lag is the 5g of gamers.

It's always there for you when things don't go your way (and like radio waves it actually is there, it's just that most people don't know what they're talking about when they talk about the subject).
 

PaintTinJr

Member
Pi retrogamers always get so upset when u tell them there is a way better lagless solution called the MiSTerFPGA..

Had my shares of Pi's and i always ended up battling with various distros breaking one thing or another and huge amounts of input lag (even on my Pi 240p board outputting to a crt!)
Ive build an arcade cabinet the other month and first had a pi running in it with the fancy frontend stuff.. tried it a few weeks and ultimately put my MisterFPGA in it since i couldnt stomach the lag and delay of the Pi.

Sure, a pi is cheap and emulates more systems (even though PSX and Sega Saturn are on the way to the MisterFPGA!) , has a fancier frontend , but thats about it for me, never going back to them.
Fpga is the future, they are cycle accurate recreations of the original hardware but indeed most people wouldnt know how much lag a pi generates until u put them in a room with the 2 systems next to eachother playing the same game.
I even stopped using retroarch on pc mostly because of my Mister :)
Have you got any thoughts on what the cause of the lag is on the Pi setup, compared to the FPGA? Are you using an SDcard or SSD drive?

My recent experiences with a PI3B+ and recently a Pi4 2GB (running MC server for a nephew) tells me that a whole host of things can interfere with the Pi running optimally for a given task, but can maybe be eliminated with different system configurations.

I've owned 3 Pis (1, 3, 4) - and a fourth if I include the pi2 my Dad bought - but the things I didn't realise until recently before replacing my Pi3b+ were, that a Pi emulates the external interfaces like sdcard, LAN, wifi, bluetooth and USB through either a shared USB 2 or 3 USB controller interface to the SoC - unlike a PC motherboard that has dedicated chipsets with DMA for all its interfaces. So on a PI the data rate in and out of the SoC is a shared limit of USB2.0 bandwidth, or USB3.0 bandwidth, and for external i/o on these interfaces will have USB latency characteristics too.

The second major thing - I only just discovered recently - is that the CPU cores in the PIs are really just the same 700-800Mhz clock of the original PI, but stably firmware overclocked by the foundation to the listed tech spec, hence why overclocking a Pi3B+ is unrewarding. However, without adding active cooling (heatsink/thermal pads & fan) to a Pi the CPU cores thermally throttle when stressed running CPU or memory intensive software(or GPU), and will drop back to ~800MHz to keep running, happily.

Overclocking or underclocking a Pi GPU, CPU and memory can result in different latency for the UI IIRC from my wasted efforts with a RPi3B+.

The latency of the operating system was also completely different when using a SDcard with swap file/dphy-swapfile service enabled (SDcard performance degrades over time, and are useless IMO for anything but /boot), a HDD with dphys-swapfile service disabled and a swap partition added (which had good responsiveness, but slow transfer) and an SSD with dphys-swapfile service disabled and swap partition enabled, which was ideal with great responsiveness and transfers/writes.

I'm meaning to have a look at Pi console emulation in the future, but the one major aspect I found of enhancing PI performance for MC - that should also work with emulating - was to place as much of the files I was using (JDK, server.jar, world folder) in a ramfs (file system type) ramdrive, so that the SoC never needed to go outside to the shared usb interface for more than swapping system files - because I'd allocated all but 40MB of the available memory to the ramdrive + minecraft java server.
 
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Grechy34

Member
Geez man, you don't feel it? Be glad.
Play on real hardware and move to a py afterwards, it is painfully laggy. It's like playing on current gen with your tv set to cinema mode.

I noticed input lag on the Pi but the mini consoles have been stellar for me and I know there's a clear difference because when I've played Super Mario World on the SNES Mini to the Pi there was a very noticeable difference, to the point where I asked my girlfriend if she felt the difference and she said it was night and day (and never games). I'm not sure what it is. I'd imagine the Mister would even be a step ahead of that. I can't wait to get my hands on it one day.
 
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Videospel

Member
Geez man, you don't feel it? Be glad.
Play on real hardware and move to a py afterwards, it is painfully laggy. It's like playing on current gen with your tv set to cinema mode.
Not at all. It's been a while since I last used it, but playing Super Mario World on a Pi3B+ with a bluetooth connected Dualshock 3 felt as snappy as ever.
 
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Hoddi

Member
Yes, the RGB-Pi is something I want to get at some point. Does it work with Raspberry Pi 4? Or do you need a Pi 3 for that? I've heard some retro emulation doesn't work well on Pi 4, but that could be outdated information by now. I haven't been in the loop.

It supports RBPi up to the 3B+. Support for Pi4 is still in the works but it's not coming any time soon, apparently.
 

Hoddi

Member
Not at all. It's been a while since I last used it, but playing Super Mario World on a Pi3B+ with a bluetooth connected Dualshock 3 felt as snappy as ever.
This has been my experience as well. Some controllers have far higher BT lag than others and they're not all equal in this regard. I notice a fairly big difference between BT and USB on my 8bitdo while my DS4 doesn't feel any less snappy over BT.

I admittedly haven't touched a SNES in 20 years but I have a modded Wii hooked to my CRT and sometimes play those same games using a GC controller. If there's a lag difference (and I'm sure there is some) then I find it hard to notice.
 

Naked Lunch

Member
The lag is hit or miss on the Pi. Obviously depends on the romset/isos used and the emulator running it.
For example, I can 1-credit DoDonpachi on the Pi but cant even clear the first stage without dying in Strikers 1945.
The input lag inconsistencies is what makes the Pi more of a novelty item - great for stuff where lag doesnt matter like RPGs.
 

PaintTinJr

Member
The lag is hit or miss on the Pi. Obviously depends on the romset/isos used and the emulator running it.
For example, I can 1-credit DoDonpachi on the Pi but cant even clear the first stage without dying in Strikers 1945.
The input lag inconsistencies is what makes the Pi more of a novelty item - great for stuff where lag doesnt matter like RPGs.
How is your hardware setup?

As I mentioned in my previous post, there are so many factors with the PIs, not least the thermal throttling to reduce clock - when not actively cooled by a fan/heatsink or when underpowered by a inadequate usb charger/too thin charging cable. Even just the erratic performance of an SDcard degrading, and all the contention of emulated ports using a shared USB bus interface to the SoC leaves a lot of potential causes to eliminate IMHO.
 

yurinka

Member
I'll give a shoutout to RGB-Pi for any Euros who happen to have an old tube TV lying around. I found myself an old Bang & Olufsen TV last year and coupled it with an RBPi and this SCART cable and it's probably the greatest new toy that I've had in a decade.

Games don't just look accurate but accurate.
RGB-Pi is clearly the best option if you want to play emulated stuff on a CRT tv.

It supports RBPi up to the 3B+. Support for Pi4 is still in the works but it's not coming any time soon, apparently.
They are working on Pi4 support.
 
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Keihart

Member
But can you play PS1 Rhythm games on any of this? in my experience, i can't get them to emulate correctly with any emulator. They all get desynched eventually.
 
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