Raspberry Pi overclocking, your thoughts

[nowI'm_the_OldGeezer]

I use a Raspberry Pi 2 model B v1.1, I play a lot of 8-bit games and it is fine as such I might not have noticed at first but for 16-bit games it occasionally slows down( some games play constantly at 0.9 x speed ). I decided to use emulators that use less resources -in RetroPie this is easy- so for the Megadrive it was Picodrive which emulates perfectly; and for SNES it was Snes9x2005 which would STILL have moments where it slows down and then there would be the occasional crackling sound in a game. This is what lead me to overclocking. The RPi 2 CPU runs at 1Ghz and uses 256RAM for the GPU, now I can use Snes9x2010 which so far emulates perfectly but for Genesis-Plus-GX I still had encountered slowdowns however Picodrive seems fine.

To the Raspberry Pi users in particular RPi 2, what was your experience? did you need to overclock? do you try emulating 32-bit consoles? I'm interested in trying out the PC-engine Duo

[pcb_revival]

If your using a crt have you looked at RGBPI OS2 final.

You need their scart cable or similair.

Demonstration of OS2.

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


For hdmi devices Batocera is worth looking at.

[kitty666cats]

A good PSU makes a huge difference. If you have, say, a CanaKit PSU, get a 3-amp Argon One PSU instead

[RocketBelt]

For Genesis-Plus-GX on the Pi2 try setting max swapchain images to 3.

[Dochartaigh]

Overclocking means a GOOD (not those crappy stick-on ones) heat sink, hopefully plus a fan – or the system will freeze and/or get other funky errors all the time. Usually this means a decent case which those are integrated into, usually around ~$15 USD...

I'll also say (talking about the original Pi Zero -closest thing I've worked with to the ancient Pi2-) that overclocking on these can be hit or miss. I've loaded up 10 (original) Pi Zero's at the same time, SAME EXACT image/SD card/Power supply, same exact overclock... and like half of them will work 100%, and the other half freeze at some point. It can be a crapshoot (and expect the older Pi 2 might be the same).

Since a proper overclocking-friendly case might run you $15, a brand new Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is $15 though (if you're on a budget)... and I believe that's still a decently bit faster than your Pi2. I have no problem doing 60FPS 16-bit on it (including TG16/PCE CD, 32x, Genesis CD, etc.)... and I want to say PS1 is good on it as well (don't quote me on that though, it's been a while). It'll bottleneck on some arcade games, although the majority in my testing were good. N64 still sucks as always. I would HIGHLY suggest a $35 Raspberry Pi 3 at the least though (just gave you the Zero 2 W option as it's the cheapest). The newest Pi4 will even do Dreamcast properly! You can find stock at: https://rpilocator.com/

Last, RetroPie (although it has been getting better) is/was an absolute shit show (but it IS still what I use on my Pi's...). The same exact emulator can run great on like RetroPie 4.3, then be ~5-10 FPS worse in 4.4 or whatever. Then if you update from source it'll be ok... or sometimes even be worse than it ever was lol (I have dozens of posts on their forum about things like this... they never gave me a satisfactory answer why... even insinuated -kinda- I was making shit up since I was bringing up all these weird issues all the time... even when I took videos...). Thankfully if you have a faster Pi (remember even Pi 3 is SIX YEARS OLD now!!!), most of this is a moot point anymore... your hardware really is your issue here. If you HAVE to keep using your Pi2, balancing RetroPie version with different emulators until you find a combo that works is probably your best bet. Oh, also do NOT use scanlines on some 16-bit - takes too much resources on a slower Pi.

A good PSU makes a huge difference. If you have, say, a CanaKit PSU, get a 3-amp Argon One PSU instead

My Amazon history says I've ordered 26 Canakit's (for Pi 3)... ALL (to my knowledge) are still working 100%. Had zero problems with them (well, think the kids broke one stepping on it... but they also somehow broke a SD card in half too, so that's on them lol).

[nowI'm_the_OldGeezer]

kitty666cats:
Indeed I was only able to overclock and remove those under-voltage warnings once i bought a 30W power supply

RocketBelt:
It was already set to 3 I played around with it and Hard GPU sync it got better it was at what I would call 0.99 speed. Visual issues I can deal with but my game has to sound perfect I really hate weird sounding music or crackling sounds.

pcb_revival:
I looked at OS2 final but it still seems to use libretro so isn't it just a different frontend to retropie? could you explain how it is better?

Dochartaigh:
I think you've hit the nail on the head the Raspberry Pis are not consistent. I had to overclock it to 1100Mhz but this one seems to be doing well (let's see for how long). As to the RetroPie you don't get that issue if you don't update.

[pcb_revival]

As I understand it some of the cores have been further optimised. Its not just a re-skin.

Its horses for courses I find the rgb-pi front end gives a nailed on ease of use quick response gui. No BS.

Their pi4 OS refines the experience.

It is a credible option if the user does not want to step down the MiSTer pathway.

[nowI'm_the_OldGeezer]

pcb_revival:
maybe the RGBPI OS uses the libretro library more efficiently and effectively if I'm going to build a new retro machine I'll give it a go. A cursory look into the MiSTer seemed too expensive for me.

[nowI'm_the_OldGeezer]

To any and all interested these are the parameters and their values in the config.txt file-

arm_freq=1100
gpu_mem=256
overscan_scale=1
core_freq=500
sdram_freq=500
over_voltage=6
force_turbo=0
temp_limit=65

[Dochartaigh]

Their pi4 OS refines the experience.

Besides not-as-easy (but still doable) analogue/RGBS output from the Pi4, it's really been shining for me. Even have all the Dreamcast game I've tried (fighters mostly) hit right around 60 FPS the majority of all the time (which might be better then the actual DC... don't know if it drops the frame rate down at points or what).

Even fast enough to do a frame or so of runahead for most 8-16+ bit consoles (not N64... which always sucks anywhere, and forget if I tried that on PS1 or what).

[Konsolkongen]

I can’t think of a single fighting game on Dreamcast that drops frames. Generally the performance on that system was very good

[gray117]

If anything you want to do with pi would benefit from overclocking then get a pi 4 (or maybe just 3 if only going 16bit-ish). Even at scalper prices it's better than fiddling with older pis imho. Add a heat sync, fan and case you like and run it within/close to official spec and don't worry about it ... and yeah I'm assuming you basically want to pop it somewhere and never really worry about it again, save for adding the odd rom.

I really like low power devices, but at a certain point it's just not worth the effort/modding, fiddling with it, and staying up to date etc. etc. it can all be more of headache than it's worth with pis imho ... there's nothing worse than getting out of your depth (easily done with me) , getting the pi in a funky state, and just feeling like you're just wasting your time ... unless you know what you are doing or really enjoy tinkering; but, then I'd *imagine* you wouldn't be asking