FPS Performance Issues when Rotating Screen 90 degrees ( frame-rate drop from 60 to 15 fps! )

shockwave1000

Hi Guys,

Appoligies for the double post ( previously posted in this thread:http://www.pimame.org/forum/discussion/comment/4818#Comment_4818), but I believe this post deserves its own section.

For anyone attempting to run games in a vertical screen orientation you may run into the same issues I am running into. When playing games in vertical orientation I am having a drop in framerate from 60fps to approx 15 fps when playing games in vertical screen orientation. I have tried numerous settings changes and have had no luck. I have tried the following without luck:

1) Thought it was hardware so used a different screen same issue
2) Per mholgatem instructions I have tried set this within the mame.cfg

antialias=no
translucency=no
display_smooth_stretch=no

after making changes the framerate did not change.

3) I have upped my gpu to 256 per in the raspi-config. Framerate did not change!

4) double and tripple checked settings etc, no dice.

If someone has a solution to above that would be great. I am running mame4all off a raspberry pi b+ revision 2 board. If someone could check and prove whether above works that would be great. Maybe I have missed something?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I am willing to try anything at this point.

Cheers

Shock

mholgatem

I don't have any of my mame roms loaded up right now, so I can't test it at the moment, but we've had questions of rotation come up previously with no one reporting poor fps performance. Can you give me some details about your setup? Power-supply? SD-card class? roms on sd card/thumb drive/external hard drive? Things plugged into your usb slots that may be taking up power?

shockwave1000

Hey Mate,

Thanks for getting in touch. Here is my setup:

####################################
** Hardware - Plugged in devices **
####################################

1) Monitor: Kogan 24" LED TV (Full HD)
2) Cheapo USB keyboard
3) SanDisk 16GB Ultra microSDHC Memory Card (http://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/sandisk-16gb-ultra-microsdhc-memory-card-br198570?searchTerm=micro sd cards)
4) 5V 1A (1000MA) USB PORT POWER SUPPLY ( http://www.adafruit.com/products/501 )
5) ( 12 buttons and joystick ) all puchased from adafruit via using same as
tutorial here: ( https://learn.adafruit.com/retro-gaming-with-raspberry-pi )

####################################
** Software:
####################################

1) PiPlay 0.8.0 Beta 5
2) pin setup per below: I have may be using pins I should not ?? or as you have alluded to, maybe
i have too many things plugged into the pi so it could be a power issue?

####################################
** Pin setup code snippet:
####################################

ioStandard[] = {

// This pin/key table is used when the PiTFT isn't found

// (using HDMI or composite instead), as with our original

// retro gaming guide.

// Input Output (from /usr/include/linux/input.h)//
{ 3, KEY_ENTER }, // To select a game hit enter key

{ 4, KEY_ENTER }, // GND for enter

{ 17, KEY_ESC }, // Escape to pimame

{ 25, KEY_1 }, // Player 1

{ 7, KEY_5 }, // Insert Coin Player 1

{ 12, KEY_LEFTCTRL }, // A/Fire/jump/primary

{ 16, KEY_LEFTALT }, // B/Bomb/secondary

{ 5, KEY_P }, // Pause game

{ 6, GND }, // Pause game

{ 23, KEY_Z }, // Game Options USE KEU_TAB--> KEEP THIS Now replaced with KEY_Z

{ 24, GND }, // Game Options GND --> KEEP THIS

{ 10, KEY_SPACE }, // C/Select weapon --> Pins have been tested
{ 9, GND }, // C/Select weapon GND --> Pins have been tested
{ 27, KEY_LEFTSHIFT}, // D --> Pins have been tested
{ 22, GND }, // D GND --> Pins have been tested
{ 11, KEY_TAB }, // GAME Options

{ 21, GND }, // Game OPtions GND

{ 18, KEY_X }, // F
// Joystick

{ 13, KEY_LEFT }, // Joystick Left

{ 19, KEY_RIGHT }, // Joystick Right

{ 26, KEY_UP }, // Joystick Up

{ 20, KEY_DOWN }, // Joystick Down

// For credit/start/etc., use USB keyboard or add more buttons.

{ -1, -1 } };
// END OF LIST, DO NOT CHANGE

####################################
** roms:
####################################

this is the only game I am testing at the moment: wonderboy : wboy.zip

####################################

If you need anything else in terms of details please let me know. Very much looking forward to your
response.

Thanks again

Shock

ian57

Garou with gngeo on raspicade is running full speed (60fps) rotated 90°. Mame4all-pi is running well too : StarFire is running at 57fps/57pfs

mholgatem

As far as i can tell, you should be running fine. can you post your /boot/config.txt file? also, are you overclocked? Right now, the only thing that i can think, would be for you to format and reflash the piplay image to your sd card (or try a different sd card). Does anyone else have any thoughts?

shockwave1000

Hey dood, thanks for the suggestions.
Going to grab the latest release and try with a toshiba sd card and see if it makes a diff. Then if that fails I am going to disconnect all connectors to the pins and reboot and try again. Will going to a higher transfer rate on the micro sd card make a diff? What sd card do u recommend? Will post my findings later tonight.

shockwave1000

Will post config as well. Pi is over clocked at 1000. Haven't touched the other settings in regards to voltage etc. what's your ideal stable setup for the other parameters / config settings in regards to over clocking?

shockwave1000

boot text file:

#################

# uncomment if you get no picture on HDMI for a default "safe" mode
#hdmi_safe=1

# uncomment this if your display has a black border of unused pixels visible
# and your display can output without overscan
#disable_overscan=1

# uncomment the following to adjust overscan. Use positive numbers if console
# goes off screen, and negative if there is too much border
#overscan_left=16
#overscan_right=16
#overscan_top=16
#overscan_bottom=16

# uncomment to force a console size. By default it will be display's size minus
# overscan.
#framebuffer_width=1280
#framebuffer_height=720

# uncomment if hdmi display is not detected and composite is being output
#hdmi_force_hotplug=1

# uncomment to force a specific HDMI mode (this will force VGA)
#hdmi_group=1
#hdmi_mode=1

# uncomment to force a HDMI mode rather than DVI. This can make audio work in
# DMT (computer monitor) modes
#hdmi_drive=2

# uncomment to increase signal to HDMI, if you have interference, blanking, or
# no display
#config_hdmi_boost=4

# uncomment for composite PAL
#sdtv_mode=2

#uncomment to overclock the arm. 700 MHz is the default.
arm_freq=1000

# for more options see http://elinux.org/RPi_config.txt
start_x=1
gpu_mem=256
core_freq=500
sdram_freq=600
over_voltage=6

# uncomment to turn screen 90 degrees change screen orientation
#display_rotate=1

# uncomment to apply RAM TO GPU(video)
#gpu_mem_512=256

#################

ian57

Remove the start_x = 1 if you don't use it.

shockwave1000

Hi Guys,

So I picked up a new micro toshiba sd stick and reinstalled everything from scratch and the issue is still unresolved. I removed "start_x=1" as per ian57 ( thanks mate ) and its still not working as expected. Really odd behaviour since the game work flawlessly when playing horizontally but when played vertically the frame rate just drops....

The next thing to try from my end is to remove all the connections and see if that makes a difference. I am assuming that all games should work vertically? Maybe its just this game in question? I am hoping someone can replicate my issue with this exact game ( well actually I hope not )

I will post back tomorrow night with my test results. If you can think of anything in the mean time please let me know.

Cheers

Shock

ian57

Perhaps you can try my raspicade distro : just put some games in directories and display_rotate=1 in config.txt file to see if you have same issue...

Just one more question : is you PI made in UK?

shockwave1000

Sure thing mate. Will give it a whirl. Impressive stuff ian57. As for where the pi is made, not sure. Purchased it from Australia from : core-electronics.com.au
will that a make a difference in performance? I did remember that when I tested this before it seemed fine ( but can't really be definitive since i didn't give it a full test and didn't feel the need since I didn't realize there would be possible performance issues playing vertically). I was using a pi b+ I bought from adafruit, but I somehow managed to kill it.

Will grab the distro and give it a try tonight. Is it a full image that I'm downloading and do you happen to have a direct link?

Thanks mate,

Cheers

Shock

ian57

If it is a B+, surely made in UK (because very new)... it is written on it near the power connector... We have stability issue with chinese PI when overclocking... electronic component are in fewer quality than the uk one.

Raspicade is ditributed as a complete 4Go image system https://sourceforge.net/projects/raspicade/. you'll have to expand it if you're SD is larger. see the documentation here https://sourceforge.net/p/raspicade/wiki/HowTo/ in english : The english is poor because I translated it by an automatic online translator... and I had not enough time to review and correct it sorry.

When Pi is connected to your home network, You can drag and drop roms via Samba directly to the right emu directory, or by ftp or scp... make you choice ;)

Just make a test, to see if it's a pimame issue or a hardware issue... because my distro has less emus than pimame... i focused firstly on arcade and Xin-Mo hardware.

shockwave1000

Downloading that bad boy right now! Just checked on the pi and thank-god, its made in the UK. Should be interesting to see what the outcome is. Fingers crossed! Be posting my update later tonight.

Cheers

Shock

shockwave1000

Ok guys. I have had success. I was able to play the game flawlessly off Raspicade with no drop off on framerate what so ever. So not sure whats next guys. Can someone else test this as well using the same game. Maybe I am missing something?

Looking forward to feedback. Thanks for helping out ian57, appreciate the help mate! Is it difficult getting the adafruit retrogame configruration going on raspicade? I bet there is a wiki or faq for it? Your a legend!

If you guys need me to do some further testing I'm more than happy to help out. Just let me know.

Cheers

Shock

ian57

For retrograme config... check the PDF documentation and the github repo : https://github.com/ian57/Raspicade-Retrogame-2Player-BPlus and wiring here https://github.com/ian57/Raspicade-Retrogame-2Player-BPlus/wiki

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