Advice on 125Hz monitor - Optimal settings

RetroArch General
#1

Hi guys,

I have a monitor which is 320x240 (hand held gaming) which I HAVE to have 125Hz refresh rate (I have no choice in this matter). What are the optimal settings?

This is run on a Raspberry Pi Zero and with basic games everything is very smooth and sound is great, however on the more intense (anything 3D) there is significant audio stuttering… If I set “audio sync” to NO and “vsync” to NO, the game runs very smoothly however it runs too fast… I am not concerned about audio accuracy but I am more concerned with video frame rate being playable… on default it is not playable, with the settings I mentioned changed it runs too fast (meaning if it were limited to 60Hz that the game would be very playable!)

I have tried setting the swap interval but this made no change to the framerate, it was still too fast…

Any advice welcome! :slight_smile: Thanks

#2

In settings > frame throttle, there’s a setting to limit the maximum run speed. You could try setting that to 1x.

#3

Ah ha :slight_smile: thanks I will give that a go later today! Another option to play around with! :wink:

The ‘refresh rate’ option (which is default 59.950 or so) is the target frame rate (that ideally should match monitor)? Which it’s primary use is to fine tune synchronisation with the monitor to prevent banding/vsync related issues right? If so I will leave that setting alone… Should this be changed when running a E (Europe) or U (USA) (50/60Hz) game? I’ve noticed it is set to the same value regardless of which region I play, but because of it running waaaay too fast I can’t tell if it is affecting the games… I’m downloading both versions of the same game and i’ll tweak my settings like you suggest and see what happens!

#4

It should match the monitor but I think it gives up if it’s too far out from 60 hz. It is indeed to help with vsync/stutter.

#5

Just to update, setting the rate limit to 1.0, disable vsync, disable ‘sync audio’ now plays at the right speed and is very playable, the audio is still stuttery but only on background music, sound effects seem ok! The audio stutter is most understandable as i guess now it is prioritising video first, and audio is lagging behind (due to lack of sync with video).

As a final question, are there any good tips on improving audio stutter? For example I did drop audio rate to 44100Hz with little difference, if I could drop to 22000Hz (or lower) that might give it a chance but i have a feeling this won’t actually work (i should probably test this before saying it!)? Could it be a loading issue, for example if the source audio track bitrate is high enough that it can’t load the data off the SD card quick enough? PS I’m using a USB DAC (not the built in Pi PWM audio which is terrible!)

#6

Try increasing the max timing skew, and you might need to increase the audio latency a bit.