Beetle PSX HW - Intermittent audio crackling

RetroArch
#1

The framerate remains smooth but the audio will consistently and for short bursts will crackle. It is not even that bad but it is extremely annoying. I have limited my CPU to 3ghz in Throttlestop and that helps quite a lot. The CPU and GPU usage is about 25% and there is no throttling being reported.

I have done all the other standard stuff like putting my system on High Performance mode and setting my GPU to maximum performance.

Specs: Dell Inspiron 15 7580 | Intel i7-8565U | 16 GB DDR4 RAM | GeForce MX150 2 GB

#2

25% Overall CPU usage can be quite high considering that Beetle PSX uses only one core. If your statistics don’t tell you each core load then you may not be seeing the whole picture. If your CPU usage checks out ok then I would start with setting GPU hard sync frames to 1 if you have it at 0. You can also tryturning off vsync to see if the crackling goes away. If it does then I would try invoking vsync through the graphics driver as I’ve had to do that with two computers now. If you’re using any kind of core overclocking or GTE overclocking you may need to turn those down or off.

1 Like
#3

With CPU usage, if I set the affinity to a single core, the framerate tanks. Settings it to more cores helps. I have never considered vsync but that’s something I will keep in mind. However this problem also really affects in both Dolphin and PCSX2 where I got better performance on my older laptop with a i7 4702mq.

As for your GPU advice, bizarrely Beetle Saturn runs MUCH faster when I use the integrated Intel GPU. Why do you think that is?

#4

Have you tried raising the audio latency setting in the RetroArch audio settings?