So I was using Beetle Saturn, and at times I was lagging after playing a game for about 1-5 minutes. After switching to the OpenGL video driver the lag, so far at least, seems to be gone. So I was wondering why the Beetle Saturn core does not play as nice with the Vulken video driver. I and able to use Vulken for more accurate emulation of the Beetle PS1 core, it’s more taxing on my computer but it does not matter because I still get a full 60fps (or whatever the fps of the game that I am playing is locked to.)
Sounds almost like a throttling issue with your system. What are the specs of the system you’re running it on?
I’m pretty sure that it’s not because my hardware is too weak. Here are my specs though:
CPU - Intel Core i5-8600k (Overclocked to 4.5 Ghz)
GPU - GTX 970
RAM - DDR4 16GB 2400 Mhz
Hard Drive - Samsung 840 Evo
Other than my GPU and debatably my SSD my specs are pretty high end, but they definitely are not low end at all. They should definitely be good enough to run a Saturn emulator. I am pretty sure that it has something to do with the Core or Retroarch itself.
It could indeed be throttling of the CPU. This is a common issue on very fast machines, actually. What happens is the emulation task finishes fast enough in the frame that the OS thinks it’s safe to throttle the CPU down as it waits for the next frame task. Once it’s throttled down, it’s too slow to finish the next task within the frame window.
Make sure your power settings are set to “max performance” or whatever.