Best graphic configurations?

RetroArch General
#1

I have searched around a bit and I cannot find a current detailed explanation of retroarch’s configurations. I don’t know what a lot of the terms mean. I want to set up retroarch to have the best graphics for each system, I have a pretty solid CPU/GPU so I should be able to handle it.

I plan to run all the major consoles (Nes,Snes,N64,GCN,GBA/GB/GBC,Gen,GG,Segacd/Megaca,Saturn,DC,PSx,PS2,Wii etc.) and I prefer using lauchbox for my frontend.

I have my roms organized and I am finally ready to set up my emulators to their best settings. I plan to use retroarch cores for just about everything but Dolphin and PSP as I hear that the standalone are better in that case. So…

1.What settings are important to change in retroarch’s global configurations for the best graphics?

  1. What cores need to be configured for best graphics?

  2. What systems run better with a standalone instead of retroarch?

If anyone can provide a link to any of this information or answer it yourself it would be greatly appreciated, I don’t know where to start with retroarch!

#2

Dolphin-libretro is still very preliminary and only really worth using for Gamecube games, so it’s worth skipping for standalone. I don’t really have any experience with PPSSPP-libretro or standalone, but apparently using the libretro core through RetroArch alleviates some microstutters on at least some hardware, so it might be worth checking it out if that bothers you with standalone.

Setting up the best graphics is a bit of a rabbit-hole, not to mention very subjective, so there’s not really any way to instruct you on that concisely. The default settings are a pretty good start, and loading shaders from the in-game “quick menu”'s shader menu can get you pretty far.

#3

“Best graphics” is pretty ambiguous and vague. It really depends on what you are wanting, and/or what kind of display you are using. (HDTV, LED Monitor, CRT TV, CRT Monitor, etc)

Overall, there’s not much tweaking you’d have to do graphic-wise like you would with an emulator such as PCSX2, for example.

Really the biggest thing is determining what aspect ratio you are comfortable with. 16:9 will fill any widescreen TV, 4:3 should fill any standard set. It will give you black bars on the sides if you are using a widescreen TV, but it’s your call if that’s a detriment or not. (Personally my current setup uses 3:2 because of a terrible conversion from HDMI-to-RF to fill my CRT TV’s screen.)

There are some shaders that will smooth things out, or others that will recreate the look of CRT’s on High Definition displays… I recommend reading through some of the topics in the shaders sub-forum, also make use of the handy search feature too.

As for stand-alone preferences, as hunterk said, the dolphin core is still very wip. I use it for gamecube, but not for wii games. The PPSSPP core usually runs great but I have to use stand-alone to get the tekken games to work (I don’t know if anyone else has issues there though) There’ no PS2 core as of yet, and it doesn’t seem like anything viable is in the near-future so PCSX2 is a must. Lastly I’d say Dreamcast is sort of ‘on-the-fence’ in this area. Some people haven’t found a need to use stand-alone, others swear by demul or nulldc. There’s 2 cores, Reicast and ReDream, both of which support seperate versions of CHD files so I can’t test reDream myself without re-doing my compressions… I’d say it’s dealer’s choice on that system.

Otherwise, in 99% of cases, you should be just fine with the RA cores. As with all things emulation based though, results may vary.

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#4

Thanks for this! What about the drivers? I have heard about the Vulkan driver being good… what does changing the drivers affect? Which ones work best?

#5

The main thing that changes with the video driver is which cores and shaders are available. Some of the cores only work with GL, some have Vulkan renderers, as well. The vast majority of cores are software-rendered, though, and will work with any driver. Some people have had luck pushing audio latency lower with Vulkan than with GL, but YMMV.

The GL driver is compatible with Cg and GLSL shaders, D3D driver is compatible with Cg drivers only and Vulkan driver is compatible with Slang shaders only. Almost all of the shaders are available in each format, though, so you won’t really be missing out by going with one or the other.