Lakka - Nightly Performance and New Stable Version

Libretro Lakka
#21

Thank you for the logs @retroFuture, I’m sure they will be helpful at some point, but these are the Retroarch logs, it would be nice to see the audio logs instead:

Lakka documentation - Troubleshooting Lakka (under “Audio device logs”)

This will simply list the sound devices that have been detected by Linux. A simple comparison of this output between the stable and nightly Lakka versions would allow us to see if there’s anything wrong with the sound devices on the system level.

It would be helpful to see the outputs of the following commands:

aplay -L
aplay -l
dmesg
lsmod

If the problem is related to the kernel, someone who owns an RPI 4 could help track down the problem by testing different kernel versions and see which one introduced the bug.

#22

Okay, finally fixed my issue, and I should have spotted it before so I blame my age…

Basically setting hdmi_enable_4kp60=1 in config.txt just doesn’t work with this kernel at the moment, so my 4K TV was just running at 30Hz and that’s why everything ran like junk.

Added the below to config.txt instead (to force 1080p60) and it’s all peachy, but only in gl mode, vulkan still doesn’t play nicely in HDMI-0 and wants to use HDMI-1 in 4k30 instead (again junk performance).

hdmi_group=1
hdmi_mode=16

Obviously most folks without 4k displays won’t have this issue, but I guess it’s easy enough to workaround for now.

#23

I do expect it to be the new standard to replace 1080x1920 HD, I myself have a 4k monitor as well. Seems like people tend to forget that 4k has been around for almost a decade already. There are some hdmi cables that don’t go past 30Hz. On my 4K monitor using a refresh rate of 30Hz had resulted in unplayable emulation due to lag and audio issues.

#24

I posted this on reddit but I will post it here too:

Pi3 has been unusable since the 3.0 update. Audio is choppy and my fps doesn’t stay stable at all. It bounces between 32 to 45 FPS. I am using the alsathread driver for sound and have toggled off rewind or anything else that may cause a bottleneck with no luck.

In contrast, this same set up was working perfectly at full speed prior to 3.0 (for an entire yr lol) and I also have an Asus Tinkerboard with 3.2 on it with zero issues in performance. From what I can see, this is 100% a pi issue. Unfortunate because my pi is also my dedicated Nintendo emulation box and I can’t play a thing lol.

Other than audio logs, what would help devs fix this that I could provide?

#25

I believe most, if not all, performance issues on the Pi3 were solved with the update to aarch64 in Lakka 3.2.

#26

So do a clean install of the 64 bit version?

I will give it a spin and report back.

Edit: yeah, that did the trick! So happy to have this working again.

2 Likes
#27

After fixing my main pi, I upgraded my other pi hooked up via composite video to Lakka 3.2 (clean install) from an old October 2020 nightly build and could no longer boot past the splash. I restored the exact same config.txt file, so theoretically the 240p video settings should have worked as before.

I tried both the 64 bit and 32 bit images with zero luck. Either the boot process freezes at the flower or gets passed it and locks up on a screen showing text right after. Hard to make it out on a CRT lol.

I went back as far as Jan 2021 for images to install and I repeatedly get this issue.

Any ideas as to what broke here, and how could I get an older image than jan? I would love to just reinstall the October build lmao.

#28

I understand that its a kernel issue related to the full-kms driver, which Lakka now uses on the Pi3/4.

There is an open issue, basically waiting for a fix: link.

I guess an option is using RPi OS with the legacy driver, which I assume should work but cannot test myself.

#29

I was able to get 3.2 running on my retrocade which is a allwinner H3 based board. Im using the orange pi pc plus image. I also found the performance less than the 2.X series I was running before. 8 bit systems run fine, but 16 bit like snes are not. I checked top with fcemm running and system was almost consuming 100 % cpu. I went to check for cpufreq setting but the module appears not to be included. I will try disabling sound next with snes9x.

#30

Noticed the nightlies are on hold at the moment, hopefully this is due to the transition of the upcoming Lakka v4.x branch.

#31

Noticed that too. Going by the date, could be a Christmas treat :smiley:

:slight_smile: