Lakka recommended requirements (x86)?

Hi,

I’m currently searching for a small factor pc, or mini PC, to build my own “retrobox” (to use it on hd tv, lcd vga screen and maybe also 15khz rgb monitor).

For now I’m doing my tests on my lenovo laptop (intel core 2 duo P8700 2.5ghz, intel gm45 chipset, 4gb ram), and it’s working perfectly (at least for the emulators interesting me, especially bsnes), and the few shaders I tried. I found (but not bought it for now) a desktop pc with core 2 duo too, but this time a E7400, 2.8ghz, 2gb ram, intel gma X4500 chipset. Do you think it’s a good machine for a Lakka based “retrobox” , especially for crt shaders and accuracy focused emulators ?

I may add (not sure of the compatibility) a low profile passive nvidia GT card (basic 30 euros card, but including dedicated ram and hdmi). I’m not sure if Lakka can use it more than the integrated chipset.

What do you think about this machine ? Good enough for my project ?

Does Retroarch benefit from a dedicated graphics card (for 8-16bit games especially) ?

EDIT : I found another machine, based on pentium dual, 2x3ghz (intel chipset again). The good thing with this PC is the ultra small case, wich is conveniant for this kind of project. Is a pentium d 3ghz better than a core2duo 2.8ghz, specifically for Retroarch/lakka ?

thank you for your help.

Hello, Lakka works better on intel chipsets for now, at least on 3D cores like PPSSPP.

Intel graphics were worthless until the HD series. HD3000 is a little weak for some shaders, HD4000 can run most at 1080p and almost all at 720p. Dedicated graphics will be necessary for shaders if you’re using GMA-era integrated.

Pentium D is a worse choice vs Core2duo and runs much hotter.

I have an Atom based netbook and am able to run all but a very small handful of 8bit and 16bit games through retroarch at full speed. Until you get into the more advanced emulators like mednafen-psx, 4do, ppsspp and even bsnes, the requirements are quite low. In those cases, I’m not really sure since the only other CPU I’ve tested them on so far is a haswell i5.

I have a Zotac Z box ID41 Plus with 2Gb RAM, on board Nvidia ION Graphics Processor, and an 1.8Mhz Atom CPU and it basically performs about as good as an XBOX classic, if that… which makes no sense to me, but it is what it is. On the other hand I have an old slow 3.x Ghz computer with 400FSB and another Nvidia card that I threw it in, and it runs great. Mind you the video card in it is no that fancy and yet it handles pretty much what ever I throw at it. The only strange thing is that on some installs, some PSP games works, then on a re-install, update or what have you, the same games no longer work, or PSP will break all together and then N64 works, or N64 won’t work, but PSX will. It all seems highly unpredictable.

I hope in the future to see optimizations for x86/64-bit cpus so we can make these tiny PC’s do something and now have to rely upon huge energy and space sucking towers as our “retro game console”.

Well what do you know, I tried the April 05 nightly, and there does seem to be improvements.

PSP works nearly perfect thus far at a steady 30FPS for the most part! Sega CD is fine, 3DO runs at 30-60 FPS, generally closer to 60 and the sound stutters horribly. My PS2 controller works via my USB adapter right out of the box, but pressing dual analogs down does not return me to the menu.
N64 runs choppy as hell at about 25 FPS. Still got more systems to test though so far so good, I just hope the 3DO gets worked out soon as well as N64, they should be flawless.

I did some more testings last night, everything now seems to work (aside of the menu bugs of course) but the following:

NDS (great frames, choppy sound) N64 (frames drop a tab below 30, choppy sound) Atari Lynx (only home brew launches, commercial titles hang at black or flashing screen, BIOS is installed in system with proper name, though it did work on my last install with older nightly) (EDIT: I have found a very small amount of commercial games that do in fact work) EDIT: PSX plays with great frames, but again, HORRIBLE sound stutter. On my old 3Ghz machine, the stutter is almost absent in some games, where as other it is very much there, though that was tested by installing the Stable release of Retroarch KodiUbuntu. I’ve not tested the latest nightly of Lakka on it yet, maybe the results will be better? PSP (some games will not work that work fine under Windows, who’d a thunk it? Most games play well though not without a little stuttering in menus or during load time. Is this up to date with sources?) HD Videos can be choppy where as they are not under KodiUbuntu.

I’ve not tested Jaguar on this release, but I expect it will be choppy as it was choppy on my 3Ghz system too.

Again, will test all of this against my older 3Ghz Pentium 4 with lower bus speed and less RAM as it usually performs better than the Zotac in regards to higher end systems, though I can make no sense of that. There is not much difference in the performances between the two system’s video cards and CPU when cross compared.

1 Like

I spoke to some of the devs on IRC, turns out my machine should in theory be enough, so I’m going to talk to some of the RetroArch devs and try to sort my issues out. I hope some of my info helps…

I deleted all my previous posts as I was trouble shooting. Thanks Kivutar for the help btw. :slight_smile:

What I have learned is that Dolphin support is on the road map for RetroArch, so if you want to be ready for that, then you will need a 3.x Ghz i5 and an intel HD4000 or Nvidia 4xxx or better. Avoid ATI because there is a bug that’s being sorted out from what I heard.

https://dolphin-emu.org/docs/faq/

As for covering all your current bases, I believe, but have not tested, but believe that a 1.5Ghz i5 should be able to pull off everything else. No one one IRC has told me that speed matters on these puppies, so I’m going to assume that they do 3DO, NDS, PSX, PSP, Jag, and all the less intensive cores.

Also a system with required video card and only a 3Ghz Pentium 4, will provide you with some PSP compatibility, some N64, most 3DO, some NDS (touch screen controls?), some PSX, and everything below that. Mind you though, this is about as low as CPU you want to toy with as some of the newer emulator seem to be looking for a modern processor and might just crash at random.

I’m going to throw myself into this thread and ask about graphics requirements. I’m only really after running older console games, NES, SNES, Megadrive (Genesis) and such. Don’t need the more recent stuff. I’ve been trying it out with a Athlon 64 X2 4200+ with 3GB RAM and my recently replaced R9 280X graphics card. I wanna fit the system into a small case though (something like an Xbox case) and hence don’t wanna use the R9 280X. Would a Radeon HD5450 be enough to run the older consoles smoothly, outputting the image at 1080p, or do I need to consider something a bit faster?

Thanks in advance :slight_smile:

That should be fine. It won’t be great for shaders, but basic ones should work okay.

Not to sound dense, but in the case of running NES and SNES games, how will this affect graphics?

If you reckon it’s not fast enough, what recommendation could you make? I’d prefer to have a fanless graphics card in there.

As far as just running the games, it won’t make any difference. Shaders are just for post-processing effects, like scanlines, hq2x, crt effects, etc.

Thanks, that answers my question. In that case, I think the HD5450 should suffice. I’m trying to keep power usage and noise to a minimum, hence don’t want high end hardware. But as I’m also trying to keep costs down, I don’t wanna buy a complete new ITX or mATX system.