Playstation and Mednafen Core Performance?

islogged · 15 January 2017 03:58

Hi, i’m little bit new with retroArch. (sorry for english)

I tried to launch Sony Playstation I games. I tried to use PlayStation (Mednafen PSX) or PlayStation (Mednafen PSX HW) Core.

My Laptop is an Core i3 with an internal Intel HD Graphics Card and PS1 games work but it’s very very very laggy on it! I’m very surprise because the first time i used a PS1 emulator in my life, it was with VGS Emulator on Windows XP with a standard (not gamer) Laptop from 2001 years and it worked like a charm.

Since 2001 year, i used different programs as ePsxe or others on different machines and i never got performances problem to play on my PS1 games with others emulators. Actually, this Laptop (Core i3) is the most powerful machine i got in my life and anyway PS1 game emulation with (Mednafen PSX) or (Mednafen PSX HW) Core is so so much slow/laggy with.

It’s look like if i emulate this with a low Pentium 1 (90mhz) Computer from 1995.

For Example: If i try PSX program Emulator (http://coolrom.com/emulators/psx/) it work without any problems or lack of performances on it contrary to Mednafens Core.

Then my question it’s what’s this problem ? Mednafen is a very low performance emulator? or do i need to make some settings in retroArch to fix this big performance problem?

Thanks for Answering -

lordmonkus · 15 January 2017 07:35

Retroarchs Mednafen PSX core does require a bit more horsepower than something like ePSXe. My laptop which is a lower end AMD system (1.5 GHz) is just not quite fast enough for it but ePSXe 2.0 + Lottes shader runs great so give that a try.

islogged · 15 January 2017 07:36

Retroarchs Mednafen PSX core does require a bit more horsepower than something like ePSXe. My laptop which is a lower end AMD system (1.5 GHz) is just not quite fast enough for it but ePSXe 2.0 + Lottes shader runs great so give that a try.

Hum OK!, but it’s not “a bit more”, it’s “a lot of more”…

As i explained more up, I could emulate PS1 Games with the VGS Emulator in good conditions on my standard laptop in 2001. That’s 15 years old ago, then i don’t remember what was my processor on it, but i think it was before Duron and Athlon first generation processor.

Anyway, Thanks for your answer because now i know that this problem don’t come from me Then i will use PSX or ePSXe for emulate my PS1 games until i buy a new computer, so SAD

Thanks Again -

lordmonkus · 15 January 2017 07:36

That isn’t really a fair comparison though. Just because an older emulator ran some games faster back then it doesn’t say anything about the overall quality of emulator and accuracy. Emulators today have become much more accurate and that accuracy comes at a system performance cost. Take the BSnes / Higan vs ZSnes for example, yeah ZSnes is very old and runs on a 300 MHz cpu (or less) and Higan requires a modern 3 GHz cpu to get full speed on every game. Higan however is 100% (or virtually 100%) and runs every game where ZSnes runs approx the 50 most common games and then it gets very dodgy in its emulation quality.

islogged · 15 January 2017 07:36

That isn’t really a fair comparison though. Just because an older emulator ran some games faster back then it doesn’t say anything about the overall quality of emulator and accuracy. Emulators today have become much more accurate and that accuracy comes at a system performance cost. Take the BSnes / Higan vs ZSnes for example, yeah ZSnes is very old and runs on a 300 MHz cpu (or less) and Higan requires a modern 3 GHz cpu to get full speed on every game. Higan however is 100% (or virtually 100%) and runs every game where ZSnes runs approx the 50 most common games and then it gets very dodgy in its emulation quality.

Ok, now i understand better maybe. Thanks for these précisions

lordmonkus · 15 January 2017 07:36

No problem, i’m glad I could explain it so it makes some sense. Give ePSXe 2.0 or newer a try and see how it performs for you. It really is a very solid emulator on par with Retroarchs Mednafen core and is much better than any of the pre 2.0 versions.

JimmyZ · 15 January 2017 07:40

i3 is an umbrella term for a very long product line, you may want to make that more specific here, as for laptop processors, model names post fixed with U and/or Y has much lower TDP ratings than M/H thus significantly slower.

On the other hand, I don’t think Mednafen requires that much processing power for PSX, I have an i3-3xxxm laptop years old which ran Mednafen perfectly.

As for comparison, It requires significantly less processing power than Higan SFC, which still runs fine on that same laptop.

I suggest you try more things like RetroArch bsnes core and standalone Higan to verify if that’s a core specific issue or RetroArch specific issue or overall system performance issue.