Retroarch 1.3.6 slight stutter every few minutes on PSX/ NDS

RetroArch Windows devices
#1

Hi, I recently updated to Win 10 x64 and also installed fresh latest stable RA 1.3.6 x64. There seems to be some problem on mednafenPSX and Desmume cores, every few minutes there is slight stutter for about half second, (audio crack, video stutter) and everything goes back to normal 60fps fluid experience. I have both audio sync and hard gpu sync enabled, default audio settings, v sync ON, 59.950fps, exclusive full screen, gameplay is butter-smooth beside above mentioned, and its input-lag free for my senses. I tried enabling cache ISO to memory on mednafenPSX and cache to memory on desmume core options but rarely stutters still occurs, after this tweak I only encountered this on desmume though.

Specs: Pentium G3460 @ 3.5ghz HD 7770 1GB GDDR5 4GB RAM DDR3 7200rpm HDD SATA 2 500GB

Also tried high performance power plan but no advantage over balanced.

#2

Try running with your performance monitor running and see if there are any spikes or down-clocking happening.

#3

Did just that, over an hour of testing, when there is a stutter desmume core gives CPU usage spike to ~75%, while running smoothly it is stable at 40-50% Mednafen PSX doesn’t give any CPU usage spikes, everything looks the same all the time, both while emulation goes smooth and while A/V stutter occurs. Tried nestopia and snes9x cores and these did not gave any stuttering at all.

CPU clock is going low while FMV are playing or while in the menu and goes high/ max while game is running, so this is as it should be on balanced power plan.

I think there might be something related to HDD usage, I’m running RA and roms/ISO from D: drive and percentage usage goes from 0% up just while game is loading, after it drops to 0%, BUT I noticed weird C: drive usage percentage jumping to 99% and that gave me few minutes of fps drop and constant stutter of A/V, this was the first time it happed, before games just stutter for half, maybe one second

#4

Try hard sync frame 1 instead of 0.

#5

This is not relevant here, even hard gpu sync OFF is not giving smooth performance, the only difference is slight input lag while off.

#6

RetroArch shouldn’t be using any disk I/O if you’re using the disc cache option and DS games should be stored in memory all the time, so if you’re getting hdd activity spikes along with your A/V stutters, something is going on in the background of your machine that is taking resources away, maybe some sort of anti-virus or monitoring program…? If it were Android, I would blame the garbage collector.

#7

Is MednafenPSX “enable disc cache to memory” option recommended? Also the same for desmume (cache to memory)? Are those option potentially gives some advantage to smooth, stutter free gameplay?

As for occuring stuttering - that hdd incrased activity was one time so far, and gave about 5 minutes of fps drop and stutter choppy gameplay, but regularly those slight stutters don’t give any hdd activity spike, ds gives high cpu spike while stutter and mednafen is not showing any changes at all is pefromance monitor, this is mystery for me.

#8

It’s probably not something you want to do permanently but you could go into your BIOS settings and disable CPU throttling altogether and see if that changes anything.

#10

Tried making profile for RA in GPU control panel and enabling triple buffering, but no change at all. Then I changed frame rate from default 59.950 to 60.000, did not get any sound craking on mednafenPSX while testing but desmume still gives this CPU spike and about half-second stutter (fps drop + music crack, it occurs every few minutes, not something game breaking but annoying and distracting)

I think this might be related to used build of desmume core, any more suggestions? I was thinking about running RA as admin and see if anything changes.

#11

I am having similar issues. I just open RetroArch and have the shuttering every 30 seconds or so. No core is loaded and the stuttering happens.

#12

Does it do it in-game, as well? Or just in the menu?

#13

Having the same issue as bindfry over there. Stutters about every 10 seconds or so. Both in game and in the menu. Does seem to go away after reinstalling but comes back after a few start ups. Version 1.6.7

#14

I’ve had that same issue on my laptop on stable. It stopped when I switched to a nightly.