RetroArch, more CPU or GPU intensive?

RetroArch General
#1

I’ve set up RetroArch on my HTPC, and it works beautifully.

NES and SNES games are nice and smooth, but N64 games have some slowdown at points on this machine, as opposed to my desktop. More than likely it is simply a difference in power, and I’m wondering where I will see the biggest performance increase, in updating the graphics card, or changing the processor and motherboard.

Windows 10 on an AMD Athlon II X4 2.4GHz with a GeForce GT730

Also, if I have a question about emulating a specific system, is it acceptable to ask the question in General, or should I ask in the cores section?

#2

It could be either one, tbh. Your best bet is to pull up your resource monitor and see if your CPU is getting maxed on a single core. If not, it’s probably your GPU holding you back.

You can ask in either one. Cores is probably more technically correct, but nobody is going complain about either one.

#3

[QUOTE=hunterk;42413]It could be either one, tbh. Your best bet is to pull up your resource monitor and see if your CPU is getting maxed on a single core. If not, it’s probably your GPU holding you back.

You can ask in either one. Cores is probably more technically correct, but nobody is going complain about either one.[/QUOTE]

That makes so much sense.

I guess I’ve been using it in full screen mode so much I forgot I could make it windowed again and monitor the CPU at the same time.

Something else I found that might be cheaper is to use my desktop to do the heavy lifting and Steam in-home streaming to get it to the HTPC.

Thanks for the idea Hunterk