Retroarch Split Second controller Lag (hardly noticeable, but there)

RetroArch Windows devices
#1

Hello, this is an awesome product. I do have a question that may help me fine tune it, but I don’t know what the setting would be or even what to look for.

When I click a button or move the joystick, (d-pad) there is a split second lag in what I click to seeing the action on the screen. I am guessing that this is a hard limitation of using the PC instead of the original console. I do have a gaming PC with fast hardware, respectable specs, 7.8 windows experience score. But is there a setting that I can play around with to sort of sync the gameplay up with the controller so this isn’t noticeable? I did not notice this at first when I first loaded retroarch, but now that the “wow factor” has worn off, I am noticing that there is a split second delay (hardly noticeable) that is somewhat distracting. Any solutions?

#2

The biggest ones are Hard GPU Sync ON with 0 frames (increases CPU load significantly but also reduces latency a good bit; setting it to 1 frame is lighter but helps a little less) and, with compatible cores, using runahead with 1 or more frames (core/game-dependent). You can also use frame delay to remove as many milliseconds of latency as you set in the option, but if it goes too high, you’ll get audio crackling (again, core/game-dependent).

All of these options are accessible through the ‘latency’ submenu of settings and the quick menu.

#3

Windows 7 inherently will have 1 frame of lag because of the slow USB polling frequency of 125hz. Additionally your monitor will add some latency as well. I have the real hardware hooked to A SD CRT and have compared both of them to each other and made judgements based on what I know about my PC hardware. My Pc’s monitor lags about 8 milliseconds or half a frame. With Retroarch set to GPU hard sync on, 0 frames, and 0 frame delay I get one frame of lag at the emulator level. That’s 1.5 frames which in reality is almost nothing even in games like Super Mario World which is a game that already has 2 frames of lag on real hardware hooked to a CRT. I will say if you have a computer hooked up to a TV, not a dedicated monitor, you might be chasing your tall trying to remove lag from Retroarch that is not Retroarch’s fault, but your TVs fault. My computer hooked to my TV upstairs feels slushy in the controls because my TV has about 3 frames of lag with game mode engaged. Even at that the games are still perfectly playable but just feel a tiny bit loose. I’ve proven in a You Tube video of mine that it’s still better than the SNES Classic which lags behind Retroarch a whole frame and even still the SNES Classic is perfectly playable. I’ve also proven in another video that the Retroarch is just as fast if not faster in some cases than real hardware hooked to a CRT TV when the incredible run ahead feature is engaged. On Linux it’s even faster. Here are the videos that I have referenced.

2 Likes