Retroarch suddenly laggy and slow on powerful build

RetroArch Windows devices
#1

Hello friends!

I have a curious problem that I’ve tried to solve for a few hours by myself with little or no success. So here goes…

I just formatted my HD and reinstalled windows, an old fashioned reset of everything. I copied my retroarch folder from C, settings and all to a USB and restored it later. When I run beetle PSX HW or Kronos Saturn I get severe stutter, where before there was non at all - even at 4K. So I downloaded Retroarch again, new separate install. Same problem. When I try Kronos stand alone it runs like a charm. No stutter. No problems.

The monitor is 60Hz (double checked), all drivers up to date, powe plan optimised for Ryzen performance.

What might the problem be? I would appreciate all the help I can get. Love Retroarch so this is a real bummer for me.

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#2

Oh, I should add… I usually run these emulators upscaled at 4K with vsync on. After this problem manifested, I can deactivate vsync for less stutter. But as a result I suffer horrible screen tearing. As soon as I activate vsync the stutter comes back.

#3

What’s the framerate that it’s putting out? Have you made sure your OS’ power consumption settings are set to “max performance”? Do you have any external utilities, such as GPU control panels, forcing vsync?

#4

Power settings are set to Max performance for sure.

I’ve tried to turn on and off the GPU AMD Radeon vSync option. It doesn’t seem to make much difference. The only new program I have compared to when everything was working fine is Advanced System Care. There is some sort of game boost option there that I might need to have a look at…

I’ll check the FPS and get back to you!

#5

Here goes! What do you make of this Hunter?

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#6

This is kinda weird…

I tried windowed mode, still slow. I also notice that the screen all of a sudden goes “beyond the frame” (icons that fall outside the screen for example) and that the colours seem a bit more intense.

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#7

That’s weird about the icons. I’m not sure what would cause that.

Since it’s estimating the framerate right at 30 FPS, there’s a very good chance that something is pushing sync onto RetroArch and then that’s making it double-sync, which drops it down to 30 FPS instead of 60.

Are you running in exclusive (i.e., not windowed-) fullscreen?

#8

Just a guess, maby your display refresh rate is somhow set to 30hz? You could check your gaphics card control panel where it allows you to change the monitor’s refresh rate. Keep it open and start Retroarch to see if it changes.

Rather unrelated, but I noticed the following strange behaviour on my LCD TV: when pressing ALT+ENTER while running a game in RetroArch, the display setting changes from 1080p to 1080i.

1 Like
#9

Ah, yeah, one other thing to check would be whether your HDMI cable is capable of 4K@60

#10

I have always noticed some stutters on emulators like Snes, Neogeo and Fba and it’s weird since I can emulate the Nintendo Wii at 720p at 60fps.