Samsung Galaxy Note 2 - Unable to run anything at full speed?

RetroArch General
#1

I installed RetroArch from Google Play in hope of being able to play NES and SNES games on my phone, but even NES emulators (tested both NEStopia and FCEUmm cores, Ninja Gaiden ROM) run too slow. It’s playable, but I’m guessing it’s running at somewhere in between 50%-75% speed. I also tested Mega Man X in the Snes9x core, and it too runs too slow.

I’ve tried all the different refresh rate settings (calibration, set to OS reported, fixed at 59.95), and VSync and bilinear filtering is turned off. (was the same with them on as far as I can tell)

According to the Cores Manual, they should be able to run at full speed on an ARM Cortex A8 CPU, while the Note 2 as far as I can find supposedly has a newer and presumably more powerful A9. Is there something wrong with my settings, or is the Note 2 simply not capable of running anything at full speed despite being a fairly new phone?

#2

The Note 2 has a screen with an 58Hz refreshrate. Setting the refresh rate to 59.95 Hz is obviously going to give bad results.

The OS reported refreshrate is 58Hz BTW - you should set it to that.

#3

I said I tried all the different refreshrate settings, including the OS reported one. It runs too slow even on that one.

#4

Do you have a custom ROM on your phone? I also have the note 2,and the cores run just fine on my end.

#5

No, not yet. I’ve been thinking of rooting it and installing CyanogenMod if and when they ever start supporting it, but at the moment it’s just running the latest stock OS.

#6

You didn’t run some tool that would move some of your system apps to the SD card right?

Because that can easily cripple performance.

#7

Not that I know of. The roms are on the SD card, but unless it installs them on the external SD by default, the apps should be on the internal one. Why would that affect processing performance though? I would imagine that if anything that would only cause longer load times when it needs to load the rom or launch the app, and not cause the actual CPU performance in the app to degrate it to running at almost half speed. I’m no expert on Android or the hardware it runs on, but that just seems plain weird.

#8

actually, on the note 2, the external sdcard stuff works a little differently than they have been on android so far. i dont remember exactly what it was, but there’s something about it being a different pathing or something.

i recommend having your ROMs on the internal storage! the cheapest note 2 has 16GB of internal, should be more than enough for alot of ROMs.also, try to turn off the built in powersaver feature!

if you still have problems, try another ROMset. oh, and update everything. the emulator and the phone itself.

oh, and check in system settings that you uncheck rewind! the note 2 should be more than powerful enough, but for some reason, it does not play nicely with my phone. i’m fairly certain that you will get good performance then :slight_smile:

besides, rewind is for sissy girls! in braid it was ok, because it was built around it, but FOOK DAT!

PS. they have nightly builds of cyanogenmod out. but i haven’t tried those yet, still running a stock ROM :slight_smile:

#9

I moved the roms to the internal storage, but that made no difference.

That seems to have been to problem. I never even knew this feature existed, but it must have been turned on by default. Looking around a bit, I found it in the pulldown screen and disabled it, and now I’m able to run NES and SNES games at least at full speed.

I think the rewind feature was off by default. At least it was off when I checked.

I agree. Can’t imagine why I’d use that anyway.

Yeah, I know. I’m just not sure how stable those are. I prefer to wait until they have a stable release, or at least a relased beta/RC.

#10

Rewind can be slow even on PS3 and Xbox 360 - which are still quite a bit faster than even the fastest Android device.

#11

glad to be of assistance! i remember i had this issue too when i first tried RA on my phone.