Threaded Video enabled - any disadvantages?

RetroArch Windows devices
#1

Hi, I have RetroArch installed on my Linx Vision Gaming tablet, it runs Windows 10 and has an Intel Atom x5-Z8300 with 2 GB RAM. RetroArch is installed on a 128GB Micro SD Card.

I was wondering if there are any disadvantages to enabling threaded video? The most obvious one is that I can’t use shaders, and I would assume rewind etc. and some timing related stuff? But I wondered if there are any emulation related issues or glitches I might encounter?

I had Threaded Video enabled and noticed some stuttering with audio; just the odd glitch, but found it annoying, and even a huge pause (the game locked up for a couple of seconds), noticeable when playing Batman Returns on Sega CD using Genesis Plus GX.

The frame rate appears to hold a solid 60fps (but the audio stuttering is so slight that if it was a frame drop/performance issue I probably wouldn’t notice it in the video). I messed about with some audio settings (drivers, latency etc) and disabled shaders etc. to try to improve things, but even on very low-end emulators I was experiencing the occassional stutter; it felt like some sort of timing issue?

I also noticed the Estimated Screen Rate (under Video) would sometimes fluctuate quite a lot when nothing was really going on (from 59.40 etc down to 6). I assumed it was something to do with the tablet saving battery life and after messing about with some of the tablet’s performance settings and Intel graphics settings I realised it made no difference.

But when I enabled Threaded Video all the issues disappeared. So it’s a great fix (although I do miss shaders).

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#2

Threaded video is fine, it just makes the video less smooth (for example, scrolling). You should still be able to use shaders with it, but if you try to load a shader that’s too demanding, it’ll do a weird frameskipping thing without making the game any slower.

#3

Thanks, I hadn’t noticed any scrolling issues, but I’ll keep an eye out. Although I think I have encountered this when using the Android version.

When Threaded Video is enabled if I try to load a shader as I navigate to it, they are viewed as folders, so no shader file to load. I tried looking in all folders (cg, glsl and slang).

When Threaded Video is disabled it depends on the video driver I’m using; so GL will work load GLSL shaders, and when using Direct X 10, I can only load the slang shaders.

I wonder if this is device/graphics card specific?

#4

What I noticed after switching on “threaded video”, is that when I choose a shader that runs slow without threaded video it introduces a lot of frame skip. Also I think it doesn’t do vsync well as it does without. Shaders still work in both options.

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#5

i cant operate retroarch without threaded video on. If i turn it off, every game runs at super slow speed. But not if i run the game in an external emulator. I wish there was a way to restore default settings for all of retroarch. I’ve changed settings somewhere and its broken it. Ive even uninstalled and reinstalled.

#6

Just delete the config files and it will return everything to default.

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