Pokefan531's Posts

I had been using the Shield Tablet K1 and checking the performance of either cores on Retroarch or standalone apps on the K1. The performance brings a lot of benefits from my previous Tablet with Tegra 3 and LG G2 phone that is near to Tegra 4 level of performance. A lot of performance benefit has made me able to use more demanding apps and settings on emulators. I’ll start with the oldest system first. I’ll list the Tegra 3 performance as well if you have lower performance on your tablet or phone.

All Retroarch core uses hard sync for less input latency, and has minimal impact. Also having Threaded core off.

NES: So far, I tested the Nestopia UE core on Retroarch, the highest compatibility NES core, and it is performance friendly without any issue.

SMS/GG/Genesis/CD/32x: The Genesis GX Plus core for multi Sega emulator has no issues at all, and the emulator itself was built in the cycle accurate style, and should perform on most mobile devices, as it was built for the Wii in the first place. I didn’t test the 32x in any mobile devices yet, but Picodrive, a less accurate multi Sega core, supports it and should perform well.

SNES: Tested Snes9X and bsnes performance mercury. For Snes9x, performance is great and even overclocking the Super Fx chip runs very well. I don’t see any stuttering on the core with overclocking. For some odd reason, the build of Retroarch from Christmas seems to have stuttering on snes9x when the chip is overclocked on any setting, including at 40mhz. The current build I downloaded solved this, and I knew the tablet k1 should perform well at 100mhz as the Tegra 4 can run them as well.
Bsnes-Performance is able to run decent on the Shield Tablet K1, but there can be noise stutter sometimes. Seems to run a bit better than my laptop though. I tested Super Mario World and I mostly had no random stutter when playing the levels. Overall, the core plays near full speed, and I do know it won’t run on games with special chips. Running on Super Fx games does mostly run near full speed, so just use mainline snes9x on any games. Hard Sync off didn’t give much performance to the core. It’s sweet that the tablet can run bsnes-accuracy decently without being in half speed like the Tegra 3 or LG G2 did.

Virtual Boy: Simple, perfect performance, regardless of hard sync.

Sega Saturn: Haven’t test any games on mobile just yet, but I expect it to run near full speed. Haven’t used any standalone yabause apps yet either.
Mednafen-Saturn, if posted on Android, would need a power of what mednafen-psx and dolphin needs to run. The only way to play Saturn games right now is to use SSF on windows instead since there isn’t good emulators on other platforms.

PlayStation: The PCSX-ReARMed core runs very great on the Tablet. It does run very well in enhanced resolution too. I recommend this over epsxe app. Only downfall is its limited choice of resolution, only going up to 2x the internal resolution. I haven’t tested intense games on the tablet yet, but the core is able to run with enhanced resolution in full speed. Rest is in default settings.
Mednafen-PSX would run between half speed and near full speed a lot of times, and would partly run near full speed. I wouldn’t recommend this core at all on K1. I even lowered the settings and it’s only a small improvement. It may change when Libretro starts implementing hardware rendering to the core on android. Hoping the opengl renderer doesn’t have stuttering by shader compilation like the gliden64 do on android, which will be explained below.
If you are running this on epsxe app, then it will run very well, but haven’t tested recently, and with opengl renderer. Opengl does have glitches and especially on the 2D elements. I stick with hardware with upscaling and don’t use the software since it isn’t as accurate as PCSX-ReARMed, as missing lines and gaps are there. The performance on either settings can run very well. I don’t know if using subpixel hacks may change that since I haven’t used the app in years.

N64: Tested Glupen64 on Retroarch. Performance isn’t always full and helps a little with framebuffer off. On both regular Glupen64 and the one with GLES 3, even with default settings, some framebuffer effects do have glitches. I tested this without hard sync at all. Conker’s Bad Fur Day doesn’t always run full speed even with framebuffer turned off and run at 240p resolution, and it still happens when trying it several times after the first, and the first only run near full speed constantly because of shader compilation. It’s not as worse as Dolphin but it can stutter a bit on the first try. Same with Mupen64plus FZ to an extent, but much better N64 app. It can run full speed a lot in other games, but sometimes on the first try of any game. You can create a new profile on emulation section and customize the video settings. It has great speed on HLE RSP core, and Full Opengl for Gliden64 should be checked, as it will have full framebuffer features in it. On GL ES, some frame buffer would have an empty look on certain games and would provide no performance benefit nor does the GL ES 2.0 have any speed improvements on any settings. I recommend leaving the resolution the highest quality for gliden64 and let the Native resolution factor handle it. 0x will go on any resolution, and I tried 1200p on the games, and the heavy frame buffer effects on some games like Pokemon Stadium 2 and maybe Majorija’s mask would slowdown until I play them in 720p. However, I always like playing it on the game’s native resolution at 1x factor, as 2D elements and impacted performance on heavy frame buffering effects gets reduced even further. Aside from the shader compilation, it should run fine with Gliden64 Opengl 4.5, with HLE RSP core. Certain games like Pokemon Puzzle League has problem with the FMVs, so you would have to use CXD4 HLE RSP core if you only want that fixed partically, but the shield tablet K1 couldn’t handle that RSP core.

Dreamcast: Reicast was tested on one game so far in my tablet K1, but I’ve seen videos that a lot of the titles are playable, like Sonic Adventure games. I’d say they have great performance, but the app itself do have glitches on some games, as I tested Bangai-O so far with poor image quality, and selecting software renderer didn’t change anything. I am not sure about demanding Dreamcast games since I don’t know a lot about this system.

GBA: While all the cores runs perfect in performance, mGBA is the best for accuracy.

GameCube: A story I would shorten. According to several forums on Dolphin, working with 32-bit ARM devices are unreliable especially updating to at least Android 6.0, which changed memory allocation and fastmem doesn’t work at all, and a lot of graphical glitches shows up. Performance doesn’t change much when underclocking. Maybe certain games do when performing on Android 5, but it’s a mess for me than what the videos on YouTube has shown. I know Super Mario Sunshine should be playable with underclocking, as long as you don’t go above Android 6. Several builds of Dolphin Android exists before June 2015 when they give up support on non 64-bit android devices. I suggest buying a K1 device that has Denver 64-bit processor, or better, the Shield TV.

PSP: Always use the standalone PPSSPP app instead of from retroarch for performance and relevance reasons. The emulator should have great performance and should be flawless at 1x internal resolution without frameskipping or automatic frameskipping set up to 1. As for going up on internal resolution, some games runs very great on 4x without any frame skipping and 2x works well on several intense games like Sword Art Online and Tomb Raider games, as I can’t run these decently on LG G2 as much. No underclocking is applied. Maybe setting automatic frame skipping would bring a lot of performance on higher resolution,
as I was getting better performance on several games I played on it. I did set real clock sync for less input latency just like Hard sync from Retroarch, as some games needed to play at the lowest latency. There was a little performance gain when real clock sync is off. I get great performance when playing most games with auto frameskipping and choose 3x internal resolution. I haven’t really test an intense game like tekken so I’ll post of how it performs.

Dosbox: I use Magic Dosbox and I could run dynamic constantly around 36000 cycles which is a performance of a 486 100mhz. On normal core, I could run at 12000 cycles which is at 486 33mhz. What I did is open the norton 8 program and look at CPU performance and all I did was moving the mouse around rapidly to see the average and lowest performance since setting the cycles to max bounces the benchmark number up and down, so moving the mouse around shows me what is the lowest and average performance I can get. I base the cycles and benchmark numbers on a spreadsheet that shows what cycles would simulate the chips. Setting the cycles to max can have the performance above the given cycles.

I realize that I didn’t test more systems in Retroarch yet, but I think most of the ones I didn’t use should be very playable. Now I will explain more about my app settings on performance.

OpenGL had to be set because Vulkan, as it is supported on Tablet K1, the app has trouble with the new api, as the framerate would go half as I looked on with threaded video off. With it on, you would notice the same framerate still. It’s not the best way to play at the moment. As for Shaders, I used xbr-level3-noblend as it keeps the framerate above 60, on many cores if not zooming beyond 6x or 7x of 240p. The one without noblend goes a bit down, but not nearly half the framerate. The K1 chip can be identical to Geforce GT 630 or slightly better than GT 430, so the shaders should be usable on most of them.

Next, I will list the cores and apps to what cores and emulators are playable to the Tegra 3.

NES: Nestopia UE should be playable since it is light on performance.

SMS/GG/Genesis/CD/32X: The Genesis GX Plus is playable on the chip, and I didn’t have any performance issues on the core when I used the tablet with Tegra 3 in it. Picodrive seems to work as well, so 32X games should work too.

SNES: I didn’t have issues on Snes9x-Next, or the 2010 one as the current name. The mainline plays fine, but you can get slight stutters on the main core, and it did happen when I played FFVI.

Gameboy/Color: Gambatte seems to play very well when I played Shantae and other games in it. No performance issues there.

Sega Saturn: I never played it there, but I doubt it would run Yabause decently since the real hardware and emulation is hard and demanding.

PlayStation: Runs fine on PCSX-ReARMed well, as long as you stick on a native resolution. Enhanced Resolution with Speed Hack can help visuals and performance, respectively, but performance can be better when playing on a native resolution.
For ePSXe, playing on a hardware mode runs fine, including on higher resolution, but the opengl one, like I said above, is experimental, and performance can vary due to being experimental. It’s better to use hardware mode, and software mode runs in native resolution, it is not accurate on HUD on non-320x240p games.

Nintendo 64: I know Tegra 3 supports only GLES 2, and Gliden64 has support for it, but what I’ve heard, performance isn’t as good as using Glide64 or Rice video plugins. Gliden64 gles 2 wouldn’t start or only show black screen. I tested Mupen64plus FZ edition and Glide64 Fast runs fine, but any plugins won’t run some games like Conker’s Bad Fur Day in full speed in any resolution. Use Glide64 despite having bad 2D alignment.

GBA: Prior to mGBA, VBA-M have performance issues and goes near full speed, so I would have to use VBA-Next, which has better performance, but some games I tested aren’t perfect, as it has glitches and lag in it. mGBA is a better option since performance and emulation is better than both cores I mentioned. I have no issue, and I recommend this since I had issues on standalone GBA apps.

PPSSPP: It runs fine on some games at 1x resolution with every speed options checked in the performance section, as well as having Texture coordinate speed hack enabled. Certain games would not run at least half speed like Tomb Raider or Sword Art Online, and I knew that it can’t run Tekken 6 either. Underclocking doesn’t improve speed as much. I always have audio latency to high for performance.

Dosbox: Had use Dosbox Turbo before and afreebox, and best performance on dynamic is around 9200 cycles which is a performance of 486 25mhz and on normal, I would go around 4500 cycles that is a performance of 386 25mhz. I never tested Magic Dosbox on Tegra 3, but on Dosbox Turbo, the dynamic core can go near 12000 cycles.

Most shaders on Tegra 3 won’t run at full speed, so using basic scanline or CRT RPI or fast variants can run at full speed only.

Next page is about the settings I used on my Shield Tablet K1.