Retroarch question?

[RPGFanboi]

Hello there guys so today i discovered this nice thing called Retroarch. I dont know much about it yet but it seems it has potencial to be the best thing to emulate games. I downloaded the Playstation Emulator and tried some Metal Gear Solid, pretty good performance on 1x Internal Resolution but if i put it at 2x it starts to lag which it sucks. What kind of processor do I need to be able to run it smoothly? My processor right now is AMD FX 6100 3.30ghz 6 Cores.
Can anyone experienced on this subject help me? Also im trying to apply shaders but dont think its working at all. Thanks in Advance.

[lordmonkus]

If you are going to try and upscale use the hardware core. The normal PSX core uses software rendering which can get pretty heavy on the system quickly. The hardware version should allow you to upscale easier. Though keep in mind that the hardware version is not quite on par with the software version and you may run into other bugs.

[RPGFanboi]

So you mean the PSX mednafen psx hw? Do i change the Renderer to OpenGL? I think my best bet is to play on Epsxe 2.05 lol the thing i dont like it is that the OpenGL2 doesnt really use Vsync ( I already tried forcing it on Nvdia settings still it doesnt work ) the games dont look smooth on this graphic plugin :/. I know that Peops soft has Vsync but its crappy on 3D games. Thanks for the reply

[lordmonkus]

Yeah the PSX HW one is the hardware one. OpenGL renderer is generally the best renderer to use is the vast majority of cases.
ePSXe 2.05 is a very good emulator and I do use it for 3D games but I also only have a couple of 3D games.

[Warrior]

I am the resident RetroArch enthusiast and I may be able to answer a few questions.

The internal GPU upscaler for the Mednafen core makes certain games look nicer but it also puts more demand on the CPU, Mednafen is totally dependent on the CPU.

The Mednafen PSX HW core is still a WIP and will be buggy.

There is alot of nice features with the standard core like the ability to turn off dithering and remove memory card 2 (great for games that are weird about a second memory card like Codename Tenka)

[RPGFanboi]

Yeah i love this Retroarch thing but i guess i wont be able to run it not even at 2x Internal Res lol my cpu is just a AMD 6100 FX 3.30ghz 6 core. Need at least a i7 i think. Oh well thanks yall.

[Warrior]

Yeah i love this Retroarch thing but i guess i wont be able to run it not even at 2x Internal Res lol my cpu is just a AMD 6100 FX 3.30ghz 6 core. Need at least a i7 i think. Oh well thanks yall.

Oh you should be able to, its honestly game dependent.

Try it with various games and see the results, its just some games have way more crap going on at the same time so that is what kills it and makes it a crackly chug fest.

[RPGFanboi]

Btw, to play 2D games what is the best plugin? I been using gpubladesoft 1.46 but it seems kinda bugged. I want to play games like breath of fire III, can you suggest a good one? Thanks in Advance.

[Bruno]

I'm not a expert in Retroarch but for me it's the ultimate place to play games!

Mednafen PSX HW should be avoided! At least for now till you can get a beast machine and they take some time to make things better.

I prefer the normal mednafen cause for what I understand it runs the game like a original PS1 would do and for me that's what's important! I try to avoid this fancy graphics things and try to be more accurate.

One thing that helped me in my old laptop was to try the option that the Mednafen-psx core has that caches the whole ISO in RAM. At the time someone told me to do it made no sense but that option helped A LOT!

Btw, to play 2D games what is the best plugin? I been using gpubladesoft 1.46 but it seems kinda bugged. I want to play games like breath of fire III, can you suggest a good one? Thanks in Advance.

If I would play 2D games I think I would use a CRT shader. CRT Royale for me is the best!

[Zorlon]

Breath of Fire III is a 3D game with 2D sprites, it's going to look better with 3D plugins/effects or whatever filtering

Still not got round to fully exploring Retroarch (I just dont have the time on my hands) but did not think it used plugins or is that a recent thing

[Bruno]

For what I remember mednafen do not use any plugins! That's why I loved it It has only one way for you to experience the video and audio and it is as the original console!

He must be using ePSXe that's why the need for plugins? ePSXe always lagged in my PC for some reason so I waited for mednafen born and fix all my problems

Here is some shots of a PS1 game using CRT Royale shader: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost...&postcount=204

I don't use any filters anymore just this shader

You can see the effect better if you load the image fully in your browser by pressing F11! http://abload.de/img/retroarch-0105-195432rtulm.png