A (Potentially) Battery-Saving Question (Pi Zero W)

[GigaCat]

So I'm almost done with my first GBZ, and I can't help but notice that EmulationStation, even at 320x240, is a little sluggish. With it lingering in the background during gameplay, just how beneficial would it be to cut out the middle man and just build/run RetroArch from boot with the RGUI menu driver? I can't shake the feeling that this might help with both performance and power draw.

Also of note, I'm using the Simple theme, so it's not exactly optimized for this resolution. I'll test and edit later.

[infinitLoop]

So I'm almost done with my first GBZ, and I can't help but notice that EmulationStation, even at 320x240, is a little sluggish. With it lingering in the background during gameplay, just how beneficial would it be to cut out the middle man and just build/run RetroArch from boot with the RGUI menu driver? I can't shake the feeling that this might help with both performance and power draw.

Also of note, I'm using the Simple theme, so it's not exactly optimized for this resolution. I'll test and edit later.

are you running the spi screen? that tends to have a bit of a stutter at first for me too. i'm pretty sure it's related to the GPU throttling that the Pi does when there isn't much load. i think what happens is that the core_freq dials down to ~250hz when there isn't anything going on on the screen, but dials back to the default 400 when stuff starts making screen changes. And that's what the SPI drivers use to push changes to the screen. i've messed around with the overclock settings and managed to force the core_freq to be 400hz all the time, which seemed to help with that, but i was worried about what forcing that all the time would do to the pi.

btw - @rxbrad's GBZ35 themes fit the form factor perfectly.

[GigaCat]

are you running the spi screen? that tends to have a bit of a stutter at first for me too. i'm pretty sure it's related to the GPU throttling that the Pi does when there isn't much load. i think what happens is that the core_freq dials down to ~250hz when there isn't anything going on on the screen, but dials back to the default 400 when stuff starts making screen changes. And that's what the SPI drivers use to push changes to the screen. i've messed around with the overclock settings and managed to force the core_freq to be 400hz all the time, which seemed to help with that, but i was worried about what forcing that all the time would do to the pi.

btw - @rxbrad's GBZ35 themes fit the form factor perfectly.

I eventually arrived at a few conclusions, including core_freq and force_turbo.

I am indeed using the SPI screen offered at pocketadventures.com. For the sake of experimentation, I ditched the fbcp driver in their guide in favor or trying my hand at juj's fantastic fbcp-ili9341 driver. Works like a charm, but I went into it with very base level customizations that didn't play well with my Zero W and ultimately caused regular stuttering. I've been fine-tuning it since yesterday, though, and it seems fine now.

I ran with my initial self-proposal - RetroPie's splash screen service with a direct compile of RetroArch 1.7.6 on autostart - but I think I'm ready to re-implement ES.

[infinitLoop]

are you running the spi screen? that tends to have a bit of a stutter at first for me too. i'm pretty sure it's related to the GPU throttling that the Pi does when there isn't much load. i think what happens is that the core_freq dials down to ~250hz when there isn't anything going on on the screen, but dials back to the default 400 when stuff starts making screen changes. And that's what the SPI drivers use to push changes to the screen. i've messed around with the overclock settings and managed to force the core_freq to be 400hz all the time, which seemed to help with that, but i was worried about what forcing that all the time would do to the pi.

btw - @rxbrad's GBZ35 themes fit the form factor perfectly.

I eventually arrived at a few conclusions, including core_freq and force_turbo.

I am indeed using the SPI screen offered at pocketadventures.com. For the sake of experimentation, I ditched the fbcp driver in their guide in favor or trying my hand at juj's fantastic fbcp-ili9341 driver. Works like a charm, but I went into it with very base level customizations that didn't play well with my Zero W and ultimately caused regular stuttering. I've been fine-tuning it since yesterday, though, and it seems fine now.

I ran with my initial self-proposal - RetroPie's splash screen service with a direct compile of RetroArch 1.7.6 on autostart - but I think I'm ready to re-implement ES.

if you get it running well, i'd be very curious what you ended up doing i haven't had much luck with the juj driver on the zero, with most 16 bit games, so I tried using Retropie 4.3, and that worked out much better overall, for whatever reason. 8bit was usually fine, but most 16bit games i tried were unplayable. with a pi3, the driver is impressively smooth though. i think it has to do with the gpu and everything the zero is using that for, but i just haven't been able to nail down how to get it working as smoothly as other setups.