Overclocking the... emulator?

[Terranigma]

You know, I always wanted a feature like this on emulators, but I'm not sure if it's possible. I've read someone on the N-sider forum who overclocked his N64 and it made Perfect Dark run smoothly. Would it be possible to add a similar feature on the emulators themselves? I'm not talking about skip frames. Skipping frames makes the game unplayable and screws up the music. Is 1964 still being worked on--or Rice Video for that matter? I've notice something like this for SNES emulators, but it's not really overclocking, just different programming I guess. For example, Snes9x can run more action intensive games without slow down, but Zsnes will run the game exactly like the SNES. Try out Final Fight 3 on both emulators and you'll see the difference when there's lots of big sprites on-screen.

 

[DarkMythril]

hmmm? that would be good terra but i think if you can't run PD smoothly its more likely your comp

 

[Terranigma]

No no no, the Perfect Dark frame rate issue is in the original N64 game, not the emulator. The guy who overclocked his system (not the emu) got better frame rate because of it. I haven't played PD on emu yet, but I think it's safe to assume that the emu will try to reproduce what the real N64 can do and it'll probably have frame rate issues the same place where the N64 had trouble with.

 

[Poobah]

Having a faster computer is sort of like an overclocked N64. That's why we can run games like CBFD with a CF of 1 with a perfect frame rate (on decent computers).

Also, I've found that I can run all games on ZSNES (even Star Ocean) without slowdown.

 

[Terranigma]

Also, I've found that I can run all games on ZSNES (even Star Ocean) without slowdown.

That's an RPG though, but it does have quite a few sprites on screen. I'm talking intense games like Gradius, Final Fight, and Harvest Moon (well try playing the game with 12 cows on screen and watch the game slow down like hell).

 

[Lemmy]

Actually its not necessary in emulators. I like this topic, so I'll go into some details:

The real n64 has two processors (main cpu and rcp) which run parallel. So in some cases one processor has to wait for the other one to finish. If this happens games usually skip stuff to keep up the speed.

In emulators (well at least in my one and i am quite sure in every other one, too) the rcp is simulated at "infinite" speed. This means that the main cpu is halted during execution. So if some game tried to measure the time needed for the rcp to finish some task it would measure almost 0 clock cycles as time is halted for the main program.

This means the game is NEVER busy rendering graphics (unless your pc is too slow but in that case the game has no way of finding out). So a game will always run at its own maximum speed (which is 30 fps for mario, 20 fps for zelda). In Perfect Dark this is very visible: It runs horribly slow on the real thing sometimes but always smooth in emus (not that I ever tried another emu )

It would be damn cool to find some way to increase this "maximum" speed (like 20 fps in zelda). For 99% of the games this can only be done using software patching, but i dunno how

 

[åsabo]

Actually its not necessary in emulators. I like this topic, so .......

My Zelda runa at 50fps in normal speed. And in 1964, press F9 to overclock

 

[Clements]

My Zelda runa at 50fps in normal speed. And in 1964, press F9 to overclock

Ocarina of Time does run at 20fps whilst in-game (30fps in menus) on the real system and emulators.

And in 1964, press F9 to overclock

Disabling the frame limiter is not overclocking any of the emulated processors. It just removes the framerate cap so the game becomes too fast.

 

[Poobah]

That's an RPG though, but it does have quite a few sprites on screen. I'm talking intense games like Gradius, Final Fight, and Harvest Moon (well try playing the game with 12 cows on screen and watch the game slow down like hell).

Star Ocean is the slowest SNES game that I know of. Fast games like Harvest Moon and Gradius (haven't played Final Fight) ran almost perfectly on my old Pentium 166.

 

[Clements]

Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius slows down no matter how fast your system is. Games like Star Ocean are not the type of games that have slowdowns on the real system. ZSNES will emulate slowdowns if they exist on the real hardware.

It would not be possible for a SNES emulator to 'fix' slowdowns without custom settings or hacks, or breaking many games due to timing issues (which editing the % to execute in the ZSNES CFG file can lead to).

 

[åsabo]

Ocarina of Time does run at 20fps whilst in-game (30fps in menus) on the real system and emulators. Disabling the frame limiter is not overclocking any of the emulated processors. It just removes the framerate cap so the game becomes too fast.

That's fun when the game is too fast

And, whats this??

It's the same in 1964 but there is seemingly VI/s instead of FPS.
And the FPS meter "on-screen", it shows always anything weird.. :S

 

[Clements]

That represents FIELDS per second (=V/Is) and not frames per second. Use FRAPS and you will see that the framerate is 20fps. The framerate on the N64 is completely dynamic and not a fixed value. Lemmy knows what he is talking about.

 

[åsabo]

That represents FIELDS per second (=V/Is) and not frames per second. Use FRAPS and you will see that the framerate is 20fps. The framerate on the N64 is completely dynamic and not a fixed value. Lemmy knows what he is talking about.

yes, but I don't know what I am talking about..

EDIT: in the video plugins settings ist it "frames per second". So?

 

[Terranigma]

Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius slows down no matter how fast your system is. Games like Star Ocean are not the type of games that have slowdowns on the real system. ZSNES will emulate slowdowns if they exist on the real hardware.

Wow, I didn't think I'd find another Parodius fan here. Yes, you hit it right on the spot. When you are fully loaded with weapons, simply firing them while no enemies on screen causes slowdown, but that's not the case with SNES9x.

It would not be possible for a SNES emulator to 'fix' slowdowns without custom settings or hacks, or breaking many games due to timing issues (which editing the % to execute in the ZSNES CFG file can lead to).

Really? Cause I saw a video of people overclocking an NES and they showed up 2 different videos comparing the speed of Kirby's Adventure when he's breathing fire. Ah well, this isn't N64 emu related anyway so you can just ignore it.

And thanks for clearing things up about how the emulator works.