Poor performance on a Celeron N3060 (DuckStation and the original port runs smooth).

[MDM808]

Hello again—here I am at another repository! ;D

Last night, I was about to download the Mega Man X6 Recomp when I realized you had released the Mega Man X4/X5 Recomp versions.

Since I had the Mega Man X4 ISO handy, I decided to give it a try.

I used my USA ISO and the SCPH1001.bin BIOS... However, when running it in OpenGL mode (it runs slower in software mode), I notice audio lag, sluggish cutscenes, and a low frame rate.

I tested the same ISO with DuckStation and had no issues—it ran at a smooth 60fps without a hitch. I also tested the original PC port (patched for Windows 10 with controller support) and had no problems (aside from the cutscene missings codec).

Could it be that my PC just can't handle the Recomp runtime? It's an Intel Celeron N3060 with 4GB of RAM that I use for retro gaming on Windows 10.

Cheers!

[mstan]

Hello! Thanks for the issue.

I suspect the issue was likely more about the psxrecomp ecosystem. It is still in active development, so there's a lot of ongoing ecosystem changes.

My suspicion is it had to do with how the game handles interpreter fallback when trying to discover overlay regions. I've since made considerable improvements to both the interpreter and sharding mechanisms and cut a release yesterday with these changes.

In theory, static recompilation, once optimized, ought to actually run better on weaker hardware. Just need to keep refining the process.

Mind to give the latest release a try and let's see how it goes?

[MDM808]

Yes, I'm going to give it a try and keep you posted on the results.

The PC port of Silent Hill runs fine for me, at a stable 30 fps. So, I figure it must be a runtime issue.

[mstan]

Hello! Wanted to follow up to see how this was performing for you. If you haven't tried it yet, I do encourage trying release v0.0.3 or later to let me know if the issues persist. PSXRecomp performance has drastically increased since initial release.

[mstan]

Hiya. Following up on this. It looks like turbo mode may have been causing some performance issues. It's disabled by default in 0.0.5. Can you give that a try for me as well? Thank you!

[MDM808]

Hi, no problem! I'm currently testing the new version on Windows and Proton, and I'll let you know the results.

If you could upload a native AppImage version for Linux, I'd really appreciate it (so I don't have to rely on Proton).

Cheers!

[mstan]

No worries.

I can't promise it's as tested as the Windows variant; but psxercomp can do AppImages. I did some basic validation in WSL. https://github.com/mstan/MegaManX4Recomp/releases/tag/v0.0.5-alpha

If you want to give it a try, I tossed up an AppImage.

[MDM808]

I'm testing the native Linux version and it works PERFECTLY!!!

No audio issues. I extracted the .AppImage into a folder, put my ISO in .cue/.bin format, and that was it.

Tested on an Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-3220 (4) @ 3.30 GHz with 16GB of DDR3 RAM. Running on Linux Mint Debian Edition 7.

One of the things I love about your releases is that, since they use SDL, they run without needing X11 or Wayland. I can launch them directly from a raw Linux terminal with minimal memory usage!

I'll run tests on my Windows 10 PC in a little while.

[mstan]

Good to know about SDL. I do try to target re-usable frameworks across my ecosystems since I'm trying to do more than PSX.

Love to hear it's running smoothly on Linux.

Excited to hear how Windows 10 comes back!

[MDM808]

Hi again; I'm running tests on the same low-end PC I mentioned at the start of the post.

And yes, I'm having performance issues. The intro FMVs are laggy, and the game's performance is poor compared to the original native PC port of Megaman X4 or the same ISO running via DuckStation and PCSX-R in RetroArch.

Specs:

CPU: Intel(R) Celeron(R) N3060 (2) @ 2.40 GHz
GPU: Intel(R) HD Graphics (114.00 MiB) [Integrated]

4GB of RAM on Windows 10.

However, I've concluded that the issue actually lies with my specs, not the Recomp itself.

I don't think the runtime is designed to run on this hardware, and I don't see that as a bad thing. My i3 machine is already a 10-year-old PC, and the Intel Celeron is an even older, slower processor.

Recomps like Symphony of the Night or Crash Bandicoot / Crash Team Racing suffer from the same problem; they aren't designed to run on such a low-powered PC.

Cheers!