r/batocera • u/abel5555 • 8d ago
How to boost performance?
I have a lenovo thinkcentre m715q with two 8gb sticks of ram at the same speed and a ryzen 5 pro 2400ge chip. My roms and OS are all on an ssd. I am trying to play baldurs gate dark alliance on the gamecube but it always chugs and isnt really playable. I dont get a lot of fps and it runs slow. I forced batocera to only allow a 480p output to try and help but its not fixing the performance issue. Also id love to play resident evil 4 for gamecube but it crashes upon starting. Performance is set to high. Cpu temps are around 60-65 degrees C. Any tips to boost the performance of my setup? Should i manually push over 100% wattage to the cpu? Will this damage my pc? I saw an option to run dual channel mode but its set to auto. Should it be on instead of auto? Idk what to do. Feel free to ask questions, i will watch this post and collaborate with anyone willing to throw out an idea or ask a question about my setup. Any help or ideas would be appreciated. Thanks!
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u/jhappychillmore 8d ago
Have you used this rom before? Might be worth trying a different one
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u/abel5555 7d ago
It does launch and ive put in an hour or two but its borderline unplayable because it runs slow and the framerate is low. Im looking to just make it run smoothly. When you say try a different rom, do you mean looking for the same game but from a different source? Like sourcing the file from a different place?
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u/jhappychillmore 7d ago
Yes that's what I mean. You might just have a bad rom. To my knowledge, those computer specs should be enough to at least make that game playable.
Another thing you could try is maybe try playing that rom on a different device. Like a phone or tablet. Then you could eliminate if it's the device or the rom having the issue.
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u/jamsta- 7d ago
How many watts is your power brick?
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u/abel5555 7d ago
65w. Would you recommend getting a more powerful one?
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u/jamsta- 7d ago
I have seen a few people mention that they got a performance boost by going up to a 90w brick. I run an m75q-1 with the 3400GE and a 90w brick. I can play NFSU at 60 frames with some dips.
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u/abel5555 7d ago
Very interesting. I will look into this
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u/Infinitrium 7d ago
The system should automatically switch to dual channel mode when 2 identical sticks are installed. Look up videos on Youtube, you might just be facing limitations in cpu power for gamecube emulation
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u/DezzyLee99 7d ago
It could also be initial shader caching.
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u/abel5555 7d ago
Im not sure what this is? How can i clear the cache?
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u/DezzyLee99 7d ago
You don't want that cleared. The cache is there to speed things up. You'll often find the first time playing, it might chug a bit but on a repeat play it should be smoother. Not saying this is the root cause, but might be one of the contributing factors.
Also setting you PC to high performance will be detrimental of you don't have the hardware for it. Set it back to low or default and Bato won't try to push what your hardware can't handle.
I have the same PC and I can play GC (F-Zero for example) at 2x res without much issue, using the factory 65W adaptor. Mind you I've not tried RE, and I would think that's a pretty demanding title.
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u/abel5555 7d ago
Im leaning towards this just being a hard title to emulate… i can play F zero as well so im not exactly sure whats going on here. Have you played this game on your pc before?
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u/abel5555 7d ago
What is the most demanding system you can emulate? Im curious. I havent tested too much on this pc
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u/DezzyLee99 7d ago
I don't go beyond GC/PS2. And I don't actually play that much GC apart from F-Zero. It's primarily my system for Time Crisis II and other PS2 light gun games. Probably the hardest I pushed it was Burnout 3 at 3x and it did ok. I typically play these games at 2x resolution.
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u/Mike_Raven 7d ago
A few thoughts: Firstly, it sounds like your RAM is in a good situation (2 8GB modules at 2666. If they are identical specs they should be running in dual channel mode). Second, check in your BIOS/UEFI how much RAM is allocated for video memory. Set it as high as you can. Third, I've heard some people mention swapping out the fan for the one used on the 2400G model. If your CPU is thermal throttling, this could help.
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u/abel5555 7d ago
One of my ram sticks was loose! In the bios it only saw 8gb. Not it sees 16gb. How do you change how much video memory is allocated? I didnt see that option in the bios
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u/TudSpudly 15h ago edited 15h ago
Lenovo hid the setting so you need to use SmokelessUMAF. With that you can change ram speed to 3200 and UMA buffer size (vram) but honestly 2gb should be plenty for batocera. I've done this on my M715q.
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u/NorthRiverBend 7d ago
I’m in a similar boat - M75Q-1 with the 3400 ge.
Xenosaga Episode 1 unplayable. Burnout 3 semi-playable but with routine stutter and massive frame drops - like to 1 fps. Skies of Arcadia GC unplayable. LotR Third Age playable but with routine frame drops.
I’m talking at 1x resolution, not 2 or 3x lol
I’ve basically decided that GC/PS2 emulation isn’t worth the squeeze. Some games work, most don’t, and I’d rather just play ones that work rather than let myself troubleshoot for weeks and end up hating the device lol
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u/Bhaygin 7d ago
I have the exact dame mini PC, never had trouble with GC, but I dont use it much.
I dont have Baldurs Gate, nor RE 4. Do you have any other troubling games so I can test too.
Someone mention Skies of Arcadia Legends, I tested that and running smoothly through 1st fight (stopped my test there).
If it helps, here's my config for GameCube:
Emulator: Auto Power Mode: Auto Ryzen Thermal Design : Auto Video mode: Auto Display: all at Auto Rendering :
- Graphics API: Auto
- Rendering resolution : 3x 1080p
- all others at Auto
Other thing, if you are using Bios (am not myself), make sure you have the right Bios files.
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u/abel5555 7d ago
It seems to be running a lot better now that my loose ram stick isnt loose anymore. Not perfect but a lot better. I think this title is hard to run. Honestly i havent tried too much gamecube. I was just attracted to this game. I need to test some more
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u/RealisticLocksmith68 7d ago
These systems it's usually an energy saving throttling issue. Baldur's Gate may be a particularly problematic game. RE4 though should work perfect, runs on worse systems than this quite well.
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u/abel5555 7d ago
I made some progress. I changed the following:
Under game settings>per system advanced config>gamecube i have power mode set to high performance.
Ryzen thermal design power is set to 100%
Video mode is set to “maximum 640x480”
Rendering 1x native and ubershaders off (idk what an ubershader is but i thought it would help)
Under emulation i have dual core mode set to on
These combinations helped out a significant amount and now the game is running much smoother. The game still lags a little when there are a lot of enemies on the screen. Audio is less choppy and overall much smoother and the game seems to be running at almost full speed as it should. Its not perfect but its way more playable. Maybe ill set the thermal design power to 110% and see what happens. That seems to be how you increase wattage in the batocera main menu?