Configure PowKiddy V90

[wviana]

Hello,

I'm trying to configure my new device to gift it to a cousin.
I've:

• installed the MiyooCFW.
• expanded the main partition
• place my roms in their directories
• installed Retroarch
• downloaded and installed all this cores
• downloaded most of these frontend zips and extracted into corresponding folders.
• made changes as recommended in this guide

The guide says to use gpSP for GBA, when using this core from retroarch Super Mario Advanced 2 is unplayable. But using gpSP from MiyooCFW it works pretty good. Am I missing something about retroarch config? Should I be working as good as "native" gpSP in retroarch core?

One other thing, after extracting all those assets, db and others, I thought I would be able to change default menu, mu there still showing just one single option. Looks like none of things I placed in retroarch folders changed anything.

Any help is welcome.

[jSTE0]

Am I missing something about retroarch config? Should I be working as good as "native" gpSP in retroarch core?

Probably not, RetroArch cores tend to be slower than the standalone emulators as the latter is typically built with LTO and PGO, which gives a performance increase. The advantage of RetroArch cores is they are maintained so there is a chance for compatibility with certain titles to be fixed, and there are features like rewind (enabled about a week ago in the git version).

That said, this game is playable for me, you might want to experiment with the video settings (video filters will slow it down) and enable frameskip in the core options.

One other thing, after extracting all those assets, db and others, I thought I would be able to change default menu, mu there still showing just one single option. Looks like none of things I placed in retroarch folders changed anything.

Only the rgui menu is available for this platform, like other low-res, "simple" platforms. The menu has to be built into the RetroArch binary and rgui is the only one built. Other frontend zips like shaders are not applicable to this platform as there is no 3D GPU.

[jSTE0]

I was referring to the extensions in the roms folder.

I was thought RetroArch should perform just as native, as cores are just dynamicly linked .so binaries.

PGO can yield up to 20-30% performance improvement, depending on emulator and the specific title being emulated. The standalone emulators built with PGO include gpSP, snes9x4d, and PCSX ReARMed, there are probably a few others.

For sure that is something wrong with mine, RetroArch performance is so bad.

I wonder if it's related to the frontend zips, I never bothered with those (and wasn't even aware of them until now).

[wviana]

PGO can yield up to 20-30% performance improvement, depending on emulator and the specific title being emulated. The standalone emulators built with PGO include gpSP, snes9x4d, and PCSX ReARMed, there are probably a few others.

Isn't possible to compile so with PGO?

[jSTE0]

Isn't possible to compile so with PGO?

It is, it will needed the relevant flags added to the Makefile. The build then becomes a multi-stage process:

1. Build a binary that generates the profile information
2. Execute that binary with an appropriate workload
3. Build an optimised binary using the profile information gathered from step 2.

There is no automation for those steps, particularly step 2 (it would need an emulation framework itself), in the RetroArch CI.

[wviana]

Oh, didn't know it.
So for PGO it created a binary that dumps some data, than uses that data to build a better performant binary. Really interesting.
Doesn't qemu have this processor? This firmware is a linux isn't it?

[jSTE0]

QEMU does emulate this processor but it would have to emulate the other parts of the platform like the video and sound to be able to run the binary as-is. I previously suggested using something like miniretro in #287 (reply in thread).

[Apaczer]

PGO can yield up to 20-30% performance improvement, depending on emulator and the specific title being emulated.

Probably with better flagging the differences may drop to approx ~10% as it mostly tells compiler which parts of code will be used more frequently - inline functions and reorganize code blocks (as I read)

The standalone emulators built with PGO include gpSP, snes9x4d, and PCSX ReARMed, there are probably a few others.

Other ones I know for sure that use PGO, are FCEUX (as seen in another repo) and UAE4ALL. However the QuickNES core in this case is far way optimized for NES emulation, and as for Amiga there is no RetroArch core available for Miyoo to emulate that machine.

@wviana I would suggest you use default RA settings as there was some improvements which have not been yet included in this guide. You may only want to set Configuration - Video - Synchronization - Sync to Exact ...: On for additional performance benefit.

[wviana]

So I've decided to go with all native emulators instead of RetroArch.
Just changing some gmenunx files and got what I want.

Thank you, really nice community here.

[Lensman76]

Would you mind saying if you managed to update any of the standalone emus from whats included in with the MiyooCFW? If so, where did you source them from?