9.9.1b > 1.0

[DreamDropDistance]

Since no one seems to be addressing this, I took it upon myself to be the first one to.

So... why exactly is the 1.0 Android build inferior compared to version 9.9.1b? It feels as though games are more laggy, slow and stuterish in the latest version compared to the older 9.9. What are the changes in 1.0? And why does it perform poorly than 9.9?

[Henrik]

That's a very good question, as I'm not seeing it. You're gonna have to be more specific.

What games are more laggy? On what hardware? What games work worse?

There are A LOT of improvements in 1.0, many games work better, and it's certainly not intentional that anything should work worse.

[DreamDropDistance]

Games feel slower somehow in 1.0.

For example, in Dissidia Duodecim, battles seem way slower and laggy with choppy audio compared to 9.9.

In P3P, rotating the screen while walking around Tartarus and summoning a Persona in battle lags the game in 1.0, while in the older build it does not.

In BBS, it lags more frequently.

I don't know if it is just my phone (Dualcore with 1GB RAM only) but games just feel too laggy compared to 9.9.1b. Quadcore 2GB RAM phones might not even have this problem to begin with.

[LG Fanatic]

(02-04-2015 11:21 PM)DreamDropDistance Wrote:  Games feel slower somehow in 1.0.

For example, in Dissidia Duodecim, battles seem way slower and laggy with choppy audio compared to 9.9.

In P3P, rotating the screen while walking around Tartarus and summoning a Persona in battle lags the game in 1.0, while in the older build it does not.

In BBS, it lags more frequently.

I don't know if it is just my phone (Dualcore with 1GB RAM only) but games just feel too laggy compared to 9.9.1b. Quadcore 2GB RAM phones might not even have this problem to begin with.

I would enable the FPS(frames per second) and game speed display to determine of your games are in fact slower. What's the GPU in your phone?

[[Unknown]]

Emulating the single core PSP doesn't really benefit a ton from quad core, actually. So a quad core processor should not have much of an edge over a dual core one.

It will matter far, far more what GPU you have and what the CPU mhz is. A quad core at 1Ghz would be definitely worse for PPSSPP than a single core 2.5Ghz CPU. But even that matters less than the GPU.

From tests I did before, I'm pretty sure it's faster. In some games it's slower, but only because the graphics are more correct.

What device exactly do you have? I have a Nexus 5. If you don't know, go into PPSSPP and under Settings -> System -> Developer -> System information, take a screenshot. It should say what device you have at the top.

Anyway, I think someone did say it has gotten slower on certain PowerVR devices right?

-[Unknown]

[klezpox]

I've noticed that my games run much faster with the update and came here just to say thanks!!

[Acorns]

Greetings!

I came to the forums today to see if I could find a solution to the decreased performance issue. Seeing the lack of posts about it, I'm guessing it is an issue only with a small subset of devices. I'm running the android version.

My device:
Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (US Version)
http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_note_4-6434.php
Snapdragon 805
Quad-core 2.7 GHz Krait 450
Adreno 420 GPU

Currently one of the fastest android devices on the market. If you need any more info on the specs just let me know what.

The performance difference between the previous market version and the new one is roughly 40% less, although it varies per game. Overall a huge difference.

In the previous version I can run practically every game in 4x psp resolution, with texture filtering on at full speed and no music skips. There were occasional slowdowns in certain games (MH3 for example) but only rarely. With the same settings on the new version, games run at 60-90% of their full speed (tested using ingame vps monitor).

Tested:
Loco Roco - title screen
Old version, 100% no slowdowns
New version, varies between 40% and 70%. The biggest slowdown.

MH3 village - bottom of the village
Old version, 92-97% (music skipping often)
New version, 50%-65%

Soul Calibur - in fight
Old version - 100% no slowdowns
New version - 80% to 90% (music constantly skipping)

MHFU - village top
Old version - 100% no slowdowns (for the entire game as well!)
New version - 70-80%

I got my phone for christmas, and ppsspp is one of the first things I installed. Shortly after testing it I then installed a dev build. The slowdowns existed at that point. I have occasionally installed dev builds (to play with the built in adhoc pro server, etc) since then and the slowdown has been present in all of them. I have not tried builds earlier than late Dec 2014 ones, other than the previous market release.

There is no single setting that seems to be causing the slowdown. I have played with them all at length, and can get some games (soul calibur) back to near fullspeed with 1x psp, underclocked cpu, and every speedhack checked but others come no where close even then (and obviously the experience is much worse). If you would like a listing of the settings I am currently playing with I can provide them, but I don't believe a single setting to be the cause.

If there is any other information or logs I can provide let me know and I will be happy to provide them. I'd love to be able to run the newer versions and not be stuck on an old one!

[Henrik]

@Acorns, do you think you could try some builds in between to figure out when the slowness started? Probably soon after 0.9.9.1 then...

You can get all the builds necessary here: http://buildbot.orphis.net/ppsspp/index.php?m=fulllist

[[Unknown]]

Yeah, that phone should be faster than mine and run pretty well. There must be a reason it's slower.

Do you use any cheats?

Does it help Loco Roco to change spline/bezier quality to low, but otherwise keep 4x PSP etc.?

If you set 4x PSP render resolution, but 1x PSP hw scaler (it will look a bit blurry) is the speed better? Or do you have to lower the render resolution to improve speed?

You are not using "read framebuffers to memory", right? Just buffered rendering.

I know you said no speed hacks help, but just to confirm, turning off "block transfers" and checking "disable slower effects" doesn't help, right? (the things disabled by those settings, and also spline/bezier, would be most likely to be slower in 1.0.)

Also, if you can test builds as Henrik mentioned, I recommend doing it by halves. Since you know it was already bad in December, you can try something like v0.9.9.1-496-g11a87b4 (http://buildbot.orphis.net/ppsspp/index....=android), and if it works, then it must be after that build, but it it is still slow, then it's before. That will eliminate ~500 possible causes right there.

-[Unknown]

[Acorns]

Sure, I'll do a binary search style on the builds and see where the speed drop happened. It will probably be tomorrow before I can start though.

As for settings:
I do not use any cheats (Enable cheats unchecked).

Changing the bezier quality to low might gain 1-2% speed increase. Kind of hard to tell exactly as loco roco jumps around in speed quite a bit. Changes the locorocos to look more like hexagons than round, though low is much higher quality in the new release than the old one

My normal setting has been unbuffered rendering and 4x display resolution, as I didn't notice any issues with it in the games I play. Switching to buffered rendering:

4x rendering and 1x display is roughly the same speed as unbuffered and 4x display, although they jump around in speed in slightly different ways.

There is roughly a 5% speed difference between buffered 4x rendering, 1x display and 1x rendering, 1x display. Changing display from 1x to 4x is a huge quality increase, but only seems to affect speed ~1%.

Unbuffered with 1x display is slightly faster than buffered with 1x rendering and 1x display. Also worth noting, there is a pretty decent difference in speed between unbuffered 2x display and unbuffered 1x display, but then not much difference between 2x display and 4x display.

My normal settings in regards to those speedhacks are:
Block transfers off (old and new version)
Disable slower effects (unchecked)

If I check disable slower effects, it provides roughly 2% more speed in MHP3 village bottom.

Thanks for the replies

[[Unknown]]

Wow, so basically, none of those things make that huge a difference? I mean, really I don't expect those things to be that hard on your device, but I was hoping something would point to why it's slower for you now...

Well, hopefully we can find what caused the drop. If those settings only have that small a difference, you should definitely be getting better speeds I think.

The labels are perhaps a bit unclear for buffered rendering; the options are: "allow games to use buffers for effects" and "ignore when games use buffers". If there's no big difference between the two, I recommend buffered for sure. There's probably some effects in some game you play that use buffers, since most games use them in some way or another (pretty sure Soul Calibur does from bug reports I've seen, don't have the game... I think it uses block transfers also.)

-[Unknown]

[Acorns]

My issue is solved:

I was setting up to start the tests, and wanted to get a clean repeatable base test for both 9.9.1 and 1.0, so I removed everything, including the psp folder and whatever is stored within (after backing up the savedata folder).

After doing so, installed 1.0 and the speed issue was gone.

I went through every setting multiple times I'm sure; but either I did miss something somehow which had an effect in 1.0 but (less/none/wasn't used) in 9.9.1, or something was wrong with the ini maybe? I didn't keep the old one so I can't compare now.

Sorry to waste time when it looks like it was specific to my installation after all!

[Henrik]

Hm, you didn't back up the ppsspp.ini ? Would have been interesting to diff it with a fresh one..

But alright, I won't let this issue hold up 1.0.1 anymore Release later this week.

[DreamDropDistance]

The speed issue is gone for me as well.

I hope 1.0.1 fixes Wild Arms XF's disappearing controls.

Thank you for this great emulator, sir.

[Henrik]

Yeah, it fixes the only cause of disappearing controls I was able to find after a lot of testing, so pretty sure it will.