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SSUPII
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Re: nocash 3DS ongoing research

Post by SSUPII » Tue Jun 18, 2019 3:17 pm

Smurfin wrote:
Mon Jun 17, 2019 10:45 pm
Is Citra locked to 30 fps or the actual 3DS is also 30 fps max, or what ?
Depends on the game. Some games have to run at 30fps on the real console so they can have a stable framerate.
Smurfin wrote:
Mon Jun 17, 2019 10:45 pm
Would that be enough juice to emulate 3DS ?
No, absolutely not enough. Emulating anything needs a WAY stronger processor then the console's one. The Snapdragon 855 is not enough yet, unless the emulator gets optimized A LOT.
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kaikun97
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Re: nocash 3DS ongoing research

Post by kaikun97 » Tue Jun 18, 2019 5:01 pm

Since people are comparing powerful smartphone CPUs to the New 3DS and wondering why Citra runs slower than on a PC I should probably point out a few things here.

The New 3DS may pale in comparison to the available chipsets in smartphones today, however this isn't just running 3DS code on a newer ARM chipset, this is a case of emulating the entire console including the CPU, and GPU (of which the GPU is proprietary and not well documented) as well as misc. hardware features and peripherals required to accurately run 3DS software. More often than not, many game consoles including the 3DS are purpose built devices and do not operate in the same way of a PC or a smartphone.

Even though chipsets like the Snapdragon 855 mentioned in this thread are quite powerful, you have to understand why emulators like Citra run faster on a PC.

This example is rather simplied, but it still makes the same point,
You can have a quad core 1GHz x86 CPU and a quad core 1GHz ARM CPU and the x86 CPU will win over in just about every area because of differences in the instruction set (of which x86 CPUs have more) as well as power use. ARM based CPUs are often designed to balance battery life and performance, especially when OSes like Android use a CPU governer to throttle the CPU to save battery life while x86 CPUs often are not limited in this way. This essentially reduces the real performance vs raw performance of the CPU compared to an x86 CPU. Its like having two cars with the exact same engine but one car only has 3 gears and the other has the full 5 gears.

You could compare the high end Snapdragon 855 to an average AMD Ryzen CPU and the AMD CPU would probably win in at least some benchmarking tests.

Unless smartphone CPUs become significantly more power effiencient, I don't see them being matched up to desktop CPUs and therefore, porting emulators will always need far more work and optimisation.

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