Is MiSTer FPGA Overkill For My Needs?

[elvis]

When I used retropie it used to do my head in how long it took linux and the front end to load, even on a fast SD card.

The model 4 RPi hardware can boot from USB3 including things like SSDs in USB3 caddies.

Installation is identical (raw write the image to the disk, attach it and boot). Performance is dramatically better courtesy of both USB3's overall bandwidth and full duplex mode (compared to USB2).

There are plenty of cheap M.2 to USB3 converters that work fine, and turn an RPi4 boot process into about a 10 second wait. Still not the "instant on" feeling of MiSTer, but a marked improvement over sluggish RPi MicroSD boot ("fast SD cards" are still slow).

If you want leaner from there, check out distros like DietPi. Although then you're in to heavy customisation for yourself, and not the "plug and play" nature of pre-built retrogaming distros like Lakka or RetroPie.

I've got a number of RPi4 devices. Most are media players running off MicroSD cards (because they almost never reboot, and are hidden away behind TVs). But my main play device is currently hooked up to an SVGA CRT, and runs TwisterOS which does x86 emulation, and allows me to play Windows9X/2K era games, including 3D stuff, pretty well (as well as DOSBox, ScummVM, and all the usual culprits). It boots from a crappy old 120GB SATA SSD drive I've got in a USB3 caddy, and gets around 150MB/s. The RPi4 can handle a hell of a lot more, but this SSD is quite old. Still, a 10 second boot and 90s/00s era PC games that load pretty quickly are all good enough for me.

I also have a MiSTer and numerous real consoles of course. These things don't have to be "one or the other" decisions. Get one of everything and enjoy what they all uniquely have to offer.

[EmK_IronFist]

Thanks for everyone's input. Regarding the low latency of the Mister that everyone mentions - does this also apply if using a LCD TV via HDMI or is it really to do with viewing on a CRT? I would be using a LCD so I wonder if then the Mister would suffer just the same as a Pi would. I wouldn't be buying the analog IO. If I go for either it would be the digital IO.

No, it's not just a CRT thing.

There's at least three kinds of latency at work in any emulation setup, whether FPGA or software-based.

1. Display latency - the time it takes for the screen on your TV or monitor to show what it has received.
2. Rendering/scaling latency - the time it takes for the frame to be rendered, scaled, and sent to the TV or monitor.
3. Input latency - the time it takes for a button press or input to be detected and processed accordingly

Display latency depends on your LCD and will affect your game the same way no matter what. We just accept it as a fact of life. The real problem is the other kinds of latency that stack on top of it.

The rendering latency of MiSTer is pretty much guaranteed to be lower than almost any emulation you do on a Pi. With the right settings, it's going to be less than a frame. The rendering latency for the Pi will depend on a ton of factors, including which emulator/libretro core is being used.

An decent USB controller (which is most of 'em) is going to have less than a frame of input latency as well on MiSTer, whereas on Pi it can vary from emulator to emulator and controller to controller.

There's also small audio timing differences and audio latency in software/on Raspberry Pi that don't occur on MiSTer. This is something that we don't typically discuss that often because it doesn't affect gameplay anyway, but it is a nice, small perk.

I have to emphasize, what this all *usually* adds up to is only a few frames more. Playing on a Pi might feel only slightly stiffer or clumsier than playing on MiSTer. But my favorite thing about MiSTer is how good the controls feel when I'm playing games, and how fast and fluid the experience is when starting up and picking a game. It just *feels* better. It's hard to explain because it takes playing to notice a difference.

I really think you'll be fine sticking with the Pi for now. The MiSTer will be here and the community will keep growing and the cores will keep getting better and the prices for everything will hopefully be less rough when we get past the parts shortage. You won't regret buying one later when everything is even more refined and the price of DE10 nanos is a bit cheaper.

[Newsdee]

1. Display latency - the time it takes for the screen on your TV or monitor to show what it has received.
2. Rendering/scaling latency - the time it takes for the frame to be rendered, scaled, and sent to the TV or monitor.
3. Input latency - the time it takes for a button press or input to be detected and processed accordingly

Indeed the same LCD has the same input lag regardless of input device, but there's a chance a MiSTer may work better with some screens.

The RPi will output a standard 60hz HDMI signal, but on MiSTer you have the option (INI setting) to send the frequency of the core instead,
which is sometimes slightly off spec (e.g. 59.43hz for NeoGeo or 50hz for PAL cores, etc). Not all LCDs can handle it, but on those than do the video will feel even more responsive.

[pgimeno]

Much like some other folks have mentioned, I think if you're looking at a Pi4, the lag is getting low enough that you won't notice in most games. I'd argue that only a few games truly need as fast a response as possible, like Punch-Out!!.

See also viewtopic.php?f=29&t=2425

[aberu]

On the subject of lag: this ends up being a very individual thing. Some people are less sensitive to it, and I'm not going to make any assumptions about any individuals on this point. I can say that I didn't notice it at the dawn of emulation (although it was definitely there) because I was simply impressed that emulation could implement so much of the underlying games. As time passed, I noticed more and more differences between emulation and the originals, and searched for a way to eliminate these differences.

On the subject of lag, then versus now... I wonder if the early days of Emulation being done on CRT's combined with lower overhead operating systems and less complex hardware (even Genecyst, NESticle, and no$gmb, etc... in MS-DOS on a 486DX4 for my first emulators) actually might have shown reduced lag. Maybe that's why we didn't notice it as much? Doubtful that it was significant, but just something I thought about.

[dshadoff]

Nah, I think back then, there were enough other problems with emulation that lag didn't stand out.

[EmK_IronFist]

On the subject of lag, then versus now... I wonder if the early days of Emulation being done on CRT's combined with lower overhead operating systems and less complex hardware (even Genecyst, NESticle, and no$gmb, etc... in MS-DOS on a 486DX4 for my first emulators) actually might have shown reduced lag. Maybe that's why we didn't notice it as much? Doubtful that it was significant, but just something I thought about.

That's a good question! I think it's totally possible. Considering most of us were also using a PS/2 keyboard (that's direct hardware interrupts with every button press!) on emulators designed around eking out optimal performance at all costs? We had fewer compounding factors for lag in that situation, so it wouldn't be crazy if that was the case. But idk. I think the more likely case is that it just wasn't popular to know or care about; the excitement of playing console games on our computers was beyond that kind of scrutiny when it was so new.

Would be a really cool thing for someone to test/experiment with to try and get actual numbers for tho

[grizzly]

Does any old emulators run on the ao 486 core?
Maybe can use that for testing

[softtest9]

You can look up which emulators you would use on a Pi, and test them out on your PC first. If you like the experience, a Pi might be fine for your needs.

[Fuzzball]

Well I've now ordered the parts for a Mister FPGA. The DE10 seems to have gone up significantly in price recently but I've been reading that there could be a general chip shortage well into 2022 so that might mean waiting a very long time for those prices to come down again. So I just decided to take the hit.

I've gone a bit overboard by ordering a digital IO board which is largely unneccessary for my needs but it has a fan already and I couldn't find a decent case in the UK that was just for the USB hub and DE10 anyway. I nearly got the analog board just on the off chance I ever get to try it on a CRT but that is highly unlikely

[Newsdee]

I'd think emulators work better on a PC than a RPi, though.

[keilmillerjr]

I'd think emulators work better on a PC than a RPi, though.

100%. MAME made a huge video change in 0.106u2. this version and newer is too much for a pi. I have compiled newer mame versions on the pi, and they are unusable. You should stick to advmame which uses 0.106.

In the end, I wasn't happy with the pi. My kids kept getting frustrated with the 8bitdo controllers constantly doing weird things. I was in the preorder for m30. That's when I scrapped the pi and went to gamecube and sp2sd. I use CRT's. Zero lag, 180deg screen viewability.

[elvis]

100%. MAME made a huge video change in 0.106u2. this version and newer is too much for a pi. I have compiled newer mame versions on the pi, and they are unusable. You should stick to advmame which uses 0.106.

I spent about 2 weeks compiling and benchmarking MAME on 8 different configurations across 2 models of RPi, stock and overclocked, 32bit vs 64bit, using 650 different games.

Games vary wildly. It's impossible to say it's globally "unusable" when some games run at over 1000% the speed required, and some don't even make 10%. It depends very much on the individual title.

Data, results and stats here, for those interested:
https://stickfreaks.com/misc/raspberry- ... benchmarks

But please, investigate the specific games you care about for yourself. There are no blanket statements that can be made on this topic. If anyone wants a specific game benchmarked that's not listed, let me know and I'll happily do so.

Yes, a powerful desktop PC will be much faster. See John IV's benchmarks I link to from my page above. But there are absolutely a large number of games that a current generation RPi is fast enough to run.

[keilmillerjr]

@elvis you only proved my point.

[elvis]

@elvis you only proved my point.

If your point is that some games work and some don't, a PC is not perfect but that metric alone. Again, see John IV's benchmarks for a list of games that won't run even on a 4.5GHz i7.

MAME's coverage is enormous, and performance of certain titles, especially 3D systems or ones with high concurrency (Sega Saturn and ST-V is a great example for titles that used both CPUs with complex gameplay, ditto for Model 3 games) isn't great under MAME's software-only approach to emulation, no matter that the system.

So again, if your point that a computer is flawed because it doesn't run all 43,308 emulated machines under MAME (number accurate as of 0.230), then there's not a computer on Earth worth your time. But I repeat, there are still THOUSANDS of games that will run fine on plenty of computers, whether it's your desktop, or a Pi. And I'm perfectly happy to help people with questions on whether the specific games that enjoy are on that list, or whether they're better off looking at different solutions. If the game isn't in my list of 650, let me know and I'll post the benchmark here.

And again, none of that takes away from MiSTer, or original hardware collecting, or any other solution. I use a combination of all of these, and each has its own extensive and subjective list of pros and cons depending on the game and the player. Blanket statements really aren't viable in a topic so complex. These can all be complementary, and there's certainly no need for conflict or false dichotomies.

[keilmillerjr]

Do the same test with mame 0.106, and my statement will hold true. Your only testing with a single newer version.

[Blitzwing]

With the MiSTer, I'm very impressed with the low latency ("lag") and the fact that the screen refresh rate matches that of the system being emulated, e.g. 50 Hz for the Spectrum core (one of my favourites). This eliminates tearing and stuttering.

I'm not so impressed about accuracy in general, though. It depends on the core, but in many cases the implementation of certain parts of the machine is purely based on guesswork, and on making an FPGA configuration that matches the observed behaviour up to the FPGA programmer's ability, but lacking detail on the handling of special cases.

I mention this because I was sold that the MiSTer cores had basically the maximum accuracy possible, and this turned out to be true in some cases, but false in others.

That's one of those simple misunderstandings of FPGA, they really are no more or less accurate than the best of software emulation, as long as there is enough CPU headroom to get the timings accurate in software emulators then there really is no difference outside of the implementation.

For me it was the display output, ease of linking to an analogue display, the minimised lag and the speed of start-up (destroys fast PC's and pi's) that was the selling point.

[Blitzwing]

I thought I was just getting a bit rusty with playing old games, until I connected my MiSTer to a CRT. All of a sudden games that require fast reaction were so much easier (I first noticed that playing Shadow of the Beast on the Amiga core).

My first one I started was Mega Turrican on the megadrive and it just felt so good to play... For those of us who notice lag and input latency the difference is night and day.

[Blitzwing]

Thanks for everyone's input. Regarding the low latency of the Mister that everyone mentions - does this also apply if using a LCD TV via HDMI or is it really to do with viewing on a CRT? I would be using a LCD so I wonder if then the Mister would suffer just the same as a Pi would. I wouldn't be buying the analog IO. If I go for either it would be the digital IO.

I'll add too. Having used emulation boxes be it PC's, Android boxes or Rpi's on an old 1080p LCD TV (2014 vintage) the lag used to be so bad that games would feel awful to play, with the MiSTer it is actually somewhat tolerable, a testament to how low latency a device it is perhaps?

On the other side a fast gaming monitor is essentially indistinguishable from a CRT, in my own testing it barely comes in at a single frame difference, how that compares to modern TVs I'm not sure... A CRT is just for those of us who are a little crazy I guess people who long for all aspects of nostalgia.

CRTs are a useable commodity and eventually the last one will die so we better get used to flat panels for our retro needs lol.

[grizzly]

Well I've now ordered the parts for a Mister FPGA.

I've gone a bit overboard by ordering a digital IO board which is largely unneccessary for my needs but it has a fan already

I can´t say for sure but the heatsink does not come with the io board/fan in most "mister stores".
So make sure to buy that separately if it is not included in th ioboard/fan package.

Made that mistake my self, but luckily i did have an unused heatsink that was a bit too big that i could saw/grind a little bit smaller so it could fit.

[elvis]

Do the same test with mame 0.106, and my statement will hold true. Your only testing with a single newer version.

I covered this in my post on RetroRGB. Older versions of MAME are faster, but are far less accurate.

For example, there was a major bug discovered in Contra only recently, and a fix supplied by Furrtek. MAME 0.106 won't have that fix, nor the thousands of other fixes between then and now. MAME developer "Haze" demonstrated this in a recent YouTube video. Again, I linked that in my article:

https://www.retrorgb.com/raspberry-pi-m ... marks.html

MAME slows down each release because of these accuracy improvements. But conversely, hardware speeds up as time goes on. My testing shows that, clock for clock, an RPi4 is nearly twice the performance of an RPi3, and is also clocked higher so the improvements scale up from there. Of the 650 games I tested, there is a 139% increase in games that become playable moving from an RPi3 to an RPi4. That goes a long way to compensating for the slower performance of more modern MAME releases, and allows you to play far more accurate builds at the same time.

You can go even less accurate from here, and choose emulators like Final Burn Alpha, if you want. FBA will play Street Fighter III, which still won't play in MAME even on an overclocked RPi4, but the emulation accuracy is low. If you don't care about accuracy and just want to play, then that's fine too.

Neo Geo used to be totally unplayable on older Pi model 1 and 2 hardware. From 3 onwards it was fine, even on very recent builds that again have plenty of fixes not in MAME 0.106 nor FBA. (Also playable on MiSTer of course, although MAME offers emulated CPU overclocking to reduce showdown in games like Metal Slug).

So yes, older releases can be faster for plenty of titles. But a 2006 MAME build is missing 15 years of fixes, and thousands of new games and dumps. But there's also nothing stopping you running both side by side on the same machine. After all, it's just software, and you can do whatever you want.

Again, endless choices here. No point dismissing any of these options.

[EmK_IronFist]

Well I've now ordered the parts for a Mister FPGA. The DE10 seems to have gone up significantly in price recently but I've been reading that there could be a general chip shortage well into 2022 so that might mean waiting a very long time for those prices to come down again. So I just decided to take the hit.

Oh wow, nice! I'm surprised based on what you said previously but I don't think you'll be disappointed you took the plunge. You're in for a great experience.

I've gone a bit overboard by ordering a digital IO board which is largely unneccessary for my needs but it has a fan already and I couldn't find a decent case in the UK that was just for the USB hub and DE10 anyway. I nearly got the analog board just on the off chance I ever get to try it on a CRT but that is highly unlikely

Well. good news! You don't really need an IO board for that, unless you want guaranteed YPbPr compatibility or the ability to simultaneously output to HDMI and a CRT at the same time. If you ever want to play on a CRT later on, you can just use an inexpensive HDMI-to-VGA adapter with MiSTer's direct_video mode. (more info here: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_Mi ... rect-Video)

[Newsdee]

So I just decided to take the hit. I've gone a bit overboard by ordering a digital IO board (...)

Congrats! The IO board is still handy for the User IO connector (for MIDI and SNAC adapters) and the 2nd SD card (for some computer cores).

I'd be interested in knowing your impressions vs. expectations after you get it.

Mostly I think MiSTer is as good as it gets... I can understand the doubt of whether emulation can match it or not (and often it can, with a powerful PC) but the user experience feels as good as original hardware. Not just lag-wise, but also the fact of having a dedicated machine that boots quickly and you can switched off at any time (whereas RPis need to be shut down to prevent SD corruption) [*].

[*] Pedantic readers will point out that some cores still need to be shut down, such as the Mac Plus core. Indeed, but that's in the minority and in line with the original machine being emulated.

[throAU]

Well I've now ordered the parts for a Mister FPGA.

I've gone a bit overboard by ordering a digital IO board which is largely unneccessary for my needs but it has a fan already

I can´t say for sure but the heatsink does not come with the io board/fan in most "mister stores".
So make sure to buy that separately if it is not included in th ioboard/fan package.

Made that mistake my self, but luckily i did have an unused heatsink that was a bit too big that i could saw/grind a little bit smaller so it could fit.

Pretty perfect size heatsinks are generally available at electronic hobbyist stores. I think i paid a dollar for mine

[Fuzzball]

Congrats! The IO board is still handy for the User IO connector (for MIDI and SNAC adapters) and the 2nd SD card (for some computer cores).

Thanks, that's good to know. There is the possibility of me adding the MIDI board to it for the minimig core at some point and I hadn't realised I would need the IO board for that so I'm glad I ordered it now. I don't think I'll bother with a SNAC adapter unless there is one for an Amiga joystick which I don't think there is.

[grizzly]

Well I've now ordered the parts for a Mister FPGA.

I've gone a bit overboard by ordering a digital IO board which is largely unneccessary for my needs but it has a fan already

I can´t say for sure but the heatsink does not come with the io board/fan in most "mister stores".
So make sure to buy that separately if it is not included in th ioboard/fan package.

Made that mistake my self, but luckily i did have an unused heatsink that was a bit too big that i could saw/grind a little bit smaller so it could fit.

Pretty perfect size heatsinks are generally available at electronic hobbyist stores. I think i paid a dollar for mine

Yea!
But most isn't open at 3AM when i was assembling it all.
And ordering just a heatsink will mean i pay more for the shipping then the heatsink here in sweden.

[Fuzzball]

Oh wow, nice! I'm surprised based on what you said previously

Yes I can see how my previous comments could be seen as someone trying to find reasons not to purchase the Mister but in fact it was quite the opposite. There is a big price difference and I just wanted to leave no stone unturned before taking the plunge.

I'm also considering getting a cheap arcade stick for it. I was going to get a Competition Pro USB for minimig but want to minimise the number of controller I have for it. May just use a cheap arcade stick for arcade cores and any computer cores that mainly used a joystick and get something like a 8bitdo M30 for everything that more commonly uses a pad.

[Chris23235]

Congrats! The IO board is still handy for the User IO connector (for MIDI and SNAC adapters) and the 2nd SD card (for some computer cores).

Thanks, that's good to know. There is the possibility of me adding the MIDI board to it for the minimig core at some point and I hadn't realised I would need the IO board for that so I'm glad I ordered it now. I don't think I'll bother with a SNAC adapter unless there is one for an Amiga joystick which I don't think there is.

For MIDI you can also use a MIDI-USB adapter.

[elvis]

(whereas RPis need to be shut down to prevent SD corruption) [*].

[*] Pedantic readers will point out that some cores still need to be shut down, such as the Mac Plus core. Indeed, but that's in the minority and in line with the original machine being emulated.

This has everything to do with the file system, and little to do with the hardware.

There are excellent log/CoW (Copy-on-Write) based filesystems like F2FS, NILFS2 and BtrFS that are always clean, even on sudden power down on any system (PC, RPi, whatever). At worst the don't flush very recent changes to disk (i.e.: the last few seconds of changes at worst), but on devices set up to mostly read, this is not a huge issue. The glaring issue is that Raspbian, by default, uses ext4. This is a general purpose desktop file system, and a very poor choice for something more akin to an embedded device. I'd hoped that the Rasberry Pi Foundation would have made the change for the next major version of Raspbian (now known as Rasberry Pi OS), but they don't seem to care at all.

The fault here is not the RPi hardware itself, but the choice of file system, not fit for purpose. We're finally seeing Linux groups like Fedora implement BtrFS be default in their latest release. Others still push ext4 and xfs by default, only offering better file systems as optional installs for advanced users, rather than as a sensible default.

MiSTer is the same when it emulates computers with legacy file systems inside a VHD. Set up Win3.1/9X on ao486, or Mac Plus (as you mentioned), and again the problem exists when the heavy read/write operations of a more modern OS exist in legacy file systems that need clean unmounts to work effectively. Shut these down suddenly, and the ancient FAT or HFS based file systems that are particularly terrible by modern standards leave you in a bad spot.

I think even MiSTer could benefit from a better file system in general (ignoring cases like ao486 and Mac Plus with extra file systems in VHDs on top). exFAT is a pretty terrible file system, especially for MicroSD media. F2FS is a much better choice (designed specifically for flash media on mobile and embedded devices), and improves both speed and life of SD media, and being log based means no unclean shutdowns. The downside is you can't merely plug your MiSTer MicroSD card into a Windows machine and write to an existing F2FS partition. But that's where writing over a network wins, hands down (SFTP or SCP being a good choices, as they work natively over SSH. rsync-over-ssh is even better for many reasons).

BtrFS is another excellent choice, sporting inline transparent compression and deduplication, both of which allow for some very clever space saving and snapshotting tricks not available to exFAT. Many Linux systems are using this now to snapshot on every upgrade, offering seamless rollback on a failed update. BtrFS's CoW design also means no unclean shutdowns, even on a hard power off.

Large scale (petabyte and above) storage administration is a part of my job, and evaluating filesystems for everything from embedded devices to laptops, desktops and servers is too. There's enormous room for improvement in all of the systems mentioned in this thread, and it's a crying shame so many Linux based devices, including Rasberry Pi and MiSTer, default to such limited and particularly ancient file systems, when great effort has gone into free alternatives that greatly surpass them for reliability, consistency, and features.

[softtest9]

Just keep in mind that some people have had issues with MIDI over USB. Of course if you already got a MIDI-USB adapter lying around, it doesn't hurt to try it out.