Homebrew Nintendo vs Homebrew Emulation performance

[Melter]

Hey GBATemp, I tried searching for some answers on this question but could not find any direct answers:

On the New 3DS systems, how does performance compare between mGBA emulator (installed as CIA) versus Nintendo's own GBA_FIRM w/ ROM injection?

And simlarly, how would something like BlargSNES or RetroArch compare to the Nintendo's in-house SNES emulation?

Again, I am strictly talking about performance (Frame-rate, screen-tearing, sound quality), not any extra features such as save states or cheat support.

 

[Denny64]

In my case (N3DS-XL), GBA VC (Virtual Console) is way faster than mGBA emulation
Sound and image are crisp clear, and I haven't found any lag in GBA games.

Did not test any SNES games, so no opinion there.

 

[Ekaitz]

Pure performance? Nintendo's emulators are better.

 

[MassExplosion213]

Pure performance? Nintendo's emulators are better.

Not SNES. BlargSNES can run on O3DS at a good framerate. The official emu can't.

 

[Mazamin]

Not SNES. BlargSNES can run on O3DS at a good framerate. The official emu can't.

Performance is different from accuracy

 

[hobbledehoy899]

GBA VC is way faster than mGBA emulation

That would be the fact that the GBA ROMs are being played on actual GBA hardware (you can thank DS backwards-compatibility for that.)

 

[Deleted User]

Virtual console seems to never fail me although I do like emulators a lot.

 

[MassExplosion213]

Performance is different from accuracy

Umm..I never said accuracy. The fact that the SNES VC is N3DS exclusive should tell you something. It has to use the 804MHz clock just to run. BlargSNES can run at O3DS clock speed. Therefore, performance wise, BlargSNES has better performance.

 

[Ekaitz]

I still think that SNES emulator on N3DS is better than BlargSNES.

It runs perfectly on all games, no framerate problems, it is just as smooth as it is possible to be.

 

[nl255]

Hey GBATemp, I tried searching for some answers on this question but could not find any direct answers:

On the New 3DS systems, how does performance compare between mGBA emulator (installed as CIA) versus Nintendo's own GBA_FIRM w/ ROM injection?

And simlarly, how would something like BlargSNES or RetroArch compare to the Nintendo's in-house SNES emulation?

Again, I am strictly talking about performance (Frame-rate, screen-tearing, sound quality), not any extra features such as save states or cheat support.

Nintendo does not use emulation to run GBA games, so of course Nintendo's is going to be faster. It is very similar to how the PSP ran PS1 games.

Update: ichfly did something similar for the original DS so that you could run GBA games from a R4 or other flash cart but it didn't work very well. Having a MMU on the 3DS probably helped.

 

[Mazamin]

Umm..I never said accuracy. The fact that the SNES VC is N3DS exclusive should tell you something. It has to use the 804MHz clock just to run. BlargSNES can run at O3DS clock speed. Therefore, performance wise, BlargSNES has better performance.

Yes, it has better performance, but worse accuracy! Read here for a better explanation

 

[MassExplosion213]

Yes, it has better performance, but worse accuracy! Read here for a better explanation

He said performance.

 

[Mazamin]

He said performance.

"accurate emulators may need up to 3GHz of power to faithfully recreate aging tech"
This is why I'm saying that performance is different from accuracy, you were saying that blargsnes is better as it has a better performance on old3ds, anyway the accuracy is worse.
The performance that the op is talking about is actually the accuracy.

 

[Deleted member 370671]

Hey GBATemp, I tried searching for some answers on this question but could not find any direct answers:

On the New 3DS systems, how does performance compare between mGBA emulator (installed as CIA) versus Nintendo's own GBA_FIRM w/ ROM injection?

And simlarly, how would something like BlargSNES or RetroArch compare to the Nintendo's in-house SNES emulation?

Again, I am strictly talking about performance (Frame-rate, screen-tearing, sound quality), not any extra features such as save states or cheat support.

For the GBA part, MGBA is an emulator, while GBA VC runs on native hardware. No emulator will ever have that level of performance and accuracy, ever.
For the SNES part, it's a little trickier. You're talking about N3DS - and on this system, the Nintendo emulator will run at 100% speed all the time, and so will BlargSNES. The thing is that BlargSNES can also run at a really good framerate, even on O3DS, while the Nintendo SNES VC can't, because BlargSNES is a lot less accurate than Ninty's own emulator. So from a general standpoint, Blarg's performance is superior - but in your specific case, there won't be any difference. So the official VC will be better.

 

[MassExplosion213]

And actually, SNES VC is worse in general. It uses hacky solutions to work around problems.

 

[Deleted member 370671]

And actually, SNES VC is worse in general. It uses hacky solutions to work around problems.

True, but in the end, while on N3DS both emulators run at full speed, one is a lot more accurate than the other

 

[Kioku]

Umm..I never said accuracy. The fact that the SNES VC is N3DS exclusive should tell you something. It has to use the 804MHz clock just to run. BlargSNES can run at O3DS clock speed. Therefore, performance wise, BlargSNES has better performance.

Not really. You're confusing performance with compatibility.

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And actually, SNES VC is worse in general. It uses hacky solutions to work around problems.

Oh? What problems?.. And what workarounds? I doubt an official release would see Nintendo taking shortcuts.

 

[Deleted member 370671]

Oh? What problems?.. And what workarounds? I doubt an official release would see Nintendo taking shortcuts.

They do take shortcuts - and so does almost every emulator. The reason here is because (iirc) the SNES' GPU can do a lot of tricky things the 3DS' GPU can't, they need to use the CPU to recreate those effects - and it takes a lot of processing power to do this accurately. That's part of why SNES VC isn't available on O3DS.

 

[Mazamin]

Not really. You're confusing performance with compatibility.

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Oh? What problems?.. And what workarounds? I doubt an official release would see Nintendo taking shortcuts.

You're right, Nintendo knows the consoles way better than an hacker. Emulators are good for compatibility and performance, but VCs are better in terms of accuracy.

 

[Kioku]

They do take shortcuts - and so does almost every emulator. The reason here is because (iirc) the SNES' GPU can do a lot of tricky things the 3DS' GPU can't, they need to use the CPU to recreate those effects - and it takes a lot of processing power to do this accurately. That's part of why SNES VC isn't available on O3DS.

I'm talking about "hacky solutions". I don't think Nintendo would take shortcuts. They would have had to do some heavy lifting.. However, blargsnes took shortcuts... Basically what I'm being told is that SNES VC shares some similar issues that emulation does. Which leaves the question: What are these issues?