DerKoun/bsnes-hd

High CPU Consumption on Linux

Opened this issue · 5 comments

Siaok commented

Tell me if it`s a CONFIG problem

I couldnt find anything that would decrease this issue Whenever i boot up a game, my CPU usage spikes to a 100% (in the process manager, it consume up to 40% to 50%) i the game runs kind of fine, but my PC obviously gets slower, i dont a reason for this to happen, i use a Radeon RX 580 and a Intel Core i5, and i just hope that if this is a bug, it gets fixed, or somebody tells me how to fix it, so, please help me.

I don't think this is a known issue.
Does it happen at default settings?
Do you use the standalone version or a libretro frontend?
Does it also happen with bsnes (not hd)?
What are the specs of the CPU?

For me and my i7-3770, in Chrono Trigger with hd7 and 2x up scaling, walking around wold map, im using 30-35% of my cpu, in smaller maps in the game im using about 20-25%, i get no sound issues everything runs perfect. All around the game uses about 40% of my RTX 3060 GPU.

I dont know if this is high or low usage i guess its all relative to the person and hardware. I also played this on my GTX 970 last year with no noticeable issues i remember.

Stand alone linux
Bsnes-hd
Pop OS 22.04 (Ubuntu)

The rendering happens entirely on the CPU and my code is not that great, so it is more CPU intensive than most people will expect, especially at higher scales.
I hope this will improve at some point, but I can't make promises for when or how much.
On the GPU side you can try different video backends in Settings/Drivers/Video/Driver. That may also help with CPU a bit, maybe. Also you could try RetroArch instead of standalone.

I know this is an old issue, but I just wanted to mention that this still occurs in both RetroArch and standalone bsnes-hd for me. Developers in the RetroArch Discord server suspect it had to do with audio sampling on Linux. This has happened for me across a number of distros, both Debian and Arch based.

I have the same on the Steamdeck. The issue detailed here seems to be the reason. It occurs in all Bsnes/Higan cores or standalone versions with PPU-Fast Mode as long as PPU-Fast mode is enabled, changing video driver in retroarch did change nothing. Something else I found out: if I reduce the core count before starting emulation through power tools and increase it to the normal amount after starting the cpu usage goes down significantly with PPU-Fast Mode enabled. If I reduce it after launching the only change is that the CPU usage even goes up.

Also the CPU usage is especially high when a new area is loaded in game. Also in Super Castlevania 4 while in the intro video or on the map screen between stages.

EDIT: Tried it on my Windows PC (AMD 5800x set to ecomode, so it performs like a 5700x) stays at below 3% with PPU-Fast Mode on, both Steamdeck and on Windows where set to use the default 2xScale for Mode 7 and no Runahead. I also think it performed way better before the update to Steam OS 3.5 especially with SMT set to off, now it performs worse with SMT off (only much better with SMT off first and then on when running the emulator because less cores are recognized initialy).