Is Sega Saturn the hardest 5th generation console to emulate on older PC?
I'm using my old laptop (Intel i5-10310U, integrated UHD Graphics, 16GB system RAM) as my NAS, and RetroArch host. I play on my Google TV through Moonlight. The NAS runs Ubuntu headlessly so to run RetroArch and for Sunshine to capture, I use OpenBox on top of Xorg for a minimum desktop environment.
With no optimization, I was able to run cores for all 3rd gen (NES, PC Engine, Master System) and 4th gen consoles (Mega Drive, SNES) , and handheld consoles up to GBA, and apply CRT and dot matrix shaders.
PlayStation was the first one to hit hardware limits. With Beetle PSX HW, I had somewhat consistent frame stuttering and audio crackling even with simple titles like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. I did a lot of debugging and realized sunshine using the Intel GPU's Render/3D engine for HEVC encoding is borderline competing with the Beetle PSX HW core's Vulkan calls. Once the laptop CPU hits the thermal wall, stuttering will start and the GPU's Render/3D engine becomes saturated. To fix it, I changed Sunshine's encoder to H.264, which only uses the GPU's Video engine. And so I was able to enjoy some Symphony of the Night.
Then as I started trying Final Fantasy VII, and Metal Gear Solid, even the H.264 streaming compromise doesn't let the two games play smoothly. FFVII has painfuly slow battle scene transition screen, and MGS has severe audio crackling during the underwater scenes in the introduction animated sequence. I exhausted all performance-first Core Options and still couldn't get it to run decently. In the end, switching to the Swan Station core solved the problem.
Then for Nintendo 64, if I use ParaLLEl as RDP and RSP plugin, audio crackling can occasionally happen during most games. I had to stick with GlideN64 and HLE for things to run smoothly. The price I pay is with the Gliden64 plugin, between 240p and 480p I can only choose either one option, unlike with ParaLLEl whereby the core can honor the individual ROM's native output resolution.
Saturn, oh Saturn is the last 5th generation console that I still can't get running. My test title is Nights into Dreams, and no matter which core I try, it won't run without stuttering and crackling.
- Yabause: the game won't even launch
- Beetle Saturn: consistenting stuttering and audio crackling
- Kronos: even worse, stutters like a helicopter
- Emir: same
- Yaba Sanshiro: the best so far, but still stutters and crackles
I spent a day troubleshooting and realize this time it's very obvious that CPU had been thermal walled (from 24W > demoted to 15W > and demoted to 7.5W as soon as the game enters the character selection screen).
I tried tinkering with thermald and even stopped thermald from running. Without thermald running, one of the CPU cores can hit 100 Celsius in less than 2 minutes, and the system firmware kicks in to cool it down to 70 and then goes up to 100 again. I thought this was very dangerous for what's supposed to be a NAS, so I gave up there.
Anyway, does my experience mean Saturn is the hardest to emulate among the 5th gen? Which my hardware and necessary overhead, do you think I can continue to attempt 6th gen consoles like PS2?