CM3 vs. Zero
#1
Does anyone have any hands on comparison between the two; battery life, performance, heat, etc.
I find that the Zero has pretty good performance in everything but GBA (well not counting PS1, N64, etc since the controller isn't really set up for that), with GBA I find performance fine with lr-gpsp but I have a lot of compatibility problems, lr-mgba is much better compatibility wise but runs about 80% or so, I'd imagine a CM3 would fix that but would I be giving up too much battery life just to play a few GBA games.
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#2
I think you're actually talking about 2 different things here: Freeplay Zero speed and Freeplay CM3 battery life.

Freeplay Zero Speed:  You might want to take a look at this thread http://forum.freeplaytech.com/showthread...475&page=4 and see if you find any speedups there.  In particular, some people find that the WiFi will significantly reduce their emulation performance.  You might try turning it off and then running a game you'd usually experience slowdown with.

Freeplay CM3 Battery Life:  In our testing, we've found that the Freeplay CM3 draws almost the same power as the Freeplay Zero.  To be clear about it, we haven't done the extensive testing we did for the Freeplay Zero.  The CM3 is surprisingly low power compared to the performance increase.  I would like to see if any builders would want to chime in here and tell us how much playtime they get on a charge.
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#3
Hi Ed, thanks for the info, regarding the speed, its on a Pi Zero 1.3 (non w) so no wifi to worry about. I think its just that the GBA is about the limit of the zero's capabilities. Not a complaint just trying to see if I'd benefit from a the extra power of the CM3.

Good to know the battery life is comparable, I'd imagine the CM3 being very stripped down (well in terms of ports etc) helps.

I know I could probably watch the assembly videos, but are the case mods different from CM3 to Zero, or could I easily transplant a CM3 into a case already modded for a Zero?
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#4
You could probably take a case modded for a Freeplay Zero and do some extra mods to make it work on the Freeplay CM3. The Freeplay CM3 has the USB, HDMI, and charging ports that the Freeplay Zero doesn't have. On the Zero, they're part of the Pi and are open to the cartridge slot area.

As for battery life, I just read a Facebook post from a recent builder that said he got 4 hours 15 minutes out of his charge (running emulation the whole time from what I gather). https://www.facebook.com/groups/retropie...%22R%22%7D
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#5
(01-09-2018, 06:32 AM)jakejm79 Wrote: Does anyone have any hands on comparison between the two; battery life, performance, heat, etc.
I find that the Zero has pretty good performance in everything but GBA (well not counting PS1, N64, etc since the controller isn't really set up for that), with GBA I find performance fine with lr-gpsp but I have a lot of compatibility problems, lr-mgba is much better compatibility wise but runs about 80% or so, I'd imagine a CM3 would fix that but would I be giving up too much battery life just to play a few GBA games.

First off, I don't have a CM3 (yet).  With the available information I had though, I opted to start with a Zero.  The CM3 has more power for sure, but no wifi (easily) and the fact that we simply don't have enough buttons to do N64 or (most) PS1 games put me off of it for my initial project.

I'm very happy with my Zero.  I'm an fairly experienced Emulator... Been doing this for a few years on the Pi and a few other systems prior to that.  

For the Zero here is what is important to know:

GBA: I am using gpSP rather than lr-gpSP.  I had to set up the emulator controls properly since it isn't a libretro core.  Once that was done, I was able to play away.  I still haven't gotten the emulator to scale up to use the full screen, but there is only a thin border at the top and bottom.  lr-gpSP didn't run smoothly.

MAME: I'm using MAME4ALL.  This is the area I'm not happy with.  Seems like the PiZero just doesn't have enough power to use the lr cores without major slow-downs.  MAME4ALL works once properly configured, but I can't figure out how to full screen games... Particularly like DK, Galaga, DigDug etc that use a 3:4 screen ratio.  They run, but my old eyes can't play them, too small.  I've dug a bit into stretching the image, but it doesn't seem possible without using a modded version of MAME4ALL.  You'll need to get your ROMs in order though, MAME4ALL uses the 0.37b5 set.  

2600, 7800, Lynx, NES, SNES, GB, GBC, MS, Genesis, GG, TG16, Neo-Geo: All worked fine for me at their default settings on most games.  I had a bit of setup to do with PiFBA (for Neo-Geo, CPS1 and CPS2 games)  but completely do-able.

I was concerned about screen size with a CM3.  I can barely read some of the text in some games on my Zero (SNES, Genesis)...  PS1 would be unplayable for me in most cases due to text size.  Additionally, I've not had great experiences emulating N64 on a Pi3.  Sure, you can get a few games playable... But is it worth it? 

The only real reasons I see to go with the CM3 is you'll be able to more effectively utilize the lr cores with the better hardware, and video snaps.
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#6
CM3 is worth it for Amiga emulation alone imho.

I also found the default N64 performance on it to be better than my regular Pi3.
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#7
(03-28-2018, 04:39 PM)HoraceAndTheSpider Wrote: I also found the default N64 performance on it to be better than my regular Pi3.

Interesting.  Maybe reduced overhead?
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