MiSTer FPGA vs. Retroarch a(Windows PC)

[dov_EL]

I can understand that those who use raspberry can perhaps still find differences between Iriginake hardware and emulation, but that I have owned all the original consoles, and today I use retroarch with extraordinary shaders and zero latency, can you tell me which differences I should find with mister FPGAs?

[Lordmonkus]

23 minutes ago, dov_EL said:

Iriginake hardware

I assume you mean "original hardware" ?

23 minutes ago, dov_EL said:

I use retroarch with extraordinary shaders and zero latency

No, this not a "zero latency" scenario no matter what you think. You can get it really low though with frame delay and run ahead, though run ahead is far from perfect and is not a magic fix, it has its own set of issues. Plus you have sound latency which out of the box is pretty high at 64ms though you can bring it down to 16 to 24 ms quite easily.

23 minutes ago, dov_EL said:

can you tell me which differences I should find with mister FPGAs?

I own a MiSTer and I can tell you right now it is a far superior experience but it's drawback is that it doesn't emulate nearly as much as Retroarch, this and a much nicer GUI is the only differences in Retroarchs favor.

The input latency on a MiSTer even on a modern display is far lower, the only latency you have is from the USB polling which is approx 4-5 ms and the HDMI scaler which is now down to 1ms, there is no input latency in the emulation at all so the only other source of latency at all is from your display which will vary.

https://www.retrorgb.com/mister-hdmi-core-now-sub-1-frame-of-lag.html

I have my MiSTer hooked up to a CRT PC monitor with the option of hooking it up to a CRT TV beside it as well and I can tell you without a doubt it is far superior to Retroarch in terms of raw emulation performance for the systems it emulates. The input latency is noticeable and I am not someone who is sensitive to input latency. My Retroarch setup that I actually play on is a high end PC with a high end gaming monitor with only 4ms of latency (actual latency, not gtg response).

With software emulation you have for more layers of junk getting in the process, the OS, drivers, possible software in the background and the serial nature of how software emulation is done. With FPGA you have none of that junk getting in the way and it all runs in parallel, not serial.

Now having said all that, a MiSTer FPGA is not for everyone, as I said before, it does not emulate nearly as many systems as Retroarch or Windows in general and you don't get a nice fancy GUI to manage it, nor do you get any really nice shaders, though you do get some scanline options.

MiSTer FPGA is quality over quantity while Retroarch gives you quantity and more options.. I can highly recommend a MiSTer FPGA setup for anyone looking to step up their emulation experience, especially if you want to easily hook it up to a CRT TV or PC monitor, it's just a simple case of an IO board and a VGA to component cable for a glorious picture.

[dov_EL]

thanks for the clarifications, but I want to add that for a good accurate emulation, you don't need a high-end PC, with a Mini PC with Cpu Apollo lake from Intel, I can emulate genesis plus GX, bsnes balanced, Mesen, mame, final burn alpha, perfectly under DX 12 and slang shaders like fakelottes.slangp,
I'm curious to see if I can connect Mister to my Arcade with CRT, maybe it would be the ideal solution, I only have the Bubble Bobble card and I hate solutions like pandorasBox

[Lordmonkus]

11 minutes ago, dov_EL said:

I can emulate genesis plus GX, bsnes balanced, Mesen, mame, final burn alpha, perfectly

"Perfectly" is such a loaded term because software emulation no matter how good it can be will never be "perfect". You will never get rid of the input lag that is inherent to the serial processing nature of it, it simply isn't possible. Yes it can be really damn good and good enough for the vast majority of people, I certainly don't subscribe to the school of though that software emulation is garbage, I wouldn't be here if I was. All of those emulators are fantastic and are very close to perfect to in it's raw emulation but like I said in my previous posts, it's the rest of the stuff like Windows and drivers getting in the way.

15 minutes ago, dov_EL said:

I'm curious to see if I can connect Mister to my Arcade with CRT

The arcade emulation on the MiSTer is quite limited right now, Mame in terms of sheer volume of games emulated has the advantage over MiSTer but the games MiSTer does is better emulated than Mame. One example of this apparently is Ghosts N Goblins, Mame (from what I have read) runs the game at a slightly off speed while MiSTers GnG core is exact.

[dov_EL]

Thank you for all the clarifications, I believe that Mister is a product to keep an eye on, also because the beauty of this sector is precisely the discovery and the study, you never stop learning something new and different.
I am fully satisfied with the current emulation under the retroarch, and I am happy that new children to grow anyway and follow a different direction. I have never considered raspberry emulation, I believe I will never use this product in my life;)

[Lordmonkus]

Yeah the Raspberry Pi is IMHO a very poor emulation experience, the only thing it has going for it is price.

Getting back to RA vs MiSTer though I would say looking at the overall package there are pros and cons to each. RA and software emulation on a PC with a frontend like Launchbox you have far more options, more emulator choice, more games in Mame, enhancements like texture packs. This comes at the expense of a financial cost, you really need a good CPU to drive these emulators well, a good graphics card for the newer 3D systems and shaders and a good low latency gaming monitor to reduce input latency as much as you can.

On the MiSTer side you get less options but what you get is superb in its quality and ease of hookup to a CRT compared to a modern PC with software emulators.

The only way to get better quality and accuracy is to play on real hardware which is getting more expensive, especially the games or buy a flash cart for each system, this cost adds up quickly.

[dov_EL]

PS 
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/console/console-modes