I started this project at once after finally meeting the goal of making a small Raspberry Pi based Nintendo Entertainment System emulator console with just two titles that my mother really cared about that console: Wrecking Crew and Super Mario Brothers.

After that, I decided to make another console for myself and try to make the most by having games for, not just the NES, SNES, NEO*GEO (AVS), and Sega Genesis, but also have some MAME aracade titles to be in there for the mix. And if that wasn’t enough, maybe some Nintendo 64 and Playstation games.

And that’s where I hit a wall. Prompting for my project to halt immediately.

Console Generation and Performance Limitation Relationship

After I mentioned this to some contacts online about my results someone told me that it is well documented that the Raspberry Pi doesn’t have a sufficiently powerful central processing unit to emulate effectively at the optimal performance that you’d expect if you were, say, emulating on a desktop computer - where usually the central processing units are more powerful and sufficient to run justa bout any emulator going passed the fifth generation (for information on video game console generations please check out the Wikipedia entry).

The fact that I can’t really play Nintendo 64 or Playstation console games (and beyond) that well, reflected to what I had already expected without need to research.

The reason that I decided to just buy a Raspberry pi and go for it was that I wanted to see for myself what was the capabilities - only to find that the performance is equivalent to that of Intel Atom dual-core CPU based laptops of recent yeras that I’ve run emulators before on, in particular one particular one that is known for being a top-heavy emulator for its focus on accuracy and performance: Higan.

The current consensus among some people that like to play older console games is that you need a high-frequency, performance oriented CPU - in particular Intel based, machine to get to perform execution to original performance (with the ability to even include some modifications on top of that like shader modifications!)

But going as far as emulating and adding visual modifications is not the goal here - that would be some other project setup for the desktop computer after a hardware upgrade in the future.

For now, the issue is finding something that can run games with emulation, having the fifth generation of consoles to be the starting point for which performance has to be focused on as earlier generation consoles and games will still perform just as well as they do on a Raspberry Pi.

Alternative Single-board computers (SBCs)

The question is what are around for the particular use-case that I have in mind? It turns out that there are many SBCs out there and they are mainly all focused on increase in the scope and performance of features than, the already impressive, feature-set that the Raspberry Pi series offers.

Udoo

Udoox86 Ultra

Udoo is the first option for me to consider seeing that it has developed some boards that all have a primary focus for computer-science, Internet-of-Things, and for product development and hacking.

The other thing too is that it has a some serious performance output and processing power compared to the Raspberry Pi.

The particular model for me is the Udoo x86 series, specifically, the Udoo x86 Ultra, with a Intel Pentium N37, clocking up to 2.56 GHz, 8GB DDR3L Dual Channel, Intel HD Graphics 405 which clocks up to 700 Mhz, followed by 32GB EMMC storage

Processor, RAM, Graphics, and built-in storage that make for a very powerful overhead for running game emulation going for $267.00 USD for the board alone. Which makes this the most expensive of the three.

You can fit in a discrete desktop graphics card to this board to make it work for gaming, but the results leave to be desired for someone as spoiled as myself


And even with the chipset built-in, it’s not that impressive. For best performance, windowed at 800x600 resolution at low settings might be the best way to get away with some titles as the case with some games

Firefly

Firefly, another alternative high-performance oriented SBC manufacturer.

The RK3399 model, which uses the Rockchip RK3399, a hexa-core 64-bit processor, which specifications can be found on the Rockchip Wiki link. Clocking at 1.8Ghz, this makes it on par with an Intel Atom processor which is significantly better than an ARM chip in terms of performance while increasing the power consumption demand (but this is a given).

With Displayport and HDMI output capabilities, M.2 SSD storage slot, Type-C USB 3.0, dual PCIe interfaces, dual camera support, and dual operating system support - which I’m not quite sure what that means if it’s that you can run two operating systems at the same time or you can boot two different installed operating systems at the same time and just boot one operating system at a time.

In any case, it’s got more processing power than whatever the Raspberry Pi 3 B+ has at the outset for any emulation, save for, quite possibly, seventh generation consoles (Dreamcast, Playstation 2, Gamecube, Xbox)

It goes from $149.00 USD to $259.00 USD, with a difference of how much built in ram you want (a maximum of 128GB is offered).

To get an idea how this board could perform, there was a video that featured a Yundoo “tv box” fitted with Android OS but features inside a RK3999 CPU and 4 GB of RAM.



Keep in mind that being able to support OpenGL ES, OpenGL, and even Direct X 11 is quite impressive, but meaningless if you can’t really get the necessary output that you need all around if you’re planning to emulate anything that is very demanding - like some fifth generation console titles and more recent.

LattePanda

LattePanda is a SBC that is trying to be the de facto development board that can run Windows 10 - with each unit pre-installed with Windows 10 Home Edition as of the time of this writing as far as the standard, current model of the LattePanda is concerned,

Key features about this board:

  • Processor: Intel Cherry Trail Z8350 Quad Core 1.8GHz
  • Operation System: Pre-installed full edition of Windows 10
  • Ram: 2GB DDR3L
  • Storage Capability: 32GB
  • GPU: Intel HD Graphics, 12 EUs @200-500 Mhz, single-channel memory
  • One USB3.0 port and two USB 2.0 ports
  • WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0
  • Built-in Arduino Co-processor: ATmega32u4
  • Video output: HDMI and MIPI-DSI
  • Onboard touch panel overlay connector
  • Supports 100Mbps Ethernet

GPIO:

  • 6 GPIOs from Cherry Trail processor
  • 20 GPIOs from Arduino Leonardo
  • 6 Plug and play Gravity sensor connectors
  • Power: 5v/2A
  • Dimension of board: 88 * 70 mm/ 3.46 * 2.76 inches
  • Packing Size: 110 * 94 * 30 mm/4.33 * 3.70 * 1.18 inches
  • N.W.: 55g
  • G.W.: 100g

Note: This product requires a power supply of 5V @ 2A to work properly using a quality USB cable. An iPad power supply is ideal.

It’s an impressive hardware set that’s reminisicent to the Firefly RK3399 and the Udoo x86 boards

The only thing that would bug me about this board is that it is dedicated solely for Windows 10 ecosystem development. So in other words, it is a board for just Windows hobbyists that could range from programmers, appliance developers, testers, debugging utilities, and so fort. It’s quite a stark difference in seeing that most single board computer vendors go for Linux, Unix (BSD) oriented ecosystem based development than Windows (given the costs and potential legal wrangles).

But given the power of this board, and what you could use this for other than development (like standard, simple, run of the mill computer), it works fine. Although, I would have to say, that for the money’s worth, for what you get - which is comparable to the processing power just above, in my wild guess, to what you would get from an Asus EeePC netbook which used an Atom processor. So the particular performance is something that I’m suspicious is going to be powerful to run, even more than what was on netbooks in 11 years ago. Especially for emulation.



Conclusion: back to the drawing board.

As I was going through these board’s websites, reading the lists of features that these boards have and what they can do. For gaming emulation, unfortunately, it all boils down to performance and that means using your desktop computer or anything that uses a current generation of desktop computers that can clock at high frequencies and have enough of sufficient yield per clock cycle to run even the most demanding of emulatiors and emulated games.

I say this because one constant with boards like Udoo, Firefly, and LattePanda - with Udoo having the most powerful of the three (an Intel Pentium N3710 2.56 GHZ), is that Udoo proves as the optimal choice at $267.00 for the board itself alone is that SBCs are well on their way to allowing for the possibility for people to have DIY PCs that are less than a thousand dollars and can allow for anyone, literally anyone, to do basic computing (word processing, web browsing, email, spreadsheet, video consumption, light photo editing and illustration.)

The truth is, for the money for something like the Udoo, for a couple of hundred more, it is quite possible to get away with building a powerful enough system that is based on, say, a Core i3 dual core that clocks at 3.6 Ghz that goes for $119.99, a LGA 1151 motherboard for $85.99, a 16GB DDR4 RAM module for roughly $140.00, a HTPC case for yet another $140.00, and so forth, totalling roughly passed $700, $900, to even already having such a project be already at the $1,200 USD mark which would then require for considering an investment of an Intel Next Unit of Computing (NUC), m.2 ssd, and even then - costing from $382 to $600 or more USD dollars. But even then, to go for an Intel NUC, which an integrated chipset that is powerful as it is, there is no guarantee of performance being consistent once you introduce emulation for some fifth generation console titles as the advent of textured, three dimensional polygonal shape rendering will require the use for best performance a discrete graphics card. Because it was in the fifth generation of consoles that 3D games became exponentially, during that console generation’s lifespan, that the complexity of 3D games and the features included in the titles (like bloom, sunrays, physics, etc) demanded more and more out of such consoles of that generation.

So where does this lead to? Well if you have computer already that has a CPU, motherboard that is almost 10 years old like mine (core i7 920 on an ASUS P6T7 WS “SuperComputer”), then all you need to do is upgrade your system - assuming your graphics card is current or of recent years.

If you’re wanting to get away with emulation well passed fifth generation consoles and games, then I’d just stick with the desktop for now and make sure to have a CPU that has a high base frequency with enough cores to assure stability at runtime. If you need to have a portable solution, a powerful enough laptop should do the trick - although I would highly recommend a workstation laptop that has proper ventelation if you’re going to be emulating fifth, sixth - generation consoles onward.

So with that being said, Project “S - Console” is on hold for me due to costs. If costs were not a concern at all, I’d be testing every one of these, or at the least make a powerful Neo*Geo tabletop arcade machine. Which I might.