The Raspberry Pi 5 is a Cheap Retro Gaming Powerhouse! Initial Raspberry Pi 5 Review for Emulation

hey everybody welcome back to video so here kind got a fun episode for you guys this Friday because you've all been asking whether or not I'm going to test a Raspberry Pi 5 on the channel and talk about the improvements in emulators that we're struggling to run on the Raspberry Pi 4 because for $80 the Raspberry Pi 5 is an absolute emulation beast and I did want to get one set up but I got this right after Christmas took me a minute to find one in stock and I forgot to do it for a few weeks this is a little bit delayed but it is worth it because when I tell you the Raspberry Pi 5 is such an evolutionary jump in power and compatibility over the Raspberry Pi 4 I 100% mean it things are running stable on this that never ran stable on my Raspberry Pi 4 before but let's pop right into the box we're going to do a very quick build talk about my setup and get right into the testing but I found it absolutely hilarious that there is no anti-static bag in this box I don't know if they forgot it I haven't asked anyone who got one but it is just a bare board sitting in cardboard I've never seen that before maybe they just missed it or maybe it's a cost-saving measure to keep the cost of the board down whatever happened the board is totally fine and it is here in front of us and just like every other Raspberry Pi unit before it it is absolutely tiny and it is shocking how much power can fit into such a small space having grown up in the late 80s and early 90s computers used to be massive and did basically nothing and now we have something that can emulate Dreamcast Playstation portable Sega Saturn something that can fit in the palm of your hand the I/O is great for USB ports with that ethernet you do need a special power adapter if you want to have all of the power over the USB ports and those adapters can be even harder to find than the Raspberry Pi 5 itself right now I was able to locate one but you can use a Raspberry Pi 4 as well and you'll see here that it does use a tiny little HDMI cable so be prepared for that if you don't have one of those in your drawer pick one up and just so you know all the tests on this video are done at stock I do have active cooling with a fan and it's heat sinking into the aluminum case so I probably could overclock the Raspberry Pi 5 and when you try to plug a fan header in be aware that there is a little cap over this before you actually get to insert anything tricked me a few times I was trying to find out why it didn't fit it is absolutely minuscule but honestly the Raspberry Pi 5 is so tiny it's going to be a lot of fun to see what this thing is capable of in the future now be aware I am using a beta of recall box for this video it is not finalized and pretty much nothing about this is final and so many of the most popular os's for the Raspberry Pi don't yet have a released working version for the pi5 so you should really consider this a worst case scenario test I have not done anything to emulation to make it work any better than out of the box this is a raw horsepower test just seeing how these games run without touching anything whatsoever I just want to see what the chipset what the CPU and everything else on the Raspberry Pi 5 can do when we actually get into emulators that I feel like the Raspberry Pi 4 would struggle at and we're going to move right into de alive 2 this is on the Sega Dreamcast and I will say all the way through at stock rendering resolution 640x480 on that VGA style resolution I I had rocksolid stable Dreamcast emulation the whole way through in the games that I am familiar with and I test I will tell you when I up the internal rendering resolution I'll tell you when we start to lose some frames I will turn the frame counter on soon but I want this to be more of a look and feel test dero Live 2 here is just absolutely fluid and absolutely smooth we're still at 640 x 480 but I'm going to jump up in resolution once you see the next clip I will tell you when but this was a game on my Raspberry Pi 4 that I would definitely feel like it started to Hitch you a little bit it's the type of game being a fast-paced 3D fighting game you want 60 frames per second you want fluidity you don't want any stutters in your gameplay whatsoever and that is what I'm getting out of the Raspberry Pi 5 with changing nothing now we've jumped up one resolution bump and again still outside of stock resolutions the Raspberry Pi is 100% holding up in this game now I did find that other games would definitely start dropping frames once you left 640 by 480 but getting Dreamcast running running at standard resolution for the hardware on the Raspberry Pi 5 with a perfect lock frame rate which is absolutely Spectacular Now we're going to jump up one more resolution bump right here we're going to go to 1440 x 1080 and you're going to see that it starts to drop a frame here and there there's ever so much of a slight stagger again no frame counter yet just watch the Cadence of the footage but I would still call this infinitely playable but dropping down one bump in internal rendering resolution gives you that rock solid 60 frames per second now moving over to Sonic Adventure 2 this is running at 640x480 it is such a bright vibrant game that honestly internally upscaling it doesn't really do that much in my opinion and again this is a game that is running at its native frame rate locked with absolutely no issues whatsoever and I remember on my Raspberry Pi 4 I would notice micro stutters and that's why these tests are so fun this is just bone stock on a beta operating system with no changes to the emulation whatsoever outside of just the resolution and the audio is as good as the visuals go ahead and listen and I'll be right back with more [Music] footage hi IO I'm here to help [Music] you trust me and we will escape from the C I'll make the reason I gave you a sound sample there is because sometimes when emulators will start to drop frames they can also start stuttering their audio and that audio sounded Crystal Clear obviously Dreamcast emulation is very far Advanced and you should expect good sound quality coming out but if it does start to drop frames or screw up on the emulation you can start hearing that sometimes as well as seeing it but from the first level of Sonic Adventure 2 I cannot tell anything in the performance that would lead me to believe that there is any issue of the horsepower of of the Raspberry Pi 5 of course Dreamcast is a very big Library I'm just testing games I'm familiar with that I've tested before but as far as Dreamcast performance so far is concerned it has been a 10 out of 10 Rock Solid experience on the Raspberry Pi 5 now moving over to Power Stone this is a game we're upping the internal rendering resolution whatsoever at least on this recall box installation seems to then slow the frame rate down we'll get to the frame counter very shortly but again I just want to do this off look and feel I think that if you just watch footage you can tell when it's running well versus when it's not I don't like when people focus just on a numerical value but we will be there in just a moment but as I switch to the next clip you're going to very quickly see the game is going to slow down and it's going to start to stutter this is one step above 640 by 480 and at least for Power Stone the Raspberry Pi 5 couldn't do it outside of internal rending resolution but I remember when I tested this game on the four I think it was dropping frames at the stock resolution on an overclocked Raspberry Pi for so this is just so much more improved let's move over to another system that is Funtime and 3D that's going to be the PlayStation Portable I love PSP I love PSP emulation whether it's on my steam deck or on real Hardware I wanted to see what Tekken 6 would do because I feel like this game is really willing to up its internal rendering resolution and continue to run at a good frame rate so I wanted to see just how far I could push this game on the Raspberry Pi 5 and the good thing is I could push it very far I'm starting with the native resolution you can see that it is not highres whatsoever but it is running perfectly fine and this is exactly the experience you would expect if you were playing this game on a real PlayStation Portable except it would look clear because the screen would be much smaller but every round I'm going to up the resolution I'm going to show you what it is and you're going to see how it behaves and I will turn on the frame counter now as well so let's pop over to 2x internal rendering resolution and see how that behaves you'll see when we get in game it is much clearer and the frame counter is a lock 60 out of 60 100 100% speed it might drop down to 99.9 but that's just a fluctuation in how the hardware works that is not the game really struggling what soever to run intox and this is definitely a fast fluid game and again fighting games are great to test when you're looking for latency or drop frames because so much of what is important here is the performance so now let's pop back in and let's go to 3x internal rendering resolution this is three times the pixels that would be going on on real hardware and again you can see it is a lock 60 frames per second this is absolutely stunning it looks great captured via my retro tank it looks great on my television and the performance and gameplay is just 100% here at 3x internal scale and I did check my Raspberry Pi 4 I could barely get off the 1X mode so let's jump up one more setting and see if it can actually handle 4X now again remember I am doing nothing for these emulators I am not changing any settings I'm just seeing what they do out of the box if you actually tweaked a bunch of of stuff you could probably even get more power out of the Raspberry Pi 5 and again this is on a beta operating system and a lot of these emulators might need some updates you will see here we have just dropped down to 38 to 39 frames per second so at least in Tekken 6 a 4X internal running resolution was not within the realm of the Raspberry Pi 5 today but with emulator updates with an overclock with an operating system that's not in beta it's possible that we could get there on Tekken 6 so just remember again I'm just seeing what I can Brute Force this thing to do without getting into any nitty-gritty and if we jump back down to 3x we're back at a lock 60 frames a second and honestly after 3x you don't really see much of a difference in the visual unless you're on a 4k monitor so just be aware of that now moving over to Ultimate ghosts and goblins here this is a game again that on the Raspberry Pi 4 I couldn't really get it to run at a lock stable frame rate now this is a 2X internal rending resolution and it is not running well here whatsoever this is the thing not every single PSP game is going to give you that resolution bump sometimes you need to drop it back down to Native resolutions as you're seeing here we're running at 13 frames per second out of 30 which is what the game would be locked at but if we jump down to One X internal rendering resolution you're going to see we're now at a lock 30 frames a second this was performance that was not easy to get out of the Raspberry Pi 4 but here on the pi five you're just getting it all the time of the games I tested for PSP I was not able to find a game at least at 1X resolution that would not run at a native frame rate and that is just spectacular and of course it's still the early days and I haven't tested the entire Playstation portable library but I would be surprised if you could find a game that would be not playable on the current hardware and that is also the great thing so many people don't even have Raspberry Pi 5S yet so many emulator developers so many operating system makers haven't even really got much of the hardware in their hands so it's only going to get better from here and some games you definitely can get to the 4X rendering resolution scale and I will move over right now to Me and My Katamari this is a game that is running at 4X and at least in the intro area here it is running at a rock solid frame rate now I'm sure as you get into the game and the print starts rolling up a lot more stuff you might need to dial it back to 3x but you can see here just how good this looks when that rendering resolution is bumped sure some of the 2D assents are going to look anywhere near as good as the 3D but this just looks absolutely spectacular it is a 10 out of 10 in my opinion and play Play Station portable performance on the Raspberry Pi 5 is so much improved from the Raspberry Pi 4 it is night and day different and so much worth the upgrade now let's move over to the Sega Saturn a notoriously difficult console to emulate it's not because the CPUs are particularly fast or it's a particularly High test system it is a highly complicated system a mess of silicon and Sega did so many different things with the hardware that emulation still to this day is a work in progress because it is that complicated of a system and on the RAs Berry Pi 4 last time I remember playing Sega Saturn I wouldn't really call it a super playable experience but here in Panzer draon and I will turn the frame counter on in just a second but again look at the screen Cadence this is running smoothly there's definitely some emulation glitches here and there and I'm sure that I could probably move around to different emulators but again I am just seeing what the day one brute force method of performance is and I am just so impressed with what we're getting here and before you ask I did test PlayStation 2 and I did test GameCube and for the life of me I could not get them to work whatsoever I know other people have gotten it done but I just wanted to kind of play around and see what was possible so as this project matures as Raspberry Pi 5 support gets more robust I will definitely come back in and take a closer look but you'll see here in Panzer draon with the frame counter at the top again it is just a lock 60 frames per second sure it fluctuates up and down a tiny bit that is normal but this game right here is just running exactly speed wise as you would expect out of this game and if for any reason you've never played paner draon before definitely go ahead and give it a shot wherever you play it on it is one of my favorite Sega Saturn games of all time but again this is a game that would be hitchy and underperform if you didn't have the hardware needed to run it and that is what I'm finding out about the Raspberry Pi 5 right now everything I throw at it as long as the emulation is currently working on the system it is running extremely well as we move into the building here you're going to see even the transition we're not really dropping any frames in whatsoever when it's floating in a new area watch that counter it stays at 59 .77 and we just continue on with the game that is great performance this is 100% a playable experience even if there are some visual glitches and even if I could pop over to a different version of the Saturn emulator maybe we might get a little bit less of a glitch this is the fun part though just seeing what is possible and what can be done and don't worry we're going to be taking a closer look at some other Saturn games as well in this video because I did want to see how they performed but everything here in Panzer draon is just so smooth it's buttery silky smooth as far as the game gameplay and the footage is concerned and as far as the latency I didn't officially test that but I had no issues in any of the fighting games I was playing so honestly the latency shouldn't matter whatsoever either on most emulation but again with everything going on on screen with it drying this big ship the Open Water and the sky I can't make it drop a frame now let's move over to something like Virtual Fighter 2 a game again and the fighting genre that if it is slowing down and not working correctly you're definitely going to feel it this runs out an interlace mode so we can get a higher resolution but it should run at a 60 frame per second clip and you're going to see here again 59.99 to 60.0 locked no issues whatsoever it is smooth it's responsive it's exactly how you would want Virtual Fighter 2 to be emulating on something like a Raspberry Pi 5 and I understand there's a lot of different ways to emulate Saturn steam deck is very popular as well and that obviously is going to have a lot more performance than the Raspberry Pi 5 but for the $80 bill this thing is going to run you the per performance to dollar ratio is just off the charts this might be the easiest cheapest way to get this s of Saturn performance out of an emulator or Dreamcast or even PSP and I know it isn't really ready for prime time yet setup wise but you can get some betas of operating system that are in testing right now and you can check them out as we move on to the second stage here again everything I did on Sega Saturn I could not get it to run anything less than full speed now of course there's a lot of games in the library maybe there's one out there that isn't working so tell me down below if you've been playing around with your Pi five and what games do and don't work for you and as far as my favorite Sega Saturn game of all time Saturn Bomberman it just works now this is not a heavy test game it's not pushing the Saturn Hardware to its limits and it's not a game that you would expect to be dropping frames cuz it's not really doing that much heavy lifting but it is a game I've played so many different times in my life over the last 20 years and it is my favorite Sega Saturn game so if there was anything wrong with the performance whatsoever I would intrinsically be able to tell the minute I start playing it this is a 10 out of 10 fun time on Raspberry Pi 5 I've got zero complaints about anything on the Sega Saturn side that I've tested so far now moving over to Nintendo 64 this is a system that I just would not recommend on Raspberry Pi 4 it never really worked well for me and here interestingly enough it is running the game but there is a big white screen over the top once I quit out of the emulator back to the recal Box home screen you can see that it's slightly running underneath you get a little glimpse of the emulator so I'm sure this is just down to something on the operating system update side or on the emulator s because again this is not prime time this is not ready for public consumption these are all beta operating systems you saw that little flash of bomber man there and there be aw at least on recal box it puts up bezels I absolutely hate them and there's more than one beta as far as what you can put on your Raspberry Pi I could have gone with bassot Tera and I'm waiting to see when the Retro Pi guys get out a Raspberry Pi 5 image maybe they've already done it maybe it's buried in a form somewhere that is how early it is here on Raspberry Pi 5 but the performance on Dreamcast PSP and Sega Saturn was spectacular and that is worth the price of $80 alone I will definitely check out GameCube and Playstation 2 once I'm actually able to get them running but I know you guys have been asking about the pi five so I figured I would run with what I have here because you know I love my Dreamcast my PlayStation Portable and especially my Sega Saturn but yeah if you can find a Raspberry Pi 5 at stock definitely pick one up don't pay scalloper prices it's not worth that bye-bye h

Channel: Video Game Esoterica

Views: 11,847

Keywords: raspberry pi, raspberry pi 5, raspberry pi emulation, retropie, emulation, emulators, retro gaming, retro gamer, retro games, redream, dreamcast, flycast, flycast emulator, raspberry pi 5 worth buying, raspberry pi 5 review, raspberry pi 5 emulation, raspberry pi 5 dreamcast, raspberry pi 5 PSP, PPSSPP, PPSSPP Raspberry Pi, gaming news, Raspberry Pi 5 worth it, Raspberry Pi 5 emulator, Raspberry Pi 5 how to, Raspberry Pi 5 Saturn, Sega Saturn emulation, Pi 5 worth it, pi 5 review

Id: HYb6DjeFsfg

Length: 17min 34sec (1054 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 13 2024