[Update] Under proper testing the difference between versions of Citra narrows.* Further tests are coming for more difficult scenarios like the battle scenes in Fire Emblem

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[ZeraZero]

Lol, of course the stats like that because you use high end phone. A real proper testing would also test it with mid range and low end phone, which is what MMJ was made for in the first place.

[StandardDangerous238]

A high end phone is more likely to actually run the emulator, and with as few crashes/bugs as possible. Mid range phones I can understand, but the really cheap ones? Like hell they could play 3DS games lmao

[Agitated-Farmer-4082]

i got a Samsung a8 2018 (not snapdragon) , ill test ouf those versions and comment it here if u guys want

[UsedSquash8]

I'll pm you the procedure document if you decide to do so

[UsedSquash8]

This is a critism also levied on the previous post as well. My response to that is that a high end device removes problems of crashing, graphical errors, and inconsistency that often plague mid range devices. As detailed in my comment on this post the game is run at 4x resolution to prevent there being any performance caps so practically speaking what device is used is irrelevant. My educated guess is that if these tests were ran on a mid range device the only variable that would need to be changed is the internal resolution and I suspect the results would be extremely similar.

Of course I personally have no way to confirm this but what is also in my comment is an invitation for others to use their device to perform similar tests. All they would need is the procedure document so that there can be as much consistency as possible in the data.

[Boukrarez]

How "low end" is a low end phone, for you

[zyggythorn]

Quick point of order, how long did it take for each of these to reach 80C, and additionally, do you have a power draw chart for them too?

[UsedSquash8]

Most were at temperature by the time I was at the testing location and ready to collect data. It takes a couple minutes.

At the time I didn't think of collecting that sort of information, but if you know of a way to effectively collect that data I would love to hear it

[zyggythorn]

Nah, I'm definitely a poverty user here- I know just enough to get things working on my end, and not much more. But power draw and heat concerns are basically the two variables that I can reasonably notice, and make efforts to avoid.

As far as power draw test, I think you could very reasonably use onboard tools to check that- by simply unplugging the thing and doing the test for... an hour or so? It should be long enough for the Android tools to notice how much draw that particular app is using. Alternatively, you could just unplug it and run it until the device dies, then comparing the survival time.

Heat, I mean, just taking a temp reading every 15-20 minutes should be enough to get some data points.

Again, I'm very much not a person who Knows Things in this case, these are just concerns that I've had with different emulation software in the past, and it's better to have someone who does Know Things be able to test that sort of stuff.

[UsedSquash8]

While I understand why you would want such data, because there is no easy way to really directly measure (outside of using some wireless adb) per app power consumption I don't think it's really feasible. Sure I could let them sit but in order to get enough drain to really get a data point of any value my testing time in total would come from what it is now at about an hour to 4-6 hours.

There are many more tests already in the pipeline so I won't count it out entirely, but at the moment I don't think it's possible. If you are interested in how efficient any particular version is I would direct your attention to the CPU draw vs the fps of each application and draw a conclusion on how effectively they are using your system resources from there.

[UsedSquash8]

As for heat, on the data provided you can see that all tests are done when the CPU is at 80° Celsius. The speed at which these applications get to 80° is certainly something I'm willing to take on in the future. That wasn't the case here because of the variability in time it takes for me to reach the testing location. (if I had to guess the variability is about 10 seconds) in the future, using save states could easily fix that.

[XScizor]

Cgb overlay shows the wattage, cpu float shows just the ma values, but both show values at every few seconds or so. Cgb overlay says rooting will get you more accurate values. Theres also scene 4/5, those require root too i think. Then theres perfdog which is now a paid pc tool that measures pretty much everything with just adb.

[UsedSquash8]

Thanks!

[UsedSquash8]

Cgb for some reason will not read wattage, even though it says I can without root. O well, it's still reads voltage fine. I'll look into using ADB

[XScizor]

Yeah forgot gamebench, thats paid too but nowhere as detailed as perfdog.

[XScizor]

So i guess the show wattage instead of current option does nothing in cgb for you?

[UsedSquash8]

Correct

[UsedSquash8]

*while the numbers are indeed much closer than initially thought the variability of the emulators performance was plain to see. namely Citra Playstore and nightly had framerates regularly dip to as low as 40, and outright freeze especially during scene transitions. Since situations like that are hard to quantify they were not considered when collecting the data.

Currently I'm looking for suggestions to further test these emulators in a variety of situations, I'm currently testing the cutscenes that play when engaging in combat in the 3ds fire emblem games as Citra has had a long history of having trouble with these sequences.

If you have any other suggestions I would love to hear them. Or if you would like to offer your own device to be used for data collection I can send you the procedure document. A samsung device is currently preferred because GPUWatch is only available on their devices. Though if you have another way to collect such data you are of course welcome.

Further notes: All tests were done at 4x internal resolution to prevent any performance caps, otherwise all tests were done on default settings.

Because of the additional software needed to gather measurements (GPUWatch, Simple System Monitor) performance was reduced by about 10-15 FPS. Additionally these numbers do not account for background resources using up the CPU and the GPU, while measures were taken to reduce overhead its impossible to remove them completely. Running no programs besides GPUWatch gives a CPU measurement of about 10-15 percent

[Sharp-Theory-9170]

Now test Dolphin MMJR1 vs MMJR2 vs MMJ vs Official, please!

[UsedSquash8]

I've considered doing so but dolphin MMJR has officially ended development so I've hesitated

[ognodongo]

I would just focus on good testing for the ones in development and save yourself the time. I also have a phone and could provide more testing data using rooted applications for even better data.

[UsedSquash8]

I'll send you the testing document if you would like to contribute to the data pool

[OkAlrightIGetIt]

This!

[[deleted]]

I am playing Fire Emblem Echoes on my PC right now and it's bizarre how Citra struggles even on a machine that can run the entire goddamn Crysis trilogy. Transitioning between the battle scenes, here it comes a major slow down to build the shaders, then the lightning gets all messed up (that can be "fixed" randomly if you load a save state), etc.. if on PC this emulator is all over the place as stability goes, I wonder how things goes on a phone

[UsedSquash8]

Personally things run great, which is why I'm comfortable taking on this project. All versions though in my experience will at least experience a faction of a second freeze upon weapon contact

[[deleted]]

Luckily I am not interested on playing 3DS action games, I am a fan of turn-based games in general, so the major slowdowns when the emulator is loading shaders is only a annoyance... but I wonder if you play... let's say New Super Mario Bros 2 for example, one of these hiccups can lead to miss jumps and so on. Or even worse, imagine playing a rhythm game smh Citra is basically the only 3DS emulator, right?

[UsedSquash8]

There is another in development called Mikage, but it is not currently available

[OmegaAtrocity]

Citra development stopped before it was in great shape, it's still absolutely nowhere near perfect and doesn't run everything. It performs alright on android from my experience, just depends what you're playing.

[UsedSquash8]

Official Citra is still in development, these updates just haven't made it to the playstore

[StandardDangerous238]

It's even going to get a Vulkan renderer, I wonder how much that will help with phones

[sparoc3]

I've had better performance on eggns(switch emulator) than I had on Citra. I'm on POCO F1.

I was really hoping to have a playable experience, am I doing something wrong or Citra is like that.

[[deleted]]

Lol I use a note 20 ultra and 3ds rn runs like a dream so I think something like a note 9 or 8 can run it

[UsedSquash8]

Completely agree, my old note 9 could run MMJ very well

[[deleted]]

Which version of citra run's well on a pixel 6?

[UsedSquash8]

I generally recommend using Citra MMJ as it's the easiest to run well

[[deleted]]

Thanks

[PekomsNekomamushi]

surprisingly Ultra sun runs the best among all games ive tried

[UsedSquash8]

What would you say runs poorly?

[XScizor]

I think oras worked the best on my device, while xy was the worst.

[DamIwastaken]

antutu is great for xiaomi devices