SNES9XGX vs. SNES9XRX

[Mario9654]

For those who don't know, SNES9XRX is a fork of an older version of SNES9XGX. Apparently, older versions of SNES9XGX have better framerates than the current version (4.5.7), I assume because those older versions have less features. So basically, SNES9XRX is focused more on performance than features.

I will be talking about the GameCube releases.

Based on what I've said, it seems like SNES9XRX is the winner, but when I compared Yoshi's Island's title screen between the latest versions of SNES9XRX and SNES9XGX, RX ran at ~10 FPS and GX ran at ~20 FPS. I immediately thought RX was worse upon seeing that, but then I tested Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars and Kirby Super Star, and to my surprise considering what I saw with Yoshi's Island, those two games ran at slightly better framerates compared to GX. Battles in Super Mario RPG ran at 60 FPS and Kirby Super Star's intro ran at ~58 FPS. Movement on the overworld in Super Mario RPG still ran at a choppy 30 FPS though.

What I'm saying is, games with enhancement chips seem to vary in performance between the two emulators. RX does worse at Super FX, but it does better at SA-1. Both chips are taxing on the hardware to emulate.

So which one is better? It depends on the game you're trying to play. If you're playing a game that does not use special chips, both are fine options. If you're going to play a Super FX game, use GX. If you're playing SA-1, use RX. Remember when I said RX does worse at SFX but better at SA-1? I'm not sure if that goes for every game, so just test your games on both emulators and see which one works best for your game.

I think I rushed typing this, so I apologize if this was hard to read in any way.

[Andross89]

I think it's been 2 years since I last tried to find the best version of this emulator. If there haven't been any changes, SNES9XTX remains the best.

[emu_kidid]

It's because RX is based on Snes9x 1.52, whereas GX has moved on to the more accurate (albeit slower in some cases) Snes9x 1.62.3.

I'd use GX for most unless if I come across a slower game and then try RX personally.

[Mario9654]

A while ago I downloaded a version of SNES9XGX from 2010 in hope of some games running better. I remembered getting nesDS v2.x before playing Mother thinking it would run better on that version of the emulator (I did not test it on v1.3 beforehand). The game was so much glitchier on v2.x than v1.3, which ran the game almost perfectly with the obvious exception being the lower screen resolution. That's when I thought older versions of emulators were better in some cases, so I tried the same with SNES for the GameCube and SA-1 games ran smoother. Now I know why that is: SNES9X was focused more on speed than accuracy back in the day. I'm not saying older versions of emulators are guaranteed to run better.

SNES9XTX gave me a black screen when I booted it up.

[Andross89]

...
SNES9XTX gave me a black screen when I booted it up.

Have you tested all versions of GBATemp?

Like all types of SNES9X on the GameCube, some versions won't work.

[Mario9654]

I know I've been gone for a while, but I have found the reason why SA-1 games use less resources on older SNES9X cores: they're not emulated at the correct speed. The intro in Kirby Super Star ended late and the ending in SMRPG went out of sync with the audio. I think what's happening is the SA-1 is emulated at 3.58 MHz instead of 10.74 MHz. I set the SNES CPU Overclock setting to Medium and that solved the slowdown, but it reduced the amount of frames shown.

I've been wondering if an emulator specifically designed to run with something like SMRPG would run better on the GameCube. I think the developer of the emulator would have to compile transparency results and whether to speed up or slow down the clock speed depending on what part of the game is loaded into the emulator. I wonder how much of a difference it would make to the framerate.

Have you tested all versions of GBATemp?

Like all types of SNES9X on the GameCube, some versions won't work.

I tested a couple of older versions. They both told me there was an error reading my SD card. When I got through the error, both versions pulled up a ton of files with garbage text when I entered a folder. That was weird because all other homebrew apps read my SD card without issues.

[Andross89]

I tested a couple of older versions. They both told me there was an error reading my SD card. When I got through the error, both versions pulled up a ton of files with garbage text when I entered a folder. That was weird because all other homebrew apps read my SD card without issues.

If this is really important to you, you can download Rufus and format a card in FAT32 in the largest possible cluster.

I can only imagine this single difference in how we are using these emulators.

[Mario9654]

What do I set my boot selection to? I don't know a lot about formatting SD cards, I just know how to format them to FAT32, FAT16, NTFS, stuff like that.

[Mario9654]

Never mind, I just set it to non bootable and it worked. I set the cluster size to 64 KB and SNES9XTX started working!

Edit: I have some bad news: The latest version of SNES9XTX still gave me a black screen. v1.0.9 didn't give me an error and I was able to select a game, but performance was identical to SNES9XGX and there were fewer menu options compared to SNES9XRX. I'm just trying to see how far the GameCube can go with certain emulators right now. I'm not focused on using it as my main system because I'm giving it to one of my friends soon and I'm getting a Wii to replace it.

[Andross89]

Never mind, I just set it to non bootable and it worked. I set the cluster size to 64 KB and SNES9XTX started working!

Edit: I have some bad news: The latest version of SNES9XTX still gave me a black screen. v1.0.9 didn't give me an error and I was able to select a game, but performance was identical to SNES9XGX and there were fewer menu options compared to SNES9XRX. I'm just trying to see how far the GameCube can go with certain emulators right now. I'm not focused on using it as my main system because I'm giving it to one of my friends soon and I'm getting a Wii to replace it.

Always use Rufus. It was the only one that managed to get a USB flash driver recognized by anything other than a PC. For years I thought it wasn't genuine.

I think I had the same problem with the latest version of that emulator.

And I think it's better because I managed to play the SA-1 version of Megaman X with save state.

And that was a long time ago... The situation has probably changed.