Are you using Auto-frameskipping? if you are, try disabling it (ie. not using any frameskipping) and see if it makes a difference.

Btw, you may want to set the FPS to Both when making a recording, so the devs know what's the internal FPS and the performance rate. Oops it's libretro, not sure whether it have this kinda setting or not.

Could be related to #15541 ?

no I don't think so, I have seen this for months, it was fine ~6 months ago but I didn't backup the core so it's hard to tell

Didn't want to create another issue but I'm having the same issue with performance on the Android Libretro PPSSPP core. Doesn't matter what device I'm on (Retroid Pocket 2+, Retroid Pocket 3+, Samsung S10e SD855, Samsung Galaxy S22, ROG Phone 5) I seem to get around -25% to -30% performance hit on the core.

Seen someone over on the Libretro discord mention it might of had a regression over time. Went back on what they mentioned that the last build that had better performance seems to be in RetroArch Plus (maybe -20% performance hit).

Only reason why I want to use the core over the standalone is for RetroAchievements 😅

This issue is happening to me also. Even if I tried on not demanding game like Street Fighter Alpha 3 the framerate is really struggling.

So this issue is impossible to fix? Because I haven't seen any progress in years.

It's a libretro issue, and the libretro core is not officially supported by the project, it's just on a level of minimal effort to keep it working. I have enough to do with the standalone builds...

So it's up to someone interested to go investigate and fix it, I'm happy to merge fixes.

I see :(

For temporary until this is fixed, by using highrange soc like snapdragon 8 gen 2 will help to solve this issue?

I don't think this is hardware issue, but you're free to try it if you had the device :)

You can use standalone builds until this issue fixed.

PS: Since iOS also suffers from FPS issue where the FPS is capped at 45 FPS (which is about -25% performance hit from 60 FPS), so may be both Android and iOS have similar issue?

using standalone fixes everything, so just use that :)

using standalone fixes everything, so just use that :)

That is not an option because I need some of retroarch's features like overlay layout, shaders, etc.

ahh...
I'd rather play games than spend a lifetime tweaking them with retroarch

I have tried to set audio resampler setting on Retroarch to null and ppsspp becomes running brutally fast with frame skipping everything.
So looked like this issue is related to audio syncing. Can this information help you to solve this issue?

That's what I've been leaning towards, audio related. Here was another issue that's somewhat related to Libretro & Audio

#12841

Well. I'll ward this issue here.
I'm a developer, but I have 0 experience with libretro and PPSSPP.

If there is anything I can to do help, or any clue regarding this issue, feel free to contact me.

@warmenhoven is looking into this, I gave him a few pointers.

Is using high-end cpu like snapdragon 8 gen 2 will help to remedy this issue?

I don't know for a fact that Android and iOS have the same issue, but I'm assuming they do. If so, then no, a faster cpu won't help, as it's not a performance problem exactly, it's a buffer blocking problem. On iOS the audio buffer gets filled, and the main thread then gets blocked waiting to add more audio data to the queue.

I don't know for a fact that Android and iOS have the same issue, but I'm assuming they do. If so, then no, a faster cpu won't help, as it's not a performance problem exactly, it's a buffer blocking problem. On iOS the audio buffer gets filled, and the main thread then gets blocked waiting to add more audio data to the queue.

I see. Have you managed to fix it for android?

No. I have an open PR that sort of works around the issue when using vulkan on iOS. I'm currently pondering how to fix the issue on iOS in a better way without potentially breaking all of the other cores, which would hopefully also fix it for the GL renderer. However, neither the workaround PR nor the theoretical fix would help Android at all. I think I understand the issue well enough that I can explain it to someone who can work on Android, and they should be able to confirm whether it's the same issue and look at potentially similar solutions.

If you can find out which commit causing PPSSPP to push more audio data than it should for the buffer to gets filled too fast like that, the other devs might be able to come up with a proper fix generally.

Pretty sure #17687 fixes this for both iOS and Android.

Pretty sure #17687 fixes this for both iOS and Android.

Wow... Finally! Thank you so much.

Confirming that #17687 resolved the issue for me with Android running on an Odin Pro.

Closing as it's reported fixed.

thanks @warmenhoven good to see someone at libretro is willing to put the work 😄