GoldenEye 007 Nintendo 64 Community, GoldenEye X, Nintendo 64 Games Discussion

[MRKane]

Seeing the new graphics card that's being worked on, and having been messing with the controllers myself for a while, I'm left wondering what we could do to actually boost performance of the N64 console itself.

This is a bit of a thread starter and musing as I've not much looked into it yet (guilty) but putting overclocking aside as "not really a suitable solution" the other bottlenecks in the system seem to be things like the RAM speed - which might have a tighter timing with a more modern equivalent were one to be available.

Other things might include making sure that the powersupply is giving enough, that sort of thing.

Thoughts?
_________________
No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[Kerr Avon]

Sorry, but I can't help with the technical stuff, or with regards to speeding up an N64 (though when CEN64 is finished, you might be able to do eveything in this 100% accurate emulator, and so use a PC as an overclockable N64, I don't know - http://www.cen64.com/), but to me the best 'hardware upgrade' for an N64 is a flash cartridge, as it not only allows you to have all N64 games on one cartridge (in effect), but you can also play the homebrew N64 software (i.e. Doom - http://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=1886.0), modded commercial games (i.e. Goldeneye X, F-Zero X Climax, the English translations of Sin and Punishment, and Wonder Project 2, etc), and unreleased games (40 Winks, etc), and prototypes (Glover 2, O.D.T., Dragon Sword 64, Tamiya Racing 64, etc).

The Everdrive 64 (the only flash cartridge that I've used so far, as it does everything I want) also allows you to play any region games, copy the contents of a controller pak to the ED64's SD card (and vice versa, so you can store backups of the controller pak on a PC or Mac, and restore them at will), and even has full Gameshark emulation pending (the initial release is at:

http://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=2079.0

and the authors are fast workers, so the final release probably won't be too far away! ).

You probably already know this, since you're posting on an N64 game modding site, but I thought I'd mention the advantages that a flash cartridge gives, for anyone who is unaware. It really does transform your system.

[SubDrag]

I still want somebody to expand the RAM to 12 or 16 meg. That would be much fun.

[zoinkity]

Apparently some people in the N64 dev community have expanded the ram. Basically, what they do is solder an expansion pak's ram onto the board, then shove another expansion pack into it. The earlier consoles are a better one to work with since they split the on-board ram into two chips instead of one.

Incidentally, it turns out that several titles detect available ram and shift things accordingly. It also turns out a few will limit the amount available to a value they want. For the most part though there wouldn't be any difference as far as commercial carts go (unless they ran out of ram for some reason) but for hackers...well, Sub already knows what that would mean for GE ;*)


I've also heard some talk about overclocking the RCP. It turns out that simply overclocking the main processor isn't especially helpful, and anything past 1.5x is downright problematic. Although there are several reasons for this, one big one is that RCP can't keep up with the A/V tasks at the increased rate they're requested. The N64 is a multiprocessor system, so it makes sense that you'd have to overclock both simultaneously.
Speeding up rdram (or replacing it with a different sort of ram, theoretically) absolutely increases the system performance and with no side-effects. The iQue, an official N64 portable-ish clone, happened to do exactly that. The difference is immediately noticable.

If you have an electrical background and a soldering iron there's some nifty things you can do. If you have an NTSC system an RGB mod is a nice addition. It's the best possible visual quality and only requires tapping into existing pins. There's also an HDMI replacement board in the testing phase right now. That requires removing and replacing some hardware though, so not everyone will be comfortable doing it themselves.
A handy mod isn't for the console but for rumble paks. You can rig most of them so they draw power from the controller, making batteries obsolete. The official rumble pak happens to be one of the easiest to work with too; you unsolder a resistor from one point on the board and attach it to another.
_________________
(\_/) Beware
(O.o) ze
(> <) Hoppentruppen!

[mistamontiel]

W-O-W. The controller can keep the rumbles juiced ? What on Earth were Nintendo doing making it battery dependable ?

Had a badass 3rd party black one that had a red light when doin its thang. Also went bust
_________________

[MRKane]

I've owned a Doctor 64 for about 10 years now, and consider it one of the best investments I ever made for my N64.

I was reading over the system information when I wondered about finding some faster ram for the system as increasing RAM speed should boost performance outright, hearing you talk about the iQue Zoinkity makes me think that it is possible, but I'll have to pour over the comparison charts to see if there's an alternative to RDRAM that I could use. It's a bit of a long shot, but (to me) seems to be the better place to start when trying to boost performance of the console - just RDRAM is very old and I've not been able to find many charts on it.

Pertaining to overclocking: We'd have to lower the speed of the games to actually have a "frame increase" advantage from it - might have been a steep call once but is possibly doable now.
_________________
No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[MRKane]

This was a very very interesting read:
http://nfggames.com/forum2/index.php?topic=5223.0

So there are alternatives out there...I'll bug the rest of the tecchies at work on monday
_________________
No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[MRKane]

Ok...so after a huge amount of reading and learning, it would seem that a:
NEC 18-Mbit DRAM (500 MHz, 3.3 V) (PD488170LVN-A50-9) has the same pinout and details as the RDRAM36-NUS (from what I can find), while advertises a lower latency than the other clips.

Users have found that putting ram in with a higher speed increases the game clock speed, but for what I can find the above chip boasts "an extremely low latency" which is kind of what we're after.

The next problem (of course) will be tracking them down and getting my hands on them were they to be considered acceptable - and that's where people here come in...thoughts...anyone?
_________________
No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[zoinkity]

You know though, you can software mod the game's relative clock speed via the second word in the header. There are even a few retail games that shipped this way.
_________________
(\_/) Beware
(O.o) ze
(> <) Hoppentruppen!

[MRKane]

But doesn't that result in the game speed increasing instead of just stabilising the framerate? I'm mainly thinking of the slowdowns that tend to happen in PD during four player games, and some of the other frame speed issues when there's a lot of onscreen action

But that Rom header is probably worth a lookup!!!
_________________
No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[Trevor]

I just thought of something and thought id post it.

Its not that simply changing the game header clock would increase framerate, but more that with an overclocked system and faster bigger RAM the game could be 'under-clocked' by software therefore cancleing out the hardware game speed increase.

This means that while PD would pump out a steadier 30fps (or whatever?) the games clocks and timers would remain normal, i.e. a 10 second count-down would actually take 10 seconds.


Without software underclocking the gamespeed increases, therefore still stutters, and a 10 second clock lasts only 5.


Another way to describe it is that the header is 93MHz, A normal CPU is 93MHz
If the CPU is 120MHz then the game will run too fast because it expects 93MHz.

Therefore the game clock needs to be adjusted to 120MHz so they match.

Trev
_________________

[MRKane]

I wondered about that too actually - although having spent quite a while on the N64 forums I ended up resigning to the issue of not being able to get a N64 console (in New Zealand) that I could easily overclock - they all seemed to be the harder types when I looked under the hood.

I'd be very interested to know the result of this is someone had an overclocked console to test it on!!
_________________
No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[zoinkity]

The RCP is the big bottleneck for titles like Perfect Dark. You can only process graphics and audio tasks so quickly. The main processor isn't involved in any of that.

Next big bottleneck is rdram access times.

Any full doubling of the CPU appears to cause faults, and even 1.5x isn't completely safe.

One major improvement for those without CRTs would be HDMI output. There's an add-on in the works for that, works regardless the region console, but you'll probably have to get one installed by someone else.
http://retroactive.be/tech_n64_hdmi.php
_________________
(\_/) Beware
(O.o) ze
(> <) Hoppentruppen!

[MRKane]

I actually discussed the RAM over at a few of the N64 forums, and the general reply from the users is that I was barking up the wrong tree.

I wasn't sure if it was arrogance or them just being assertive towards the "ignorant newcomer". Seriously though, does anyone know where I could get some ram chips that might suffice? I'm dead keen to give it a go.

There's been a few rumours I've found regarding the RCP but nobody has actually written anything or boasted of having done it, although there was a processor replacement thread which went dead (I'd assume one can only break so many N64 consoles before it starts to hurt their souls).

I had a look at the HDMI graphics card, and I think there was a discussion here about it - although personally I'd be looking at putting it through an edge preserving smooth enhancement instead of a dither, but that's just my reaction - they've probably already tried that
_________________
No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[Trevor]

I think I may have read some of those posts... I was always under the impression, linked in with what zoink has just said above, that RAM was too slow, yet those forums all claim that the RAM is fine... what gives?

The RCP I read somewhere had been increased from 62.5MHz to some level but the overclock resulted in corrupt graphics unless some other clock was multiplied.

Also While the CPU can be increased from 93.75MHz apparently this reduces RAM speed (Due to some ratio) and so for games like PD overclocking is bad without altering the RAM.

Can I just ask what people are using as a multiplier though? Are you assuming that 93.75 = 1 or are you correctly using 93.75 = 1.5?

From what I have read online as well as the SDK, the CPU is 62.5MHz (Same as the RCP which is the same as the FSB) and it is clocked 1.5x to the stated 93.75MHz (100 MIPS).
RAM is apparently 250 MHz(9 bit bytes at 500 M/sec)

Trev
_________________