[2508.4][RG34XXSP] PSX poor performance

Hey, can someone chime in? I’m on loose goose on both rg34xxsp and rg35xxh and both are pretty bad when it comes to PSX/PS1 performance, I’m getting very frequent dips in FPS (down to 15 at worst) + audio crackle. Most of my library is affected except for vagrant story. Worst games to run were King’s Field and Final Doom.

Tried billions of things… swapping chd roms for bin/cue, switching audio backend from alsathread to pipewire, switching perf governor from ondemand to performance, switching regions, turning on threaded video, reflashing, restoring retroarch configs, switching SD cards, even switching devices from 34SP to 35H. Currently my system is as default as it gets, minus the added legit bioses and games, no wifi, no external audio, no bluetooth controllers. Is there something super obvious that I missed?

Other systems run fine, esp gba and ports (i expect stuttering in n64 and dc, theyre not light anyways).

[Edited to remove bios file acquisition details]

This isn’t normal behaviour as default, so this would point to a config or setting issue.

First things to check are if runahead or rewind are enabled, as well as any heavy shaders.

Run-ahead and rewind are off, as per default. Shaders were on by default, I’ve disabled them to no visible effect. I asked around on Discord — the running theory is some games just run poorly to begin with. The emulation is accurate, to an extent of replicating how poorly ps1 was handling Final Doom, Alien Resurrection and especially King’s Field. I only wonder if this can ve remedied somehow.

Choose core psx reamed
Go retroarch –> settings –> ***Frame Throttle —> Rewind. turn off rewind and back → save configuration. get back to game and try.

In core options you can try upping the PSX’s emulated CPU speed.

This can sometimes achieve smoother framerates for games that ran poorly on original hardware. It can also cause bugs in some games though so YMMV.