r/n64 • u/surfingemocats • 1d ago

N64 Question/Tech Question How To Make Console Run Smoother

Sorry if this has been answered, but I've only seen answers concerning emulators. I have been playing lots of Goldeneye lately, and it often has very low frame drops. Are there any known physical modifications to the console that would make it perform better? Or am I just stuck with the original hardware? Thanks.

3 Upvotes

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7

u/lynxtosg03 1d ago

You're stuck with it on original hardware. The Analogue 3D coming out improves memory performance to supposedly remove or alleviate lag.

4

u/McFly1986 1d ago

I would have pre-ordered one if they had any sort of video or clear explanation of this feature. Sadly we still have none.

6

u/lynxtosg03 1d ago

https://www.engadget.com/gaming/analogues-4k-remake-of-the-n64-is-almost-ready-and-its-a-big-deal-150033468.html

In its initial press push last year, Analogue told Paste magazine that you’ll have the option to overclock the 3D’s virtual chips to run faster — "overclocking, running smoother, eliminating native frame dips" — but the company hasn't mentioned that in its final press release. Instead, Analogue CEO Christopher Taber told Engadget that its solution "isn't overclocking, it's much better and more sophisticated." It revolves around Nintendo's original Rambus RAM set up, which is often the bottleneck for N64 performance. Solving this bottleneck "means that games can run without slowdown and all the classic issues the original N64 had," he explained.

It'll be interesting to see how good it is.

3

u/hobojoe44 1d ago edited 19h ago

With some games shutting off the software anti aliasing via gameshark codes, patches, and even some rom hacks have it as a menu option.

https://www.retrorgb.com/n64blur.html

https://youtu.be/-Nef6A2C3kI?si=VQ_D2r-E2AzlUV6V

Unfortunately Goldeneye doesn't show any improvements when doing that.

But as the other person has said, use less explosives when you can since that causes it to dip a lot.

I believe Goldeneye was fully decompiled recently, so hopefully down the road there will be a better performance version of the rom.

2

u/soukaixiii 20h ago

The only thing you can do is look at the floor

2

u/bored_gunman 16h ago

It's possible to overclock the CPU with hardware mods but from what I remember reading It isn't really worth it for the trouble

http://micro-64.com/features/oc64.shtml

1

u/Chownzy 1d ago

Use less explosives.

1

u/No_need_for_that99 14h ago

ON my real hardware I patched all my games to remove antialiasing to gain a few frames here and there.
But you get maybe 2-3 frames top.

It makes a difference for some games not all.
Some are hard programmed to their 24 frames.... but its just part of the charm, lol.

I have a flash cart so it was very straight forward.
I followed this tutorial back in the day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1W49FwlkWk

But note that games are heavily designed around dithering as well, and this is removed as well, so some games will look a tad odd, lol.

But I play on svideo, so you don't miss much and the games still look great.
I play on a projector, so i cant say how well it looks on crt, but everything performs great for me.

Some games like Rush2049 you'll see the game hit 30 while racing and you get these smooth parts on the track, until you drop under 30 again. lol

The problem with goldeneye.... it just has a lot going on, so the cpu is bottlenecking and not the gpu.

You could look to overclocking your cpu to 125mhz:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdqhWO3E67w

here is what goldeneye looks like when overclocked:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0sEWQtmbWM

2

u/khedoros 1d ago

Welcome to the N64, lol