One of my least favourite pastimes is setting up Retroarch. Nothing seems to stick after you save a million times and it feels like you need to do things in a specific order while hopping on one leg and singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star just so it works. But the only reason why I keep going back is familiarity and shaders.
Not all shaders work that well due to the technical limitations of a device so I thought I’d put together a list of the CRT shaders that come with Retroarch and give an opinion on how they run. To test this, I’m using my RG 40XXV, specifically running muOS.
Hold up, what’s a shader?
A shader is a graphical file that visually alters a game, either through some form of enhancement or by replicating an effect. One of the most popular forms of shader is a CRT shader which tries to emulate the style of a CRT screen with its scanlines and curved screen.
As a reminder, the RG 40XXV has a H700 chipset with 1GB RAM and the version of muOS I have is 2410.2 BIG BANANA. This has only been tested on Megadrive and SNES so if anything is slow on those consoles, they might be worse on, say, a PS1 or N64.
I won’t be showing you what the shaders look like so if you want that, there’s a handy shaders guide on things i play. There are also guides on Emulation General Wiki and Filthy Pants you should check out. And if you want a comprehensive guide to shaders and overlays, Retro Game Corps has you covered.
Shaders
CRT shader | Performance |
---|---|
crt-aperture | noticeable frame rate drop |
crt-beam | slight frame rate drop but runs smoothly |
crt-blurpi-soft | runs with no issues |
crt-blurpi | runs with no issues |
crt-caligari | doesn’t load |
crt-cgwg-fast | slight frame rate drop but runs smoothly |
crt-consumer | slight frame rate drop but runs smoothly |
crt-halation-easymode | blank screen |
crt-easymode | runs with no issues |
crt-geom | noticeable frame rate drop |
crt-guest-dr-venom-fast | runs with no issues but the screen is white and blue so not really playable |
crt-guest-dr-venom | blank screen |
crt-guest-sm | runs with no issues |
crt-guest-sm-r-mini | runs with no issues |
crt-hyllian-3d | runs with no issues |
crt-hyllian-fast | runs with no issues |
crt-hyllian-low | doesn’t load |
crt-hyllian-multipass | runs with no issues |
crt-hyllian | doesn’t load |
crt-interlaced-halation | noticeable frame rate drop |
crt-lottes-fast | slight frame rate drop but runs smoothly |
crt-lottes-multipass | noticeable frame rate drop and not playable |
crt-lottes | noticeable frame rate drop and not playable |
crt-mattias | noticeable frame rate drop and not playable |
crt-nes-mini | runs with no issues |
crt-nobody | runs with no issues |
crt-pi-vertical | runs with no issues |
crt-pi | runs with no issues |
crt-potato-cool | runs with no issues |
crt-potato-warm | runs with no issues |
crt-royale-fake-bloom | doesn’t load |
crt-ntsc-256px | doesn’t load |
crt-yo6-KV-M1420B-sharp | noticeable frame rate drop |
crt-yo6-KV-M1420B | noticeable frame rate drop |
crtglow-gauss | blank screen |
fake-CRT-Geom-potato | runs with no issues |
fake-CRT-Geom | runs with no issues |
fakelottes | runs with no issues |
gtuv50 | runs with no issues |
metacrt | noticeable frame rate drop, doesn’t fit the screen, and not playable |
phosphurlot | runs with no issues |
smuberstep-glow | slight frame rate drop but runs smoothly |
zfast-composite | runs with no issues |
zfast-crt | runs with no issues |