MK808B plus: disappointing emulator performance

[phinc]

Hi guys.
Today i wanted to turn my mk808b plus into a N64 emulation machine. I was playing around with N64 emulators with my old (now broken) MK808B (non plus) some time ago and the performance was really good. I was able to play mario kart quite perfectly for example (at least in single player mode). So i fugured the mk808b plus with a much more powerful cpu and gpu should show a even better performance. But got really disappointed here. I tried mario kart and i couldn't even play a single player race without major slowdowns. I tried different emulators and all different settings and graphic plug-ins, all without success.
Has any of you experience with emulators on the mk808b plus (or similar device)? Maybe a special rom or speial settings? I am on stock 110k rom btw.
Any input is appreciated.

[prahjister]

Try 720

[phinc]

Yeah i tried that already. It brought no siginficant improvement. What i also did was to install CM 12, that improved the perfomance slightly. Then i removed my connected USB hub, which again brought some improvement (maybe a power issue). So all in all it is comparable to RK3066 performance now, which is still very disappointing, but at least Mario Kart is playable in single player now.

[ididmytime]

The CPU's on Amlogics are weaker than those rk3066's clock for clock, although they have more cores and a better GPU emulators won't take advantage of that.

They make wonderful media centres however with OpenElec which is the best low powered XBMC device I have used, but if you want the best of both worlds then you can't go wrong with an rk3188, would steer clear of the rk3288 as although it's a powerhouse has problems a plenty.

[HwGeek]

have you added heat sink to it 4 better cooling?
I just got this stick and it was pure **** VS the old RKM RK3066 stick, can't even play 1080P videos smoothly, then I checked the CPU-Z and saw that it only runs @ 1.2GHZ max and the temps was over 80c (throttling ), now after I have added small heat sink the temps are around 50C and now I can force it to work at 1.5GHZ max and 1.2GHZ min and the performance is great!, XBMC run smoothly @1080P UI+ 1080P videos.

try this and add small heatsink and force max Freq all time.

[phinc]

Yeah i already noticed that the max frequency is reduced to 1.2 ghz most of the time. Did you romeve the original heatsink or did you just put the new one on top? Could you make some photos of your mod please?

[HwGeek]

I have removed the stupid metal sheet and applied thermal past(non conductive) and added small heat sink.
U can buy the Raspberry Pi heat sink kits- very cheap and they have adhesive applied .

[phinc]

Okay thanks. I will see what i can get at my electronics store. Or maybe i cut an old mainboard heatsink to fit the chip.
Some further questions:
How did cut the case?
Did you really just use thermal paste or did you use thermal glue? Because i guess with thermal paste the heatsink won't stick to the chip reliably.
What did you do with the piece of metal tape? (i guess it is part of the antenna, or maybe some kind of shielding for the antenna)
Have you checked if your mod affects wifi performance? (because of the antenna thing)

[HwGeek]

I used Arctic Silver 5 and used the black plastic sheet from other side and cut it to pieces to cover the PCB around the CPU/memory so that the metal heat sink can't touch the electronics.
to cut the plastic it's easy with Stanley knife, the heat sink shape + some tweaks is forced down on the PCB when I close the top cover, this is what make it to stay in place without the glue.
the AVG temp after mode is 45~60 when at stock it was over 75 idle.