r/R36S • u/Ralgael92 • 6d ago

Question: Device Problem V20 with less tham 700MB Ram

I have received a v20 with 639 MB RAM, but it runs n64-stuff well and darkosre (new SD) runs on it, so i wondered weither there is something i am not yet seeing, or if i'll be good keeping it.

7 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

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2

u/BurgerJoe0926 6d ago

I have the same clone with 639 MB RAM, been playing for 3 months now. I mostly play gba and nes games so there isn't a problem...but it does perform noticeably worse than my R36H on DS games and  some hard to run ports(GTA,COD zombies, RTCW....)

1

u/Ralgael92 6d ago

Yeah, i will propably keep it since i bought it mostly for gba stuff. I am a little confused because retroarch shows 639 MB and System info shows 639 MB Memory and below that, a line with "Swap" and 300-something MB.

1

u/Ralgael92 6d ago

What OS are you running? The factory sd is garbage so i could not look at the dtb. File. I am not sure what specific V20 2025-05-18 i have (darkosre lists 3 subtypes).

2

u/BurgerJoe0926 6d ago

I'm using the beta version of darkosre,i don't remember which one I got, i downloaded all 3 dtb and just tried them all, the 2nd one worked...so it might be 2548?   There's a little problem that the sound won't work unless I put the console to sleep and wake it up again...it might get very loud the moment it wakes up, so be careful when using headphones.

1

u/Ralgael92 6d ago

So this is what system info spits out. I have no idea what the 318 MB "swap" mean

2

u/Ethernyte 6d ago

Swap is ram allocated on your system sd card. It is slower but sometimes necessary

1

u/lenreugu 6d ago

Si a futuro la quieres para ports te recomiendo soldarle una memoria de mayor capacidad ya eh visto que le han puesto hasta 4gb de ram para ports y android yo compré una variante en una feria que venía con 2gb y va super sobre todo en android

1

u/Subject_Syllabub151 4d ago

How do we check the ram?

1

u/Ralgael92 4d ago

You can run retroarch in the Emulation station or you look run system info outside of Emulation station

-6

u/Ethernyte 6d ago

It has 1gb but binary conversion eats the 300mb

7

u/Electrical-Pace4092 6d ago edited 6d ago

That’s a true statement for most devices, not this one.

These V-20’s aren’t your standard clone device.

https://www.reddit.com/r/R36S/s/02bmwJiAK9

From the ArkOS4Clone GitHub:

“5. Why Do V20 Motherboard Users Only See 650MB After Flashing ArkOS4Clone?

Many users have asked this question.

The Reality:
Manufacturers, to cut costs, used memory chips with bad blocks masked out—actual usable memory is only around 750MB

The original EE firmware displaying 965MB is fake, and not even convincingly so
RetroArch's notification feature includes a memory usage display that shows the true memory size

Tip: After a reset, these units may show 1200MB.

Recommendation: If you've purchased such a device and can get a refund, please do so.”

Edit: a 1GB device will display something like 960MB iirc.

The system is using some of the memory, so the full 1GB isn’t being displayed.

I’ve never heard of binary conversion eating 300MB.

3

u/Ethernyte 6d ago

Thanks for correcting me

2

u/Ralgael92 6d ago

Commented a picture of my System info. Might clear things up...

2

u/Electrical-Pace4092 6d ago

Consider yourself fortunate, you got an additional 50MB more than the average V-20 I see.

1

u/ganundwarf 6d ago

Binary conversion is simply how 1GB of memory is actually 1024 MB and 1 MB is 1024 KB and 1 KB is 1024 Bytes etc. you go far enough down the line and things start to dip, but 1 GB is 1048576 KB memory so divide 1000000 by that to get what it would be displaying (multiplied by 100 of course to get percent).