WinUAELoader performance issues

[Clavius]

Hi everyone,

I'm not new to WinUAE, but I am new to WinUAELoader and WHDLoad.  I seem to be having some serious performance issues with games when I use WinUAELoader along with WHDLoad.  More specifically what's happening is that a vast majority (probably 90%) of the games are playing much slower than normal (ranging anywhere from just slightly noticeably slower to completely unplayable at 1fps).  I have an extremely fast computer (Intel i7 cpu, 6GB ram, nVidia GTX285, Windows7, etc.) and all the games play at their appropriate speeds when I manually boot them via .adf files into WinUAE without the loader.

Here are some of the games off the top of my head that were just completely unplayable: Blastar,  First Samurai, Gods, Indianapolis 500, James Pond 2 (AGA), Jurassic Park (AGA)... these seemed to be the worst of the games I've tested so far.

I'm not entirely sure how to test these games with WHDLoad without using WinUAELoader, so I don't know if the performance issue lies in that or in the loader.  Something that I noticed is that it's easy to tell if a game is going to have performance problems based on the little CPU meter in the bottom left hand corner of the WinUAE window... if it's pegged at 100% then the game will run slightly (or terribly!) slow.  If it's floating in the normal range of 5% to 12% then the game plays perfectly.

Has anyone else been having these issues?  I tried editing some of the values in the WHDLoad.xml file but they didn't seem to help.  It could be that this is normal, but since I didn't see anyone else posting a similar issue I thought I'd check.

Any help would be appreciated!

[headkaze]

That is very strange. It shouldn't be slowing down the game especially a super fast PC like that. Apart from a global key hook (which is not much overhead) the loader shouldn't be doing much in the background while WinUAE is running. Perhaps something is going wrong? Can you check your WinUAELoader.log file after you experience a slow down? Also are you running from inside a Front End? What happens if you launch the game from inside WinUAE Loader's "Run ROM" function?

I would like to remove the global key hook for remapping keys eventually and use WinUAE's internal remapping system by editing the cfg file directly. I have nearly all the code in place to do that except for the actual writing to the config.

[Kman-Sweden]

I would like to remove the global key hook for remapping keys eventually and use WinUAE's internal remapping system by editing the cfg file directly. I have nearly all the code in place to do that except for the actual writing to the config.

Dude! You got some real skills. And where do you find the time? 

[Clavius]

That is very strange. It shouldn't be slowing down the game especially a super fast PC like that. Apart from a global key hook (which is not much overhead) the loader shouldn't be doing much in the background while WinUAE is running. Perhaps something is going wrong? Can you check your WinUAELoader.log file after you experience a slow down?

Okay, I ran a particularly slow game and checked the log after exiting.  It doesn't list any errors, just says:  1/13/2010 9:24:31 AM: WinUAELoader v1.72
1/13/2010 9:26:00 AM: Exiting.

Also are you running from inside a Front End? What happens if you launch the game from inside WinUAE Loader's "Run ROM" function?

Initially I was booting it from MaLa but when I noticed the slowdowns I took it out of the equation, so now I am in fact just running it from the "Run ROM" button.


Some other data in case it helps --

Running Windows 7 (I tried setting compatability options for both WinUAELoader and also WinUAE to WinXP SP2 just in case)

Using WinUAE 2.0.1 and WinUAELoader 1.72

Disabled Avira Antivirus just on the off-chance that it wasn't playing nice with your key hook, but it didn't seem to make a difference.

Below is a screenshot of the cpu usage of my computer vs winuae.  My computer's cpu seems to be sorta all over the place, and slightly higher overall than what I would expect, but it's nowhere near max.  But you can see that winuae's cpu is pegged at 100%.



-Clavius

[headkaze]

How much CPU is WinUAE Loader using when you're running a game?

One thing you can try for me.. launch a game from WinUAE Loader then kill the WinUAELoader.exe process. Does the CPU usage in WinUAE drop?

I'll be getting Win7 soon so I'll be able to test it and see if I can figure out what's going on.

[Space Fractal]

Only a longshot guess, I guess you missing some sort of delay command (in blitzmax I use delay 1 to make sure it dont eat all the cpu).... As I guess, just a longshot guess.

[Clavius]

How much CPU is WinUAE Loader using when you're running a game?

One thing you can try for me.. launch a game from WinUAE Loader then kill the WinUAELoader.exe process. Does the CPU usage in WinUAE drop?

I'll be getting Win7 soon so I'll be able to test it and see if I can figure out what's going on.

Sounds like a good way to get some more data about the problem - I'll try it as soon as I get home from work tonight, about 7pst.

[Clavius]

How much CPU is WinUAE Loader using when you're running a game?

One thing you can try for me.. launch a game from WinUAE Loader then kill the WinUAELoader.exe process. Does the CPU usage in WinUAE drop?

I'll be getting Win7 soon so I'll be able to test it and see if I can figure out what's going on.

According to the task manager WinUAELoader is using 0%, and WinUAE is holding steady around 13% of my cpu.  I killed the WinUAELoader process while playing a really slow game and there was no change.

So what it seems like now is that the virtual Amiga is being taxed pretty heavily, but my computer is not.  Almost like I would get the same exact result if I ran this with my real Amiga1200.  But I can only speculate, as I haven't tried running these WHDLoad games without the WinUAELoader since I haven't yet learned how to do that.

Let me try to get an A1200 going with a Hard Disk inside of WinUAE, and try using WHDLoad to run a game within that and see if I have the same issue.  I'll post back in a few with results.

[Clavius]

I finally got WHDLoad to launch one of the games that was playing slowly from within an A1200 setup inside of WinUAE, and with WinUAELoader out of the equation it played fine.

So this helps narrow it down a bit.  It really seems like something that WinUAELoader (or maybe whdrun?) is doing.

Something strange I noticed, which may be unrelated, is that when I booted up the A1200 from an old hardfile I had laying around, the cpu on WinUAE was pegged at 100% which I figured was a sure sign that it wasn't going to work, but the game played fine.   

Any thoughts on what to try next?

[headkaze]

Try running whdrun without WinUAE Loader.

Use the following syntax replacing the "..." with the appropriate paths.

Code: [Select]

whdrun.exe "...\Blastar_v2.0.zip" "...\Temp\Blastar_v2.0" "...\winuae.exe" "...\Data\WHDLoad.uae" "...\WHD\S\user-startup"

[Clavius]

Phew... this turned out to be one hell of a command line entry!  Here's what I typed:

whdrun.exe "D:\ARCADE\RomFiles\Amiga\Blastar_v2.0.zip" "D:\ARCADE\Emulators\WinUAE\WinUAELoader\Temp\Blastar_v2.0" "D:\ARCADE\Emulators\WinUAE\winuae.exe" "D:\ARCADE\Emulators\WinUAE\WinUAELoader\Data\WHDLoad.uae" "D:\ARCADE\Emulators\WinUAE\WinUAELoader\WHD\S\user-startup"

It launched WinUAE and then I got an AmigaOS error saying "No disk present in device DH1".  I thought it might be because Blaster is 3 disks so I tried it again with a 1 disk game (Prince of Persia) and got the same error.

[Clavius]

I tried playing with it some more again yesterday and still no luck.  I think I'm going to have to switch to using disk images instead of whdload files.   

If anyone out there has any ideas...

[headkaze]

Open WHD\S\user-startup in Notepad and write the following:

Code: [Select]

cd dh1:Blastar;
whdload Blastar.slave PRELOAD; CUSTOM1=1 CUSTOM2=1;
Then try your command line again. This will tell us if it's WHDRun causing the problem or WinUAE Loader. BTW I have Windows 7 now, so I will test it when I get some spare time.

[Clavius]

Open WHD\S\user-startup in Notepad and write the following:

Code: [Select]

cd dh1:Blastar;
whdload Blastar.slave PRELOAD; CUSTOM1=1 CUSTOM2=1;
Then try your command line again. This will tell us if it's WHDRun causing the problem or WinUAE Loader. BTW I have Windows 7 now, so I will test it when I get some spare time.

I put the code into the user-startup and re-ran the command line and got the same error. 

[headkaze]

There are some more settings I missed. These need to go into your WinUAE cfg folder.

Code: [Select]

filesystem2=rw,DH0:DH0:D:\ARCADE\Emulators\WinUAE\WinUAELoader\WHD,0
filesystem=rw,DH0:D:\ARCADE\Emulators\WinUAE\WinUAELoader\WHD
filesystem2=rw,DH1:DH1:D:\ARCADE\Emulators\WinUAE\WinUAELoader\Temp\Blastar_v2.0,0
filesystem=rw,DH1:D:\ARCADE\Emulators\WinUAE\WinUAELoader\Temp\Blastar_v2.0

[Clavius]

There are some more settings I missed. These need to go into your WinUAE cfg folder.

Code: [Select]

filesystem2=rw,DH0:DH0:D:\ARCADE\Emulators\WinUAE\WinUAELoader\WHD,0
filesystem=rw,DH0:D:\ARCADE\Emulators\WinUAE\WinUAELoader\WHD
filesystem2=rw,DH1:DH1:D:\ARCADE\Emulators\WinUAE\WinUAELoader\Temp\Blastar_v2.0,0
filesystem=rw,DH1:D:\ARCADE\Emulators\WinUAE\WinUAELoader\Temp\Blastar_v2.0

I'm a little lost on this change... I don't know where exactly it goes.  I just tried adding it to my ...WinUAE/Configurations/Default Configuration.uae file but that didn't work.  Can you give me some more info on where I'm supposed to put these new lines of code?

[headkaze]

Yeah sorry I meant .uae not .cfg. It's usually default.uae from memory. If that doesn't work well I have no idea what's going wrong!

[Clavius]

D'oh!!  Well, I certainly appreciate all your time and suggestions.  If you end up getting Win7 installed and have the same issue and get it resolved please let me know.

Thanks!
Clavius

[Space Fractal]

Its propenty a emulator issue with WinUAE on Windows 7. Have you tried to change compatible of the exe to Windows XP and see what happens? And which games is giving problems?

[headkaze]

D'oh!!  Well, I certainly appreciate all your time and suggestions.  If you end up getting Win7 installed and have the same issue and get it resolved please let me know.

Thanks!
Clavius

If you launch Blastar from WinUAE Loader it should have everything setup for it to run. If you use the Data\WHDLoad.uae config file in WinUAE and use that command line for WHDRun it should work.

As I mentioned to do have Win7 installed now, I am just in the process of installing everything.

SF: There seems to be only an issue when running from my loader, not when running WinUAE Loader standalone.

[Clavius]

GAH!!!!!! 

I just setup WindowsXP on my arcade cabinet to bypass this problem and now I'm having an entirely different problem... I can't even get WinUAELoader to run at all!  When I double-click on it to run it I get the error:

 "This application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135). Click on OK to terminate the application."


Help!!
 

[headkaze]

"This application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135). Click on OK to terminate the application."

Do you have the .NET Framework 2.0 installed?

[Clavius]

"This application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135). Click on OK to terminate the application."

Do you have the .NET Framework 2.0 installed?

Hmmm... probably not, it's a fairly fresh install of WinXP.  I'll try installing that.  I tried looking around for a "you need xxxx to run winuaeloader" list but I couldn't find one... is there anything else I will need?

[Clavius]

After installing .NET 2.0 it worked normally.  Also, the games playing slowly disappeared on WinXP, so it's definitely a WinUAELoader+Windows7 issue in some form.

Thanks again for the help!  Good luck with the Windows7 issue.   

[headkaze]

Great to hear you got it sorted although uninstalling Win7 just to get it working? LOL You must love your Amiga! 

[Clavius]

Okay, I'm confused.  Now it's having the same performance issue on my Windows XP arcade cabinet, the one it was working on just fine a couple of weeks ago.

After I got it set up and running that night and made the above post that it was working perfectly, I hadn't run the amiga stuff again until today.  I haven't changed anything on that computer at all and suddenly it's having the same exact problem with WinUAELoader that my Windows7 pc was having.

Let me know what kind of info I can give you that might help troubleshoot this.  It's a P4 3.2Ghz, 1GB of ram, etc., so it's a decent enough machine.  The games play fine when I run them directly through WinUAE and only have this weird slowness problem when run through WinUAELoader.  I would also be curious to know if you had any performance issues with it and Windows7?

Clavius

[headkaze]

I'm really sorry to hear the problems you're having with WinUAE Loader. I don't know when I'll get the time to look into it, sorry.

There is another app that may help you in the meantime, it's for launching games through GameBase. This apparently supports GameBase Amiga.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=98108.0

Let me know how you go!

[Clavius]

Okay thanks Headkaze, I'll take a look.

In the meantime if anyone else has noticed this issue with WinUAELoader, I'd like to hear from them.  It could be possible there's something in common with the computers that do.  The two PC's that I've run it on that are having the problem are:

Windows7 RC2, i7 CPU, ASUS P6T Deluxe, 6GB RAM, latest DirectX, nVidia GeForce GTX285.

WindowsXP SP2, P4 3.2GHz, Intel D865PERL, 1GB RAM, latest DirectX, ArcadeVGA 9200.


Same issue on two extremely different computers.  If it's performing correctly for you on your computer, please post what you are using.

Thanks!
Clavius

[Clavius]

Important update -- a friend of mine came over yesterday and I was explaining to him the issue I was having with games when I use the WinUAELoader app to launch them.  He pointed out that I was incorrect about an assumption I had made...

Apparently it's not the Amiga's CPU that is at 100% load but one of my PC's cores.  I always thought the cpu number in the bottom left corner of the WinUAE window was the amiga's processor load, but it isn't, it's my PC cpu!

So what this means is that WinUAELoader is causing WinUAE to to take up far more pc cpu than it usually does, which is resulting in the games playing slowly and having graphical glitches and so on.

Hope this helps you troubleshoot it, Headkaze.