Issue with Windows 7 and native resolutions.

[Calamity]

Is there any way we can test this?  Maybe a small DirectX app that just runs and displays the refresh rate that windows is reporting.  It would probably be useful if it could run in both DDraw and D3D so we could see if there was any difference.

Try Arcade_OSD, a tool that's inside my drivers download:
http://mario.groovy.org/GroovyMame/WindowsATIDrivers/

It will show your available video modes reported by Windows (xres, yres, vfreq), and also will allow you to measure the real refresh rate of a given mode by pressing the coin button (5).

The one variable here, however, is the ArcadeVGA 3000 drivers themselves.  Since the XP x64 and Windows 7 drivers are different, there's no way to be sure if the refresh rate reporting difference is due to Windows (and DirectX) or somehow related the video drivers.

I think that issue happens with any card, not only with ArcadeVGA 3000. I'm inclined to think the problem is on the W7 side and how it deals with interlaced modes, but might be wrong.

[krick]

There's definitely something wrong with Win7.

Check out the attached screenshot.  All the interlaced resolutions are 1/2 what they're supposed to be.

[Calamity]

There's definitely something wrong with Win7.

Check out the attached screenshot.  All the interlaced resolutions are 1/2 what they're supposed to be.

Yeah, there it is. It would be interesting to run the vfreq measurement test, get into the test mode menu (enter/P1) and press 5, you'll see an scrolling grid during some seconds as the test is being done.

[thaddeussmith]

Is this still an issue 2 years later?

[krick]

Is this still an issue 2 years later?

I no longer have a Win7 system handy that I can test on, but Andy claims in the first post that this only affects Direct Draw.

The latest version of GroovyMAME works pretty well on my XP x64 system in D3D mode, so maybe that's an option to work around the issues at least as far as resolution switching goes.  GroovyMAME doesn't have the stretching problems in D3D mode (in most cases) that baseline MAME does.

The bigger problem that I saw was the problem with interlaced resolutions having the wrong refresh rate.  I don't know if this is something that could be detected and worked around in software in GroovyMAME or not.

I got frustrated pretty quickly and gave up on Windows 7, but I'm sure there's people out there beating on it that know exactly where the limitations lie and if there are any real workarounds.

[indigocc]

I have solved this problem in Hyperspin for my Egret 2 arcade machine (Using Windows 7 X64, ArcadeVGA and J-Pac).

Get the Switchres.zip file posted  earlier in this thread.
Unzip it into you mame folder.
Edit Hyperlaunch.akh in your Hyperspin folder. (Make a backup of Hyperlaunch.exe, and Hyperlaunch.ahk first)
Change the MAME part to this:

;*************************************MAME**************************************

else if (systemName = "MAME" && executable = "mame.exe")
{
    hideDesktop()
    Hotkey, %exitEmulatorKey%, CloseProcess
    Runwait, c:\Emu\Mame\640x288.exe, Hide UseErrorLevel
    Runwait, %executable% %romName%, %EmuPath%, Hide UseErrorLevel
    Process, waitClose, %executable%
    Runwait, c:\Emu\Mame\640x480.exe, Hide UseErrorLevel
    exitapp
}


Change the path names to 640x288.exe and 640x480.exe, to your mame installation,  before saving.

Download Autohotkey from here: http://www.autohotkey.com/download/
Install it and run the compiler. (Compiler\Ahk2Exe.exe)

Select the new hyperlaunch.ahk and compile it into a new hyperlaunch.exe.
Replace the old hyperlaunch.exe with the new one you made. (Remember to always make a backup first)

And now DirectDraw in MAME under windows 7 works.

What this change does is whenever you launch a MAME game from Hyperspin the resolution is changed to 640x288 before mame is started.
Mame runs, sets the right directdraw resolution and avoid the interlace/non-interlace bug in Windows 7.
When you exit mame the resolution is reset to 640x480.

And everything works. 

DirectDraw looks glorious on a 15Khz monitor. A huge difference compared to D3D. Well worth the bother. 


Regards
/Finn