Tearing, vsync, and input lag

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

So the Armoircade is up and running and the family is loving it. But it's not quite right yet...
I've got a k7400 running via soft15khz on xp64 and the video tearing is horrible. But if I enable tripple buffering or vsync the input lag is unbearable. Its particularly bad in trackball games. Centipede is unplayable, getting upwards of 2 seconds of lag if im really aggressive with it.

Wat do?

Certainly there is a proper solution I'm just unaware of.

[Jack Burton]

I made some comments on the issue in these threads:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=107213.msg1136694#msg1136694

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=102480.msg1084984#msg1084984

and there is also this relevant one:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=92600.0

[RayB]

Faster hardware

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

I don't think faster hardware is the issue. This is an E8500 running at 3.6Ghz with a decent midrange ATI card. Centipede was running full speed ten years ago on hardware that was outdated THEN.

Games run flawlessly without any sort of syncing enabled, except for the tearing. Alien Syndrome as a lot of smooth scrolling areas that make this particularly visible.

if I enable triple buffering, things look great, except for the lag that is introduced. For joystick games I don't think i'd ever notice, but for trackball games it makes the game unplayable.

I can very literally roll the track ball in a couple of loops very quickly then pull my hand back and watch it finish making the motion for the next few seconds. This does not happen with any of the syncing options off. It's almost as if it's polling the input at a much higher rate than the game syncs to, and then playing back the 'buffer' at game speed.

[RayB]

The only thing that's supposed to fix tearing is Vertical Sync. Turn that on, but not triple-buffer.

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

I've done that as well. It still produces the same input buffering/lag phenomena.
Surely im just missing something simple. There is nothing exotic about my setup.

[Gray_Area]

I've noticed threads like this in recent times. The common denominators seem to be newer computers and recent MAME.

[RVZ]

I also have this problem on my arcade.  Eventually just gave up.  I did get some better results with the tearing by using different drivers I think.  But some games like Wonderboy I just can't fix.  The tearing is horrible, but when I enable vsync, the sound is all screwed up.  The pc is a dual core pc, so it's not the hardware.  And like others have said, I've been into Mame for more than 10 years now, and it definitely wasn't like this back then.  And then it was on much slower pc's.

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

I've been doing some digging and it looks like there may be an issue with ATI cards that causes the input 'queing' lag. I'm still researching. Going to have to try a few different video cards and see what happens.

Sound stuttering with vsync has been addressed with SailorSat's cabmame (though it does affect the pitch of the sound produced, that certainly wouldn't bother me any).