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Mini pinball cabinet project hiccups ongoing problem I can't resolve

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arcadepcnut:


--- Quote from: RandyT on January 07, 2013, 05:34:01 pm ---You have a lot going on with that setup.  The best way to troubleshoot this would be to start taking some of the features out of the equation.

Do the tables run smoothly without the backglass animations?  Do things get better when you turn down the resolution on your table screen?  Are ball reflections on?  What happens if you disable your onboard sound?

Essentially, start with the configuration you don't want, but which works, and then start turning things on until it breaks.  Then, whatever breaks, throw enough money at those things until you find something you can live with, or go broke, whichever comes first :).

Seriously, though, you may not have enough processor to do all of the things you want, as smoothly as you would like.  Some of those frills are probably relying on scripting of some sort, and nothing helps that outside of raw processing speed.  I've also seen it recommended to use a graphics card with 2 gigs of memory, but I can't say how this might affect what you are experiencing.

--- End quote ---

If there is anyone I trust I trust key wiz as I use all your products on all my builds.
I tried all what you suggested. I just can't understand why a 4870 won't run a pinball game. I can't grasp my mind around it.
Basic windows loaded no sound and no fronted visual pinball runs the same.
It's not ram. Ram usage never goes above 800meg
I don't think it's processor as either core never goes above 50%
It's not resolution, 1600 acts same as 1900
It's not Ssd stuttering. I tried many apps to circumvent stuttering and even put in another regular Sata hard drive
It's not hardware rendering. With hardware rendering on I get white boxes for flashers. With it off white boxes for flashers
No extra services loaded
Hardware rendering off and on makes no improvements on playability whether off or on
Updated all drivers no difference
Turned direct draw off. No difference

Should I just junk this thing and rebuild? Is there still a problem with Ati cards ?
Is there a better os to run than xp 32
Is amd processors inferior? I got this processor specifically for this because of the 3ghz cores

IMHO pinball has got to be smooth or it's unplayable! I cant antioate the ball if one second its smooth then telports or jumps. I can't understand why iPad pinball looks so much better and has so many more "effects" than visual pinball but a dedicated decent computer can't run it. I know it has to do with emulation vs native app but visual pinball isn't really an emulation is it? Well the roms for Dmd are and I guess the sound is emulated?!

I mean my machine will play old pinballs fine like bad cats and even indian jones plays ok. But Jurassic park, sttng, lord of the rings.....forget about it. Sounds stutter and ball jerks and white pieces covering play field and flashers flashing white boxes.

I can't afford another geforce video card. I had a 9800gt and 8800gt and they didnt seem better than this. Will I have better success with 2 4870?

I guess pinball party won't happen and we will have to play pinball on my iPad. :(

RandyT:


--- Quote from: arcadepcnut on January 08, 2013, 11:18:32 am ---If there is anyone I trust I trust key wiz as I use all your products on all my builds.

--- End quote ---

While I appreciate the vote of confidence, VP is a hard nut to crack.  There are multiple versions of the same tables, some designed with certain versions of VP in mind some with others.  While trying to figure out similar issues folks were having while using the LED-Wiz to drive lights and contactors, I must have spent 6 hours mixing and matching tables and VP versions.  Get the wrong combinations and you get some really poor performance.  With the LED-Wiz, or any externally driven hardware and some software for that matter, it boils down to scripting performance issues.  If anything in your setup requires additional scripting calls outside of the table proper support code, you will have slowdown.  The more advanced the table, the more scripting and the less room, performance-wise, for some of these external features.

One thing I found was that the latest version of graphics card drivers isn't always the best for VP.  If you are getting white squares for your flashers, it sounds an awful lot like video card issues.  It could be that there isn't enough memory for the textures, or just a driver problem in general.  Try earlier versions of VP and the card drivers.  Also, for testing purposes, get rid of the backglass and DMD stuff, or at least turn off the second monitor output and put the DMD on your main monitor.  I know you don't want to have to run it that way, but it will help to isolate the problems. 

Also, when I say drop the resolution, I mean really drop it.  Start at the lowest and if it's good, then start working your way up.  You can't fix the issues if you don't know what they are, so the key is going to be finding the configuration which works and then starting to add things until you see the issues you don't like.  The only way to do this is to start at a bare-bones, craptacular setup.  And if that is still giving you issues, you'll know that you have some serious issue with your hardware base.

RandyT

lilshawn:

maybe take a look through your hardware and see if anything is sharing IRQ's or DMA addresses.

ive had instances where i'd be listening to audio and have it cut out for a second. turned out the modem was sharing an IRQ # with the soundcard. when the computer accesses the hardware it sends an IRQ (interrupt request) for a specific number. in this case, the sound and modem happened to share the same number (not in itself a bad thing) but it caused the sound to drop out.

ive run into this a few times now (game pads going AWOL, video corruption)  plug and play is effective, but it isn't smart. manually changing things around (and disabling items not needed such as printer ports serial ports etc. and doing a little re-arranging) frees up IRQ's and DMA's so they don't have to be shared.

perhaps your video card or sound is sharing something with another piece of hardware causing the video to stop processing for a moment until the request times out and resumes.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314068

vidmouse:

At a glance, your hardware seems very similar to what I have running on my mini pincab,
which runs fine.  (if anything, I think your processor is faster?)  I would doubt that you
need to add more memory or anything hardware-wise unless there is a piece of hardware
that is malfunctioning.

I too would recommend trying to play them w/o the backglass and see if problems persist.
You could also ask as vpforums.org
As a last resort, you could try Future Pinball for your party and see if that works alright for
some more modern tables until you get your VP problem sorted out.

Will try to follow up with how I have settings on my mini pin to help you out...



vidmouse:

Did a little more work on trying to figure this out for you... here are my video settings in Visual Pinball:
Full Screen, 1280x1024x32 resolution, At Full Screen antistretch the ball to my monitor 16:9, all Details are checked, Hardware Device rendering checked, Troubleshooting options checked, Max Texture Unlimited, Alpha Ramp slider all the way to the left.

Running Directx 9.0c on WinXP32 SP3 w/ the following PC specs
Mobo: Biostar K8M800 Micro Motherboard - Via K8M800, Socket AM2, MicroATX, Audio, Video, AGP 8xk ...
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ Processor 2.40GHz, 1MB Cache, 1000MHz (2000 MT/s) FSB, Brisbane, Dual-Core, Retail, Socket AM2, Processor with Fan
Memory: 2GB (2x Patriot Signature 1024MB PC5400 DDR2 667MHz Memory or similar brand)
Video Card: 1GB card (forget the brand, ATI?)
Monitor: Hannspree HF-259HPB 24.6" Widescreen LCD HD Monitor - 1080p, 1920x1080, 16:9, 1000:1 Native, 3000: Dynamic, 2ms, 60Hz, Integrated Speakers, VGA, HDMI
Backglass monitor: unknown, about 19"
IPAC2 (which in hindsight I didn't really need, I have a spare gamepad I could've hacked but oh well)
Altec Lansing Speakers w/ sub
Logitech keyboard
optical mouse

And here's a sample video playing ST:TNG on Visual Pinball, to give you an idea of the speed:




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