M2 laggy as hell after system switch

[Endprodukt]

Okay... had to switch systems, new mainboard + cpu, it's an i7 860 and has plenty of power to run m2. OS is Win XP64 (Groovymame + CRT Emudriver... no other choice...), I've 4gb's of ram... i've installed all drivers for the new MB and still... soundstuttering and it's all slow.

Any ideas what I could do besides a reinstall of the whole OS?

[HaRuMaN]

I'd re-install the OS.

[arquillos]

Why not use Win 7 - 64bits?

[Endprodukt]

Because the crt emu driver is only for xp64.as soon as they update the driver I'll switch.

[Malenko]

I'd re-install the OS.

I agree with this assessment. Youre going to end up messing with it for a couple of hours then reinstalling the OS anyway.

[Endprodukt]

Okay... will do... god I hate installing os's.

[Endprodukt]

Cool, I just wasted 3 hours of my time with reinstalling the OS just to stand in front of a stuttering M2 again. Awesome.

Edit: Sorry for the sarcasm but this bugs me. I mean... it's a 2,8ghz i7 quadcore that should easily run M2. I can throw Blitz or Gauntlet Legends at it and it runs almost full speed.

[Malenko]

do you have any sort of throttling on in the bios aka power save mode?

[Endprodukt]

I don't think so because it would be global with any emulator... but it's just m2 that's affected.

[yakk11]

directx updated?

[Howard_Casto]

Did you install TS2?

Did you remember to disable "send outputs to mamehooker"?

Remember, you emailed about that a while back if you don't actually have mh installed it causes a bit of lag.... shouldn't be noticeable on a machine that powerful (it's barely noticeable on mine), but those i5's are odd ducks. 

[Endprodukt]

Direct x is the last xp64 redistribution from 2010,  that I used on my other system as well. Ts2 isn't installed yet. Fresh install. I had the same setup with an i5 that ran m2 perfectly the i5 is a little better than the older but m2 shouldn't be a problem.

[Malenko]

how much ram and at what speed ...whats your resource monitor look like while running M2?

[Endprodukt]

4 gb's at 1333. I'll watch the resource monitor with m2 running after work and let you know.

[Howard_Casto]

What about the video card?  M2 is surprisingly video card dependant.  Your machine is powerful enough to where you can run it in software mode by changing the ini though.

[Endprodukt]

Sorry for the bad phone picture but as you can see the cpu ist around 15% and the ram barely touches 400mb. I guess this is happening on the software side or maybe something in the bios is wrong. I'll set it back to default and see what happens.

[Endprodukt]

The graphic card is a ATI HD4350, not the worst there is. It's exactly the same I used in the last setup. Only things I changed was the MB and the CPU. Everything else is the same. Hitting a brickwall with this one and I really really don't get it. I installed a new bios today, reset the bios to default and it didn't help.

How can I set M2 to software mode?

[Howard_Casto]

At the top of the ini turn on "softwarevertexprocessing"

[Endprodukt]

Didn't help. Actually it was running just like before which makes me feel like it was never using the GPU... BUT: I played around with the F-keys and F7 deactivated backroungs/healthbars in VF2 and everything was fluid. What the heck is going on there!?

Also I was wondering about another thing...: After installing DirectX on your system you shouldn't be able to reinstall the exact same version as it checks for existing versions, right? I can install it again... and again... and again.


EDIT: Another thing I forgot: Usually VF2 looked not  that colorful by itself. Rather bright. It did look like that on every computer I played it on. But now it's rather colorful... wonder why.

[Howard_Casto]

debug menu settings..... many of the model 2 games have the option of setting the screen type to crt or projection tv. I believe the projection tv setting is much darker. 

I think it's your settings.

Why don't you post your emulator.ini so we can have a look at it. 

[Endprodukt]

Because it's the default ini that comes straight with the emulator.

[Howard_Casto]

So? 

Post it anyway. 

[Endprodukt]

Ok, there you go:

;Configuration file for the SEGA Model 2 emulator
;All text to the right of ; is ignored (use as comments)


;Add your rom directories here (max 10)
;ROMS subdirectory in the same folder than the exe is always scanned when searching for roms
;(remove the ; form Dir1)
[RomDirs]
;Dir1=c:\Model2\roms


[Renderer]
SoftwareVertexProcessing=0   

Wireframe=0         ;Disables polygon filling (for debug purposes, don't change)
FakeGouraud=0         ;Tries to guess Per-vertex colour (gouraud) from the Model2 per-poly information (flat)
Bilinear=1         ;Enables bilinear filtering of textures
Trilinear=0         ;Enables mipmap usage and trilinear filtering (doesn't work with some games, DoA for example)
FilterTilemaps=0      ;Enables bilinear filtering on tilemaps (looks good, but can cause some stretch artifacts)
ForceManaged=0         ;Forces the DX driver to use Managed textures instead of Dynamic. Use it if the emulator
            ;crashes after loading or doesn't show anything
ForceSync=0
FullScreenWidth=640
FullScreenHeight=480

AutoMip=0         ;Enables Direct3D Automipmap generation
MeshTransparency=0      ;Enabled meshed polygons for translucency. Requires PS3.0
DrawCross=1         ;Show Crosshair in gun games
GammaR=1.0         ;Per Component Gamma correction (1.0 = no correction). Red
GammaG=1.0         ;Green
GammaB=1.0         ;Blue

WideScreenWindow=0      ;Set widescreen in windows mode: 0 - 4:3, 1 - 16:9, 2 - 16:10



;These options are configured from menus so don't touch
FullMode=0   
Sound=1
Frameskip=-1



[Input]
XInput=0         ;Enable support for Xbox360 compatible devices
EnableFF=0         ;Enable Force Feedback Effects
HoldGears=0         ;Set to 1 to return to Neutral in driving games when the gear shift key is released
UseRawInput=0         ;Read mouse through Rawinput, allowing 2 mice
RawDevP1=0         ;Assign specific RawInput devices to players. If you have more than 2 mice
RawDevP2=1         ;set which one is assigned to each player (0-based)

;FORCE EFFECTS PARAMETERS
;FE_CENTERING Effect (Spring centering effect)
FE_CENTERING_Gain=0.5      ;Global gain
FE_CENTERING_Coefficient=10000   ;0-10000
FE_CENTERING_Saturation=10000   ;0-10000
FE_CENTERING_Deadband=1000   ;10%

;FE_CLUTCH Effect (Friction, wheel turn hardness)
FE_CLUTCH_Gain=1.0      ;Global gain
FE_CLUTCH_Coefficient=10000   ;0-10000

;FE_LEFT,FE_RIGHT (Constant force in a direction)
FE_LEFT_Gain=1.0      ;Global gain
FE_LEFT_Magnitude=10000      ;0-10000
FE_RIGHT_Gain=1.0      ;Global gain
FE_RIGHT_Magnitude=10000   ;0-10000


;FE_UNCENTERING (Sine force, wave the wheel, rumble)
FE_UNCENTERING_Gain=1.0      ;Global gain
FE_UNCENTERING_Magnitude=10000   ;0-10000
FE_UNCENTERING_Offset=-200
FE_UNCENTERING_Phase=0
FE_UNCENTERING_Period=56000

[retrorepair]

I've had exactly the same problem with my new i5 setup, it was greatly reduced though by making sure all options in the bios related to power saving were turned off like speed stepping etc. I forget now what all the options were but I'd check an overclocking guide for your motherboard, it'll tell you all the bios options you should turn off.

I do still have speed issues with m2emu though. Roll on mame model2 support.

FWIW on an i7 you should have no problem. I'm also on xp64 due to crtemu driver. I've only ever seen people complain of this problem on that OS.

[Endprodukt]

M2 was running perfectly on the i5 system and on the dual core I had. Only problems with the i7. I do remember running m2 on my desktop without problems too, although this was a win 7 machine . Most stuff in the bios that automatically controls the cpu is turned off. Eist, c1 etc.

It's running fine with 2d graphics turned off via f7.

[Endprodukt]

Disabled everything that could somehow control the cpu... still no luck. Any ideas what else I could try?

[Howard_Casto]

What about your video card settings.  Maybe there's something in there throwing it off.  I'd try disabling vsync, ect. 

Also believe it or not it may be your sound card drivers.  Now days nearly all sound cards are completely software driven, so if something is off with them they can bog down the machine dramatically. 

[Endprodukt]

I'll check that out. Thanks howard, will let you know. Soundcard (onboard) drivers seem to be working wihtout any trouble.

[Endprodukt]

Crt Emu Driver doesn't seem to come with any additional software so I can't access the graphic cards options... I don't think it's the audio driver as M2 runs fine after deactivating backgrounds with F7. Guess I'll have to live with it, which sucks so hard since TS2 is released...

[Howard_Casto]

Were you using that video driver on the other pc?  Because if you weren't then I can almost guarantee you that is the problem.  Many games and emulators use the sync rate to keep time and if that's been hacked in any way it can cause issues. 

[Endprodukt]

Yes, I've used it on a Dual Core System and an i5 2500k System with M2 and had no problems.

[Endprodukt]

I tried it with sounds disabled and it's still lagging. Running out of ideas what else to try. I don't thing crt emu driver is the problem as it was working before. My desktop runs at 640x480 at 60hz which should be fine. It's not like the game is totally slow... Just a little.

[Haze]

Maybe it just doesn't like Ati/AMD cards?  It was always problematic with them in the past, could be this is just the latest incarnation of this.

If turning off the tilemaps (which would be 2d elements, eg the life bars) helps then it would suggest that the hardware can't / won't mix things properly.  I don't know how the emulator is coded, but it might just be the way the Ati drivers / cards work mean it won't allow for some post-process mixing in the same frame as rendering, and the emulator relies on that or something? (or at least the way the emulator has been coded relies on something the drivers don't like)

There have been multiple reports of this kind of thing fwiw, usually on AMD systems with ATi/AMD video.  I'm only guessing that might be it due to the general history of problems the emulator has with said manufacturer.

[Howard_Casto]

That's true.  Turning on "managed textures" might help somewhat if it's some sort of throttling issue.  I'm out of ideas at this point.  You really need to find a way to get into those video card settings though, even if you have to muck about in the registry. 

[Endprodukt]

The reason I'm skeptical is that it worked with the same card on another computer without any additional setup. I'll ask calamity about the crt emu driver. Thanks guys for all the suggestions.

[retrorepair]

Yeah I have to say I can't see it being the video card. My core2duo system using the same exact card runs fine.

I can't figure out why my 2500k is lagging when yours didn't though. I get the feeling it's still xp64 related but no ideas beyond that.

[Endprodukt]

Maybe it's not the cpu but the mb having trouble with the os. I used an asrock board with the i5 and an msi with the i7. As xp64 wasn't that popular maybe the board drivers got rushed and it was just luck it worked with the i5 on my end.

[Haze]

same driver revisions?  newer doesn't always mean better when it comes to drivers... most have fixes hacks aimed at 'current games' and damn the rest (and most older hardware..)

[Endprodukt]

As for the GPU you don't much choice.... so that's the same driver I'm using. For the Mainboard it's of course not. It's inf driver i've installed, catalyst 9.3 (or 2...), sound drivers... that's about it. Direct X Redist Jun 2010 as it's the last for xp64...

[Endprodukt]

Okay I finally got it to run smooth. Here's what I did:

SoftwareVertexProcessing=1
ForceManaged=1

Now it's working as expected... I didn't get it running with that because I was playing around with all options on/off and this was the one that worked.
Thanks anyway for all the help, it's great to know where to get support. Thanks!

[Howard_Casto]

Forced managed loads all the textures for the game at the start instead of dynamically.  That means you've got a serious throttling issue somewhere.  I hope it doesn't effect other games for you, but something is off. 

[Endprodukt]

Would that be related to the gpu only? Everything else is working fine, no problems with demul, null dc, super model and other emulators.

[Howard_Casto]

Emulators often do odd things with the texture buffer, so I'd get off of them for a sec and perhaps try a pc game that you know works. 

The fact that the emu is slowing down when trying to load textures dynamically suggests a throttling issue, and by that I mean that you have low bandwidth to the "pipe" for your gpu somewhere.  This can actually be a hardware issue.  Improper voltage or a slow buss speed can do this.  Again, it could be the video card drivers.