Added memory and switched to 64 bit and everything seems slower???

[cmoses]

I have a Asus P5GC-MX/1333 motherboard with a Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8Ghz CPU, 2MB of RAM and a 1MB nVidia 9400GT video card that I have been setting up for a cocktail cabinet that I am building.  I have Windows XP 32 bit on there and it has been running everything pretty well even with HLSL on.  I recently purchased 4MB of RAM and decided that I would load Windows XP64 on there thinking I would get a boost to the OS and also from running MAME64.  Well I tried it out and it seemed to run slower than when I had 2MB and Win XP32.  I also tried Windows 7 x64 and it seemed slow as well.  I didn't go in and do a lot of tweaking with either Win XP64 or Win 7x64 but they both seemed to be running slower even just at the OS level.  Does anyone have any thoughts or ideas on the issue.  Could there be some setting or something that needs to be tweaked on the motherboard for x64 OSes?

With this system what is the consensus as to OS that should be running on there.  I have access to Windows XP 32 & 64 bit as well as Windows 7 32 & 64 bit.

Thanks

[Malenko]

what speed is the new RAM? What speed is the old RAM? I hope your nVidia 9400GT has 1GB of memory and not 1 MB

[cmoses]

Yes it is 1GB of RAM on the 9400GT.  The memory sticks were the same speed, they were both PC5300.

[ark_ader]

As kit gets faster our perception makes it seem slower.

[Dawgz Rule]

Could be a number of things...

At best, I think you would only see a marginal performance improvement with the given hardware.  You might even be better off going back to XP32 as it would at least get the benefit of at least one more gig of memory (or even slightly more than that.) 

You could be constrained by your hard drive and you could also be constrained if you are running 32 bit apps...especially AV.   

WinXP 32   SP3 is pretty stable for mame and is pretty mature from a driver/optimization point of view. 

[Malenko]

I would put the newer 4GB in and run WinXP32 and see how it runs. If you want a world of difference, get an SSD drive for the OS 

[Dawgz Rule]

+1 on the SSD.

[keilmillerjr]

The main benefit of 64-bit over 32-bit is that you no longer have a 2gb file size limit, and you are able to have more than 4gb of ram. Your video card and bios also take up with 4gb limit in 32-bit as well.

Is 64-bit faster than 32-bit? As far as I can tell, no. However, 64-bit will allow you to address more memory and virtual memory. You could build a faster computer with the correct components. You are limited with 32-bit.

Sorry you went through all that trouble. You should upgrade your computer with more ram anyways. Ram is cheap now. My minimum requirement for ram I suggest for anyone is currently at 4gb.

[404]

I have a Asus P5GC-MX/1333 motherboard with a Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8Ghz CPU, 2MB of RAM and a 1MB nVidia 9400GT video card that I have been setting up for a cocktail cabinet that I am building.  I have Windows XP 32 bit on there and it has been running everything pretty well even with HLSL on.  I recently purchased 4MB of RAM and decided that I would load Windows XP64 on there thinking I would get a boost to the OS and also from running MAME64.  Well I tried it out and it seemed to run slower than when I had 2MB and Win XP32.  I also tried Windows 7 x64 and it seemed slow as well.  I didn't go in and do a lot of tweaking with either Win XP64 or Win 7x64 but they both seemed to be running slower even just at the OS level.  Does anyone have any thoughts or ideas on the issue.  Could there be some setting or something that needs to be tweaked on the motherboard for x64 OSes?

With this system what is the consensus as to OS that should be running on there.  I have access to Windows XP 32 & 64 bit as well as Windows 7 32 & 64 bit.

Thanks

xp x64 has quite a few more services running in the background. It is far more catered to the IT and deployment crowd than for public consumption. The issue with win 7 x64 is that the amount of memory overhead is far more simply because it's a newer OS with more features.

did you Mame benchmark your previous rig? If so, what are your numbers then and now?

[Fursphere]

I would put the newer 4GB in and run WinXP32 and see how it runs. If you want a world of difference, get an SSD drive for the OS 

So you can only use 3GB of it?  No thanks.

Go Win7 x64.

Make sure you install _ALL_ the correct drivers.  Video, audio, chipset, I/O, etc. 

[MonMotha]

Is 64-bit faster than 32-bit? As far as I can tell, no. However, 64-bit will allow you to address more memory and virtual memory. You could build a faster computer with the correct components. You are limited with 32-bit.

x86-64 aka AMD64 aka "x64" (in Microsoft-land only) has, in addition to wider registers, more explicitly named registers (double, IIRC) than IA-32 aka x86.  In some applications, this can provide a surprising performance boost since you don't have to deal with register aliasing.  Some applications can make pretty decent use of this, and MAME is apparently among them which makes sense: lots of the architectures it's emulating, especially for the more modern, high performance titles, have tons of registers compared to x86.

Now, this has nothing to do with the fact that the architecture is 64-bit.  The changes just happened to be made at the same time with x86-64.

There are also some instances where 64-bit code can hurt you.  Specifically, all your pointers and register saves (on the stack) are now 64-bits which means they take up twice as much room in memory.  Likewise, if you go ahead and bump up the size of "int" to 64-bit (Windows keeps it at 32, Linux goes to 64 by default), those also take up more space.  Generally, in the grand scheme of things, this doesn't cause a huge increase in resident set size for an application as most of that is other "assets" like graphics, text strings, and the code itself, which doesn't get much bigger and in fact can get smaller, but it can be a somewhat big increase in terms of keeping things in the CPU's cache, and main memory is of course much slower than cache.

In other words, going from IA-32 (x86) to x86-64 (AMD64/"x64") is not guaranteed to result in a performance difference in a given application, and it may result in either a loss of performance (usually small, at least) or an increase in performance (sometimes very substantial).

[Malenko]

I would put the newer 4GB in and run WinXP32 and see how it runs . If you want a world of difference, get an SSD drive for the OS 

So you can only use 3GB of it?  No thanks.

Go Win7 x64.

Make sure you install _ALL_ the correct drivers.  Video, audio, chipset, I/O, etc.

While having more RAM is a good thing, if he's not utilizing it and performance is solid on xp32 there's no point of running Win7x64. My advice is solid and based on the practical use of the system. Its a MAME PC, if it was an everyday PC or more of a gaming PC I'd agree with you but thats just not its purpose.

[rpgposer]

I upgraded an Intel E-8500 w 4GB ram from winxp x86 to win8 x64.  I didn't notice much difference, but there was SOME difference using 64 bit applications vs. 32 bit.  There was a noticeable difference in mame, for sure.  I had lowered expectations, so I was pleased at the end.

[Dawgz Rule]

While having more RAM is a good thing, if he's not utilizing it and performance is solid on xp32 there's no point of running Win7x64. My advice is solid and based on the practical use of the system. Its a MAME PC, if it was an everyday PC or more of a gaming PC I'd agree with you but thats just not its purpose.

   Agreed.

If he's lucky he may actually get 3.25GB of usable memory from XP32 with 4GB.

[JDFan]

I would put the newer 4GB in and run WinXP32 and see how it runs. If you want a world of difference, get an SSD drive for the OS 

So you can only use 3GB of it?  No thanks.

Go Win7 x64.

Make sure you install _ALL_ the correct drivers.  Video, audio, chipset, I/O, etc.

Actually normally closer to 3.25GB, which once you consider the other various limitations Windows uses (ie. 2GB memory usage per program) that's probably more than he'll ever be using out of the 4GB on a 64 bit install anyway - until you go to 6 - 8GB for multi tasking operations it really doesn't make sense to move to a 64 bit OS to run older programs. ( the reason for going 4GB instead of just 3 is you can use a portion of that extra GB plus it is easier to keep the system operating in dual channel mode, unless you use a couple 512mb modules to keep dual channel mode with 3 GB. )

Especially on an older CPU as the 64 bit OS uses more overhead since everything needs to be using 64 bit registers there is a lot of memory space that goes wasted when dealing with older 8, 16, and 32 bit programs leaving less actual memory space available for program usage than there would be if using 32 bit registers.

You have to remember that most of these emulation programs also are not designed for 64 bit support natively so much of the memory allocation goes unused since it is using a 64 bit space to store a 8, 16, or 32 bit chunk of data. Kind of like say you are trying to move water from a pond to a 50 gallon drum and you have either a supply of 10 gallon or twice as many 5 gallon buckets, if you are aware of the extra space and are designed to use it (ie. can actually carry 10 gallons) in the 10 gallon buckets it may be quicker to transfer using it (ie. using a 64 bit program on a 64 bit system) but if you could only carry 5 gallons and had to leave 5 gallons empty in the 10 gallon bucket (ie. using a 32 bit only program on a 64 bit system)  then you'd be just as fast or faster using the 5 gallon buckets instead since you have extra 5 gallon buckets to fill while waiting for the transfer rather than only half as many 10 gallon buckets that you have to wait to empty before refilling. So in this instance performance may actually be faster on the 4gb. 32 bit system (3.25GB useable) since it allocates the resources better in 32 bit chunks that the program is using rather than transferring in 64 bit chunks where half of it is empty space even though it can use all 4gb. 

[cmoses]

Thanks for the information. I am going to reload Windows XP 32 bit and keep the 4MB of RAM in there and see how it goes. I think that might be the best route to go.


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[Haze]

the 64-bit versions of MAME on a 64-bit OS are roughly 20% faster (sometimes more) than the 32-bit ones with no tweaking required.  This is an undeniable fact and is very noticeable with certain drivers.

If you're noticing a slowdown something else is wrong, possibly drivers or you're not comparing like-for-like on MAME versions.

The only reason you'd want to run a 32-bit OS is if you have hardware that doesn't have 64-bit drivers (eg. some of the light guns)

[Fursphere]

the 64-bit versions of MAME on a 64-bit OS are roughly 20% faster (sometimes more) than the 32-bit ones with no tweaking required.  This is an undeniable fact and is very noticeable with certain drivers.

If you're noticing a slowdown something else is wrong, possibly drivers or you're not comparing like-for-like on MAME versions.

The only reason you'd want to run a 32-bit OS is if you have hardware that doesn't have 64-bit drivers (eg. some of the light guns)

Thank you.  I was just going to point this out.  Why gimp your setup with a 32bit OS?  Doesn't make sense.

[Dawgz Rule]

The only reason you'd want to run a 32-bit OS is if you have hardware that doesn't have 64-bit drivers (eg. some of the light guns)

Not true.  There are a number of good reasons to stick with the 32 bit OS and I think those have been pretty well outlined.    You can't just go by Mame.exe vs Mame.exe, there are a number of other factors that will dictate how well a system will perform on one version of OS versus another. 

If you want additional info, just google it.

[keilmillerjr]

The only reason you'd want to run a 32-bit OS is if you have hardware that doesn't have 64-bit drivers (eg. some of the light guns)

Not true.  There are a number of good reasons to stick with the 32 bit OS and I think those have been pretty well outlined.    You can't just go by Mame.exe vs Mame.exe, there are a number of other factors that will dictate how well a system will perform on one version of OS versus another. 

If you want additional info, just google it.

Yeah, and it all boils down to your computer being outdated. I was actually surprised at how cheap I was able to build a bare bone computer for my arcade project, and its at what i think is my minimum requirement for today's general standards (i3 4gb ram). Because you have old hardware doesn't make 32-bit better. It means that your hardware and software is outdated, and 32-bit might be a better choice for the computer as it is.

[ark_ader]

I would put the newer 4GB in and run WinXP32 and see how it runs. If you want a world of difference, get an SSD drive for the OS 

So you can only use 3GB of it?  No thanks.

Go Win7 x64.

Make sure you install _ALL_ the correct drivers.  Video, audio, chipset, I/O, etc.

Just use the rest of the memory as a ramdrive.

[Haze]

The only reason you'd want to run a 32-bit OS is if you have hardware that doesn't have 64-bit drivers (eg. some of the light guns)

Not true.  There are a number of good reasons to stick with the 32 bit OS and I think those have been pretty well outlined.    You can't just go by Mame.exe vs Mame.exe, there are a number of other factors that will dictate how well a system will perform on one version of OS versus another. 

If you want additional info, just google it.

I disagree, unless the drivers for one are utterly terrible / unavailable, which I already mentioned.

The simple fact is the 64-bit version of MAME we offer *is* significantly faster than the 32-bit version.  The code is better, it can make use of the extra registers available, it runs significantly faster, this has been benchmarked over and over again.  32-bit Operating Systems should have been ditched years ago and really only exist to retain some legacy compatibility with 16-bit apps and other older software in the workplace.

The advice being given here is again shocking.  An SDD will NOT make MAME run better, it might make your system boot a bit faster, but it won't help MAME.

The specs of the PC are similar to mine and there is a world of difference in terms of performance gains from using 64-bit on such a system.  If those aren't coming through there is another issue with the configuration, likely the drivers installed / directX 9 not being properly installed etc.

[Dawgz Rule]

It means that your hardware and software is outdated, and 32-bit might be a better choice for the computer as it is

You make my point exactly although I would disagree with the statement that is hardware and software is outdated.  If it is doing everything the OP intends for it to do is it really outdated?   To that end I guess we could say every game you play on mame is "old and outdated"

The advice being given here is again shocking.  An SDD will NOT make MAME run better, it might make your system boot a bit faster, but it won't help MAME.

I am not suggesting that Mame will run better because of an SSD.  However, if you are looking to get a boost in overall performance, an SSD can frequently help with that (especially if the existing hard drive is an older 5400 rpm drive).   There must be some merit to this as we frequently do this for our end users and they see a big difference in performance.

And yes, drivers can be an issue here...should have mentioned that but I gave the OP the benefit of the doubt on that one.

[Malenko]

The advice being given here is again shocking.  An SDD will NOT make MAME run better, it might make your system boot a bit faster, but it won't help MAME.

No one said a thing about MAME running faster on an SSD, I even specifically stated "get an SSD drive for the OS" , I advised him to try 32bit XP and see how it runs, if it runs great leave as is, if it doesnt try 64bit Win7 ; and I stand by that advice.  I am not sure how you can give a blanket "x64 is XX% faster than x86" when its going to vary quite a bit system to system. My MAME PC is actually older and slower than the system he is presenting and its running 32bit XP like a champ.

[Dawgz Rule]

Malenko, that is the problem.  It is just too easy to jump on the "64 bit is better" bandwagon.    Did I tell you that my amp goes to "11" so it is "1" louder?

[kahlid74]

You have to go back to what MonMotha said above.  64-bit can be fast if utilized correctly (registers, etc).  As Haze has pointed out, Mame for 64-bit is faster (makes use of additional registers, etc.) so running on a 64bit system you should see an improvement. 

So the OP should have seen an improvement.  Since the Op didn't I would go back to the documentation provided by the MAME dev's for configuring a 64bit system and make sure they have everything configured as expected.

[Arbee]

As Haze said, MAME always benchmarks faster in 64-bit, even on cheezy Ultrabooks.  In the OP's case, I would suspect a couple of things:

1) Slow RAM.  MAME uses all the memory bandwidth you can give it.  This doesn't mean you need expensive gamer DIMMs, but don't gimp your processor either.
2) XP64 isn't very well optimized; it was essentially a one-off for developers.  Win7 and later have kernels tuned by Aaron Giles and therefore work supremely well with MAME.

[Fursphere]

XP64 never received Service Pack 3.  A lot of things require SP3 for XP. 

I would consider XP64 an unfinished OS.  If you run it and it works for you, great.  If you are having issues with it, dump it and move on.