Groovymame Sound Stutters

[Calamity]

Hi rawbe,

What hardware (CPU) are you running GM on (please, just to discard CPU issues)?

Running groovymame using this params: -noswitchres -nomodeline -nosyncrefresh -notriplebuffer
... should result in same performance as baseline MAME with default settings (aspect ratio may be off however), just for testing.

There's something odd in your logs that I forgot to comment, was this intentional? :

DirectSound: Primary buffer: 11025 Hz, 16 bits, 2 channels

[rawbe]

After a fresh mame -cc I disabled the modeline function and Galaga's sound is perfect. Of course now the game doesn't fit my screen.

My computer is an AMD Athlon XP(sp 3)1700 1.47 GHz with 2gb ram.

[Sledge]

My computer is an AMD Athlon XP(sp 3)1700 1.47 GHz with 2gb ram.

Might be something to do with this.
I'm running an E8500 with an AVGA and galaga is rock solid on 100% (ddraw)

[rawbe]

Sledge-

I understand it is not the fastest computer but I am surprised that it is having problems keeping up with Groovymame. Like I stated before, regular Mame runs fine with no sound hiccups.

[rawbe]

I have tested mameuifx and 3 different Mames and have no sound issues. I have tried countless sound configurations with GM and still get sound stutters. I also picked up a $5 sound card just out of curiosity it was my drivers messing with GM. No luck.

But Groovymame looks SO GOOD!!!!

[Calamity]

Hi rawbe,

GM requires more CPU power than normal MAME because vsync itself consumes many CPU cycles, and it is enabled all the time in GM, either with -syncrefresh or -triplebuffer. Your CPU has a single core, this means that it can't benefit of the multithreaded -triplebuffering in order to alliviate the vsync overhead. Remind some posts above that I reported slowdowns in Galaga running on a P4 3.0 GHz which is faster than your system. If you can live with some tearing for galaga, using these options inside galaga.ini should make GM perform just like normal MAME:

galaga.ini

Code: [Select]

triplebuffer 0
syncrefresh 0

[Sledge]

Or upgrade your hardware
decent PC's for GM can be really cheap now!

ANY excuse to upgrade is a good excuse!

[rawbe]

Do you think a P4 3.2ghz 2gb ram would be enough CPU to get my audio sounding correct?

[Calamity]

Hi rawbe,

As explained, it's not the sound what's incorrect, it's the overall performance, it's just that it's manifesting as sound issues because sound is the first thing that breaks when performance is poor.

That said, I tested this myself on a P4 3.00 and I noticed sound stuttering during the first explosion at the grid pattern, after that the sound was fine during gameplay. I assume 3.20 GHz should perform a little bit better, but it's still an underpowered CPU to run modern MAME. Consider Core2Duo as a bare minimum.