Whats slowing me down?

[langlem]

Ok...here is my setup.  Something is bogging me down somewhere.

I5 desktop with 8 gb ram
Nvidea gt650 graphics card (2gb)

Running MAME 167 with HLSL enabled.

28 inch LCD monitor via VGA main screen
25 inch LCD monitor for marquee display via HDMI using Mamehooker.

I strictly have this cab playing things like Pac Man, Galaga and Donkey Kong.  Since I loaded Mamehooker and hooked up the second monitor I get stuttering gamesound but the play is pretty much normal.

Surely I have enough juice to be running the above?

Just curious if anyone else has any similar issues.

Thanks all.

Matt

[mgb]

In your mame ini, try disabling vsync and triple buffering and see if that helps

[langlem]

Thanks...appreciate the reply.

But...they are already disabled.

Just thought someone might have a similar setup.

I really noticed the slowdown once the Mamehooker was setup with the second monitor.

Any other thoughts out there?

[BadMouth]

You don't say what model i5 you have.
2.7Ghz i5 or 3.5Ghz i5?

prescale on HLSL has been the culprit on my setup (which is still on v.146 and has an old 3.4Ghz Athlon X3)
I had to reduce the prescale on old games that had discrete sound emulated and turn it all the way down on 3D games.
If you're on the newest version of MAME, rolling back to the 150's might help.

Running a second monitor does tax the system more.
I can run Ridge Racer full speed in MAME on my 3.4Ghz i7 laptop, but get stuttering if I try to run both the laptop screen and living room screen at the same time.
One or the other and it's fine.

Just FYI, Howard (author of mamehooker) usually sticks to the software, console, & everything else forums so post in the software forum if you want his input.

[lamprey]

Disable HLSL and see what your performance is. One of the keys (F10 or F11) will how you the percentage you are running at (100% being optimal). If you running at a solid number like 50%, then you may need to disable v-sync. I have this problem with GLSL, I have to use the NVidia control panel and disable v-sync for MAME. HLSL shouldn't have this problem though.

If you are running 100% with HLSL disabled. Enable it and then see where you are at. As Badmouth mentioned you might need to adjust the PreScale value if your video card is struggling. Also, the newer versions of MAME are more demanding than the old versions, but, I'd think that a i5 should be able to handle the majority if playable games.