Got new gfx card but MAME is slower; why?

[TheManuel]

One of the recommendations I see more often to increase MAME performance is to get a decent video card especially if you have an onboard one.
That is my case.  I have a ghetto 700MHz Celeron with onboard video and no AGP.  I bought a Sapphire Technologies PCI Radeon 700 with S-video out because I wanted to improve performance of my system and the TV-out capability for MAME.
After installing it and downloading the latest drivers, I was dumbfounded at the realization that now sfa3 ran 9 fps slower than when I was using the onboard crap.

The BIOS did not allow me to disable the onboard card, nor could I find any jumpers on the mainboard to physically accomplish this.  All I could do was disable the driver in Windows XP.

Am I missing something?
I know "ATI powered" is not quite the same as "Built by ATI" but Sapphire is supposed to be one of the better third party manufacturers out there.  Besides, the idea behind using a gfx card for MAME is allegedly to free up processor resources used up by the onboard card and therefore any video card should do.

As far as the other capabilities of the card, I did not see any noticeable improvement in performance in Unreal Tournament (the old one).  I still get the same old fps as with the onboard card.  That seemed to me even more ridiculous.  TV-out was good except for the colors which were way off.  After a little adjustment on the TV they were passable.

Please help.  What can I do other than returning the damned thing?

Thanks.

[HagHore]

It would help to know what kind of onboard video your mobo has.  As for the Sapphire card you purchased, first off, you picked up the 7000 which is a Radeon VE (a "special" edition of the regular Radeon, similar to the MX GeForce family, in other words slower).  Second, unlike the newer Radeon family, OEM versions (Sapphire) of ATI cards like the Radeon VE are clocked slower than their true ATI counterparts.  Third, the onboard video has the advantage of using a hardwired AGP bus, whereas your add-on is PCI and so it suffers a little there as well.  As for Unreal Tourney performance, frankly, the RadeonVE is somewhat lacking for 3D gaming...a Geforce2MX will run 3D games better than the VE.  If you are wanting a MAME card that also performs decently for 3D games and are trying to stay under a $100 then you would be better off looking for a ATI 8500/9000/9100/9200 or GeForce4MX/GeForceFX5200.  

[SirPeale]

Regarding MAME, the choice of video card (unless it's a really, really old ISA card with 512k RAM) really shouldn't matter.  All MAME does with your card is use it as an output to the screen.

That being said, I am curious as to why your framerate has dropped off so dramatically.

Are you using MAME32?  Disable Direct 3D if you have it enabled, and hardware stretch as well for the interim.  Play with the settings a bit.

[shmokes]

Disable Direct 3d, huh?  Can this be turned on and off at will?  For example can I have MameWah turn it on and off based on what I choose to play (turn it off when I'm using Mame, but turn it back on when I play PC games)?

[SirPeale]

Disable Direct 3d, huh?  Can this be turned on and off at will?  For example can I have MameWah turn it on and off based on what I choose to play (turn it off when I'm using Mame, but turn it back on when I play PC games)?

Direct 3D can be turned on or off on a per-game basis when using MAME32, and it might be possible with regular MAME with a command line argument (that I don't know).  And since you can use MAME32 via command line as well, you could set up the games you wanted to use Direct 3D, and then making your calls from there.

[TheManuel]

HagHore:
Your information helped a lot.  Maybe the card is lame enough that the oboard video actually out-performs it.  I'll check what the onboard video is when I get home, but off the top of my head I know it is Intel 80#### something.  As far as getting one of the cards you suggested, I don't have AGP available.  I'll wait until I make an upgrade and return this one in the meantime.

Peale:
I did turn off Direct 3D and hardware stretch.  In fact I never had them on.  I played with the settings a while to no avail.

shmokes:
You can disable/enable features easily with the .ini files.  You have a general one and can set up others for individual games.  Use them, you won't be dissapointed.

[rampy]

Disable Direct 3d, huh?  Can this be turned on and off at will?  For example can I have MameWah turn it on and off based on what I choose to play (turn it off when I'm using Mame, but turn it back on when I play PC games)?

I think he means the d3d setting in MAME (and win gui mame32) Mame can use some d3d features for a "cleaner" stretch, or effects like sharp/scanlines/etc... and use your video cards horsepower to do it... but it can slow stuff down still, and it doesn't work well with all video cards...  hence the suggestion to disable d3d in MAME specifically...  it's not like disabling directX on your whole machine or something... just a line in the mame.ini or a checkbox in mame32.

know what I mean, vern?

rampy

[HagHore]

As far as getting one of the cards you suggested, I don't have AGP available.

Actually, there should be PCI versions available for those cards, check newegg, I believe they run in the $50-$100 range.