Searching for ultimate MAME setup (NO LATENCY!)

[Count Trakula]

Hi guys!  I’ve recently purchased an upright MAME arcade that needs tweaked, and I’m possibly looking at building another from scratch that focuses on the most accurate, uncompromising arcade experience possible.  I’m located in the Los Angeles area and am looking for someone with a lot of experience I could hire for help with this.  Thanks in advance!

[keilmillerjr]

Hi guys!  I’ve recently purchased an upright MAME arcade that needs tweaked, and I’m possibly looking at building another from scratch that focuses on the most accurate, uncompromising arcade experience possible.  I’m located in the Los Angeles area and am looking for someone with a lot of experience I could hire for help with this.  Thanks in advance!

Use a crt with groovymame, jpac key encoder (jamma and 15khz filter), and a computer with decent specs. That's it.

[lilshawn]

the most accurate, uncompromising arcade experience possible.

gonna have to play on original boards then.

[paigeoliver]

All you need to do is use a crt, that is it, no other tricks, use a CRT. I have been in this hobby since it almost began, the first mentions of latency or display lag came about the same time that people started using flat panel monitors.

[csnow]

SSD drive will greatly improve load and boot-up times.  Outside of that, there aren't any tricks.

[barrymossel]

All you need to do is use a crt, that is it, no other tricks, use a CRT. I have been in this hobby since it almost began, the first mentions of latency or display lag came about the same time that people started using flat panel monitors.

I believe you right away, but is there any reason to that? I would have thought a CRT would be a lot "slower" (I don't notice stuff like that anyway), working with lines etc.

[lilshawn]

LCD and plasma displays have a lot of processing that goes into building each panel update...often there is a delay in when a frame is received and when it's displayed because it has to receive the entire frame FIRST, process it...then display it.

[Titchgamer]

Some flat panel screens can have there settings adjusted to help with this problem.

If I hook my pi consoles up to my big LG LED tv I have to set it to "game mode" otherwise there is noticeable lag.

On the flip side my smaller LED tv upstairs does not have that issue!

[Haze]

read
https://byuu.org/articles/latency/

but really, if you want no emulator induced latency you're going to have to use the original PCBs and a CRT.
not the xx-in-1 PCBs because those are just emulators and also have their own latency.

[postmortem]

The issue with LCD monitors is the battle between input lag and screen tearing. If you disable vsync and triple buffering you will get minimal input lag, but you will probably have screen tearing issues. I find the best comprise is to use triple buffering. Otherwise CRT is ideal for sure.

[vwalbridge]

focuses on the most accurate, uncompromising arcade experience possible.

Start collecting real arcade games.

[paigeoliver]

The crt is actually so fast at displaying the image that the latency essentially rounds down to zero. The best response times will be found on the older cheaper sets (and arcade monitors), that weren't using an onboard microprocessor or fancy chipset to do any display tricks.

All you need to do is use a crt, that is it, no other tricks, use a CRT. I have been in this hobby since it almost began, the first mentions of latency or display lag came about the same time that people started using flat panel monitors.

I believe you right away, but is there any reason to that? I would have thought a CRT would be a lot "slower" (I don't notice stuff like that anyway), working with lines etc.

[barrymossel]

Thanks for the explanation(s)!

[Haze]

If you're not using a CRT then apparently the high end Gsync monitors combined with a good Nvidia card are your next best bet as they'll match the proper frequencies, so you can have smooth scrolling without having to enable triple buffer of Vsync, both of which add lag.

That said, I'm not sure anybody has done comprehensive tests on them, and they are expensive.  People with them seem to recommend them highly tho.

[paigeoliver]

Early 2000 era 19" and 21" PC monitors are still pretty easy to come by and make pretty good general mame and gaming monitors. They don't show up on craigslist that often anymore, but asking around to your facebook friends can probably shake one loose for free.

[postmortem]

If you're not using a CRT then apparently the high end Gsync monitors combined with a good Nvidia card are your next best bet as they'll match the proper frequencies, so you can have smooth scrolling without having to enable triple buffer of Vsync, both of which add lag.

That said, I'm not sure anybody has done comprehensive tests on them, and they are expensive.  People with them seem to recommend them highly tho.

How about freesync? Has anyone messed with that and Mame? I'm wondering if it is better than triple buffering.

[Haze]

If you're not using a CRT then apparently the high end Gsync monitors combined with a good Nvidia card are your next best bet as they'll match the proper frequencies, so you can have smooth scrolling without having to enable triple buffer of Vsync, both of which add lag.

That said, I'm not sure anybody has done comprehensive tests on them, and they are expensive.  People with them seem to recommend them highly tho.

How about freesync? Has anyone messed with that and Mame? I'm wondering if it is better than triple buffering.

Haven't found a single person who has reported it to work / not work with MAME.

Outside of MAME I've heard people say it's an inferior option tho, however, these type of things depend very much on the use cases and maturity of technology available.