Main Restorations Software Audio/Jukebox/MP3 Everything Else Buy/Sell/Trade
Project Announcements Monitor/Video GroovyMAME Merit/JVL Touchscreen Meet Up Retail Vendors
Driving & Racing Woodworking Software Support Forums Consoles Project Arcade Reviews
Automated Projects Artwork Frontend Support Forums Pinball Forum Discussion Old Boards
Raspberry Pi & Dev Board controls.dat Linux Miscellaneous Arcade Wiki Discussion Old Archives
Lightguns Arcade1Up Try the site in https mode Site News

Unread posts | New Replies | Recent posts | Rules | Chatroom | Wiki | File Repository | RSS | Submit news

  

Author Topic: Frame Delay advice  (Read 2383 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Maccy

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 23
  • Last login:October 25, 2022, 08:08:41 am
Frame Delay advice
« on: February 22, 2021, 09:14:05 am »
Hi all,

thanks to Calamity for GrovvyMAME and to this community for the the great support (and thanks to MAMEDEVs for MAME)

I would need an advice on how to tune properly frame delay parameter.

I'm using a 70-120Hz CRT to run GroovyMAME 0.225 so to use frame delay parameter I need to disable -autosync and use -syncrefresh instead.

With a frame delay value too high I cannot get 100% speed and with a value that is too low I get above 200% speed: there is always a value which seems to represent the sweet spot with which I get 100% speed almost the whole the time. "Almost" because during a I get occasional very quick frame rate drop here and there (we could say one per minute or so) which probably I couldn't even realize if it wasn't for the slowdown of the music pitch/tempo which is a bit annoying.

Am I missing something or am I hitting some limit here with my equipment?

Thanks in advance

Calamity

  • Moderator
  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Full Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 7411
  • Last login:March 14, 2024, 05:26:05 am
  • Quote me with care
Re: Frame Delay advice
« Reply #1 on: February 22, 2021, 01:39:07 pm »
Try forcing -nosleep -priority 1, this will hopefully make it more stable performance-wise.
Important note: posts reporting GM issues without a log will be IGNORED.
Steps to create a log:
 - From command line, run: groovymame.exe -v romname >romname.txt
 - Attach resulting romname.txt file to your post, instead of pasting it.

CRT Emudriver, VMMaker & Arcade OSD downloads, documentation and discussion:  Eiusdemmodi

Maccy

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 23
  • Last login:October 25, 2022, 08:08:41 am
Re: Frame Delay advice
« Reply #2 on: February 25, 2021, 02:11:40 pm »
Thanks a lot, Calamity. Probably I will try that during next weekend, been very busy with real life.I will let you know the outcome.

Maccy

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 23
  • Last login:October 25, 2022, 08:08:41 am
Re: Frame Delay advice
« Reply #3 on: February 27, 2021, 06:15:34 am »
Unfortunately I had no luck, same issue using priority 1 (sleep 0 was already there).

I've tried to update GM to latest version currently available (0.228) and now the situation seems to be worse since I can't get 100% anymore. Tried also disabling artwork setting a fake path.

My PC is an Intel i5-3470 CPU equipped with 16Gig of RAM, 256Gb SSD, ATI Radeon HD5450 with CRT Emudriver 2.0 beta 15 ("15.8") and the monitor is a PC CRT Monitor 19" HP 9500.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

« Last Edit: February 27, 2021, 06:21:47 am by Maccy »

Calamity

  • Moderator
  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Full Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 7411
  • Last login:March 14, 2024, 05:26:05 am
  • Quote me with care
Re: Frame Delay advice
« Reply #4 on: February 27, 2021, 08:56:10 am »
Currently with SR 2.0 if you disable autosync you must manually enable both syncrefresh and waitvsync.
Important note: posts reporting GM issues without a log will be IGNORED.
Steps to create a log:
 - From command line, run: groovymame.exe -v romname >romname.txt
 - Attach resulting romname.txt file to your post, instead of pasting it.

CRT Emudriver, VMMaker & Arcade OSD downloads, documentation and discussion:  Eiusdemmodi

R-Typer

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 143
  • Last login:Yesterday at 07:21:31 pm
  • C64 Rulez!!!!
Re: Frame Delay advice
« Reply #5 on: February 27, 2021, 11:04:14 am »
I use GroovyMAME 0.228 with Frame Delay 1 set on every game. There's no need to go further IMO. FD1 gives you 17ms latency. If you were to have 5ghz Intel CPU or AMD 5600x then OK I would set higher Frame Delay on such a CPU.

Maccy

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 23
  • Last login:October 25, 2022, 08:08:41 am
Re: Frame Delay advice
« Reply #6 on: February 27, 2021, 12:52:27 pm »
Thanks Calamity, with waitvsync at least I came back to previous situation, with 100% speed on 99% of the play time with very occasional single frame rate drops to 97%. But just to give an indea, it happens 3 times across 3 minutes of game play. As told, if it wasn't for sound slowing down, probably I wouldn't even realize. But given the music slowdown it's a bit annoying.

This doesn't happen without frame delay.

@R-typer It doesn't seem a performance issue, given I get the same result with my selection of '80-'90 favorites with frame delay set from 5 to 8. With 9 generally I start getting consistent slow down. Below 5, games are too fast. From what I understood this is the expected behavior using a PC CRT 70-120hz monitor.

Thanks, regards


Calamity

  • Moderator
  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Full Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 7411
  • Last login:March 14, 2024, 05:26:05 am
  • Quote me with care
Re: Frame Delay advice
« Reply #7 on: February 27, 2021, 01:41:19 pm »
@Maccy,

Yes, unfortunately this happens on some systems, running at 120 Hz + frame delay is more demanding than frame delay alone. Probably I'll make the "soundsync" feature optional at some point to avoid the annoyance.

Anyway, try to figure out if there are some background tasks stealing cpu time from us.
Important note: posts reporting GM issues without a log will be IGNORED.
Steps to create a log:
 - From command line, run: groovymame.exe -v romname >romname.txt
 - Attach resulting romname.txt file to your post, instead of pasting it.

CRT Emudriver, VMMaker & Arcade OSD downloads, documentation and discussion:  Eiusdemmodi

Maccy

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 23
  • Last login:October 25, 2022, 08:08:41 am
Re: Frame Delay advice
« Reply #8 on: February 28, 2021, 06:14:51 am »
I've stopped all non-vital services and terminated unneeded applications but the issue still happens on random base. The drop game speed percentage seems to be fixed (from 100% to 97%) but it's really quick, even if enough to be a little annoying for the aforementioned music/sound issues. Thanks for keeping in consideration make the soundsync feature optional.

Given that I will try to reinstall the OS from scratch to start clean (current OS has not been installed for GroovyMame), could the graphic card do the difference for this issue?

I've read that frame delay is all about GPU. But I'm not running super resolutions. Don't know if this make some differences or not.

Yes, I could live without frame delay but my feeling is that in some games it makes a big difference. Apparently my setup is currently capable of running my favorites at least fd 7 at full speed, so I don't think the upgrade of rest of the hardware could make any difference.

I would keep monitor replacement as last resort.

I will also try GroovyArcade, since it can be run as live.

Thanks
« Last Edit: February 28, 2021, 06:19:54 am by Maccy »

schmerzkaufen

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 791
  • Last login:October 03, 2023, 02:27:31 pm
  • Multiple Electronic Machine Emulator
Re: Frame Delay advice
« Reply #9 on: February 28, 2021, 09:12:48 am »
Dunno if that will be relevant but in a different situation (flat panel as a monitor), I often need to inject at least a little bit of vsync_offset before I can use frame_delay, otherwise for some reason the whole thing crawls.

In other words; often, unntil I first set like something around 50 or 100 vsync_offset, I cannot use frame_delay beyond the lowest setting or even not at all.

I'd use at least either 0.227 switchres v0.017t (a.k.a 'legacy') or 0.228 for trying that since the vsync_offset slider is a rather new thing just recently polished by Calamity.

Welp if that does nothing for you then I dunno, 't was jut my 2c...

tonyt76

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 72
  • Last login:March 11, 2024, 10:06:18 am
  • I want to build my own arcade controls!
Re: Frame Delay advice
« Reply #10 on: March 02, 2021, 04:15:59 pm »
Is frame delay beneficial for crt users?

Maccy

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 23
  • Last login:October 25, 2022, 08:08:41 am
Re: Frame Delay advice
« Reply #11 on: March 07, 2021, 02:35:52 am »
Hi all,

Replacing the video card with a R5 230 didn't helped.

I was going to reinstall the OS, but I've tried to be more "radical".

I've installed GroovyArcade and since the beginning the frame rate drop issue has been solved, even with frame delay 8. It has taken a little bit to tweak everything (sound disappearing after a few seconds, brightness/gamma increasing by itself for apparent no reason) but now I have AttractMode with ArcadeFlow running even better than in Windows.

Perhaps a complete rebuild of the Windows system might have solved this, but at the end of the day I like the GroovyArcade solution ;)

Thanks everyone for the support.

donluca

  • Trade Count: (0)
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Online Online
  • Posts: 261
  • Last login:Today at 07:20:43 am
  • I want to build my own arcade controls!
Re: Frame Delay advice
« Reply #12 on: March 07, 2021, 07:57:47 am »
"2021 will be the year of Linux"
On a scale of fakeness, from more genuine to more fake, we'd have:

1.- Plastic plants (cf. Fake Plastic Trees)
2.- Inflatable dolls
3.- Arcade cabinets with LCD monitors