Groovymame 15khz modelines and Adjust timing Questions/help

[Olivcade]

Hello everyone,

I introduce myself my name is Olivier I am French I have to use the translator because my English is bad sorry.

I'll explain my problem, here I just installed GroovyMame on an Intel Pentium 4 3200GHZ Windows XP-SP3 32-bit PC and I tested with several ATI HD series graphics cards... all the models were generated well except that I end up with 321x240, possible to have modelines in 320x240 ? with Groovymame at first sight I have no problem with 321x240 but I also use other emulators and there it gets stuck, I have a vertical line in the middle of the screen :embarrassed:

Is there a way to fix it?

I have another config with Soft15KHZ and NVidia Card I don't encounter this problem with NVidia, strange...

[abispac]

Why xp? why dont you upgrade to windows 7? i think youll have better suport with that.

[Olivcade]

Hi 

My PC is not very powerful, before I was with soft15khz, my version of Windows XP SP3 is an iso which weighs only 200 MB. So to quickly test with GroovyMame and CRT emu_driver I only changed the graphics card and did some tests with several ATI...

Besides, apart from the number of modelines I don't see too many differences in precision improvements in terms of timing and fluidity, if I want to improve/adjust the modelines it's exactly the same as before under soft15khz and card Nvidia I can't seem to get better with ATI.

If you confirm me that I can get real 320x240 with Windows 7 I will try yes, thank you.

And will it be better in terms of timing precision under Windows 7? because there I have the impression that I cannot adjust a refresh rate modeline of 0.001 in 0.001. it takes effect from 0.005 to 0.005 or 0.05 I think. I don't know if I can make myself understood, so it's haphazard luck, sometimes I have perfect modelines the tear remains stuck and fixed in a place on the screen it doesn't scroll, and sometimes not impossible to have the tear fixed, it scrolls slightly from top to bottom or from bottom to top, very slowly, but it still scrolls, and impossible to adjust the modeline perfectly because the harware does not allow it.

The only solution in this circumstance for me is to adjust in Mame the Slider Refresh Rate to 0.001 and yes it's perfect I manage to pin the tear line.

Any info on that?

[abispac]

Hi 

My PC is not very powerful, before I was with soft15khz, my version of Windows XP SP3 is an iso which weighs only 200 MB. So to quickly test with GroovyMame and CRT emu_driver I only changed the graphics card and did some tests with several ATI...

Besides, apart from the number of modelines I don't see too many differences in precision improvements in terms of timing and fluidity, if I want to improve/adjust the modelines it's exactly the same as before under soft15khz and card Nvidia I can't seem to get better with ATI.

If you confirm me that I can get real 320x240 with Windows 7 I will try yes, thank you.

And will it be better in terms of timing precision under Windows 7? because there I have the impression that I cannot adjust a refresh rate modeline of 0.001 in 0.001. it takes effect from 0.005 to 0.005 or 0.05 I think. I don't know if I can make myself understood, so it's haphazard luck, sometimes I have perfect modelines the tear remains stuck and fixed in a place on the screen it doesn't scroll, and sometimes not impossible to have the tear fixed, it scrolls slightly from top to bottom or from bottom to top, very slowly, but it still scrolls, and impossible to adjust the modeline perfectly because the harware does not allow it.

The only solution in this circumstance for me is to adjust in Mame the Slider Refresh Rate to 0.001 and yes it's perfect I manage to pin the tear line.

Any info on that?

See, thats where most people fail. Are you doing this, for the sake of playing games and hvae fun? or for the sake of getting the emulation running the way it should? Because if is #1, you going the wrong path. As long as games run good, and look good. it shouldnt bother yu a perfect pixel ratio. If the reason is #2 You doing it wron. Emudrivers and groovymame have been worked and got better over the years, to the piont that using a pentium 4 pc ,will only give old bugs problems. If is not posible for you to upgrade your hardware a bit more, lets say dual core pc, then you just looking for trouble. So either, upgrade your hardware and try windows 7 or 10, or deal with old problems, and stick with that.
Any dual core pc, and windows 7 together with an ti hd5xxx or hd7xxx card should work just fine.
I dont know, maybe try groovyarcade, that as far as i know it works nice on old hardware.
Anyway good luck.
And to the youngsters out there, stop looking for pixel perfect, no lag, emulation. At the moment , developers almost make that posible but still not perfect, mister seems a good alternative, but if you want no lag pixel perfect, then look for the original hardware. Try to have fun with the hobby, not bang your head for some bugs. 

[Olivcade]

Thank you for your feedback abispac,

I have two motherboards in stock an Intel Dual core and an AMD Quad core. I will test with Windows 7.
The precision of the timing in the emulation for me is passionate and as much as I can also put myself in gaming mode and ignore these bugs when I am immersed in the game, or when my friends are playing it. I also have some original jamma cards, in fact I started with the original in the 2000s when you could still find game coffee and billiard game merchants.
Thanks to all these years of tests I was able to understand how to calculate a modeline with precision and I actually developed my own modeline calculator (I do a little development). But I think I went or maxed out the best accuracies under Windows XP. Better we can not. It is for this reason that I now want to evolve even if I know that I have fallen behind all these years, but it does not matter it has allowed me to understand many things in 15khz emulation .


I've even had weird surprises with the MamePlus emulator on XP, for example when the timing is very close to perfect sync, and the tear line moves slowly across the screen, once it goes beyond the visible screen, finished it does not reappear at all, it remains stuck in the part of the screen not visible and as long as we play we never see it appear again. strange isn't it?

I tested everything: Mame / MamePlus / GroovyMame / Arcade32 / MameUIFX etc.... for me under XP MamePlus is one good emulators if you want to do 15khz. it is with him that I obtained the good results in terms of precision.

Thank you ;-)

[Zebidee]

With XP you will be limited to MAME v0.180 or thereabouts, whatever variant you use.

Groovymame is the best for framerate matching and speed accuracy - should be no "screen tear" lines at all. 

[Olivcade]

With XP you will be limited to MAME v0.180 or thereabouts, whatever variant you use.

Groovymame is the best for framerate matching and speed accuracy - should be no "screen tear" lines at all.

Hi :-) for info Arcade32 version 0.245 works without any problem on Windows XP-32. and it even works very well.

I just did a test with Windows 7 + Groovymame and I get exactly the same results in "timing".

Groovymame does a great job, the modeline values ​​taken from the Mame source code are respected, but that doesn't mean your hardware will interpret things that way! you have to touch up the modelines if you want perfect timing. It depends on the material. Most older generation graphics cards use multiples of 8 horizontally (this is the VGA standard). The resolution / modeline information taken from the source code of Mame does not necessarily use multiples of 8 so it will result in artifacts, jerks on the screen and loss of sound sync, and therefore it is necessary having recourse to Triple Bufering, V-Sync and other filters of this kind which induce lag.

However I have never tried with newer gear.

home hardware differs from arcade hardware. Arcade gear tolerates larger values, so unless you have a real graphics card that accepts timing differences of more than 3 decimal places + no constraints in the numbers of the number of horizontal lines, yes, but personally I've never had the chance to test a graphics card of this type.

Information on this subject is rare on the web, I have the impression that most people are content only to have a beautiful image and beautiful scanlines but they do not seek to go further. Personally, what I like is the timing, I want something to respond to the joystick! I do not care if the image protrudes from the screen or not, or if the game runs slightly faster than the original, no, what I want is perfect fluidity, and for that you basically have to find the perfect modeline is the basis for obtaining as little lag as possible. then we see whether or not to use a filter.

[psakhis]

Hi,
I don't understand your last post. Groovymame matches exactly timmings freqs and resolutions if you have a compatible gpu card, from switchres 2.0, this happens without any installation of modelines with super or native resolutions, all is needed is a crt_range.

I don't know about Arcade32, but seems he hasn't same target than Groovymame.

[Zebidee]

With XP you will be limited to MAME v0.180 or thereabouts, whatever variant you use.

Groovymame is the best for framerate matching and speed accuracy - should be no "screen tear" lines at all.

Hi :-) for info Arcade32 version 0.245 works without any problem on Windows XP-32. and it even works very well.

My comment was never intended to mean that it is impossible to run MAME past ~0.180 on XP. More that you will be "limited", it won't work out-of-the-box, without hacks. Arcade32 is a version specifically hacked to run on older hardware, so an obvious exception.

I myself am running a hacked version of Groovymame 0.200 on XPx64 machines with older video cards.

[Olivcade]

Hi,
I don't understand your last post. Groovymame matches exactly timmings freqs and resolutions if you have a compatible gpu card, from switchres 2.0, this happens without any installation of modelines with super or native resolutions, all is needed is a crt_range.

I don't know about Arcade32, but seems he hasn't same target than Groovymame.

I did the tests with Groovymame 64 216 I see that Switchres is older it's version 0.017 but it didn't suit me so I went back to XP-32

My comment was never intended to mean that it is impossible to run MAME past ~0.180 on XP. More that you will be "limited", it won't work out-of-the-box, without hacks. Arcade32 is a version specifically hacked to run on older hardware, so an obvious exception.

I myself am running a hacked version of Groovymame 0.200 on XPx64 machines with older video cards.

Sorry, I misunderstood :-)

Well do you also encounter the same problem as me on XP64 with resolutions 321x224 and 321x240?
I came back to XP32 and I use the Custom Build Groovymame32 0.211 version because with this version you can save the values ​​of the Sliders for the refresh rate and the CPU sound overclocking.

I tried more recent versions of the custom builds but they don't work from 0.212 it doesn't work under xp32 even though they were compiled for that... even the official Groovymame32 0.227 XP32 version doesn't work on XP32 SP3.
cannot launch system compatibility error.

I'm currently having fun testing Groovymame 0.211 in combination with soft15khz on an Nvidia MX 400 card and it works great, the rendering is great, better than with Arcade32. it allows me to use Frame Delay. good Switchres does not work, I am limited to 32 modelines but it does not matter because it is me who manages all the ini files + my modelines + I adjust the slider refresh rate.