PC and 31khz screen

[Retro77]

Hi all,

I have spent the last few weeks changing the config on my racing cab PC. I am thinking I might start again with a few different components.

I was wondering if there is anyone here who runs a PC on a Sega racing cab who can give me a few pointers.

When I first built my cab, I built it around grooovymame and CRTemudriver, but I am starting to think that was unnecessary (the monitor is 31khz only).

Does anyone use an unmodified graphics card on a 31khz monitor and just keep the resolution at 640x480? Or am I missing a step?

I am basically looking to see if I can get a performance upgrade on some emulators as my AMD card is struggling. I am currently running MAME, Model 2, Model 3, Demul and Outrun PC.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[lilshawn]

if you're struggling at 640x480, you are gonna have to get yourself a new card... i know outrun on pc needs at least a FX5600 to even run at potato settings, a geforce 6200 is recommended. quite honestly, unless you are running a 15k monitor or for some reason want to run native 15k resolutions and junk and need the AMD card with custom bios to lock 15k what have you, here is really no reason to have an old video card as almost every modern video card supports 640x480. i think the 950 GTX was probably the last videocard to feature analog VGA outputs before everything went digital with DVI-d, HDMI or Displayport. check to be sure it has a DVI-A port and not DVI-D cause you cant use an adapter to convert it to vga on DVI-D

most 31k monitors are smart enough to ignore anything other than 31khz (or whatever other modes it supports like 15 or 25) so even if you boot in 800x600, it will probably come up scrambled... but once you enter you FE (or whatever) and switch to 640x480, its fine.

[Retro77]

Hi lilshawn,

Thanks for the response. I think when I initially built the cab I was worried about too high a resolution breaking the monitor. I had also built two PCs for 2 15khz cabs. But I think in this case, for a few MAME racing games it is probably not needed.

CRTemudriver does allow for resolutions higher than 640x480 but within the monitor tolerance. Although I must admit, I don't fully understand how this works.

Thanks

[lilshawn]

basically crtemudriver patches the drivers for windows to add back in the lower resolutions and particular sync settings to allow the greatest connectivity of non-standard monitors. due to the newer operating systems (sort of) blocking out resolutions lower than 800x600... as for average windows computing they aren't required and do nothing but make the desktop unusable.... since a 640x480 game would either run in a window and the user would select a fullscreen mode, or be set to fullscreen anyway and windows would just set to it. so the resolution's still there...just kind of "hidden"

it can be done without it, you just have to manually go into the windows resolution settings for the monitor and select a checkbox to "list all resolutions" to show it.

[Retro77]

I see. Thanks for that. I will be swapping out the card.

Cheers

[buttersoft]

This is an arcade monitor? Most will accept interlaced resolutions just fine, but not always 50Hz. I mention this as i'm using two PVM-2730's at 15kHz as driving cab monitors. I find that 640x480i loses too much detail from newer titles like IDZ, but 800x600@50i is great. Or even 1024x576@50i for a widescreen mode in games that distort the aspect ratio (I stretch the modeline out both sides of the screen so it's at the right aspect ratio, but only the center 4:3 section is visible of course.)

So you could try a 960@60i mode, or possibly even a 1080@50i one if your GPU will support it. I'd check the specs on your monitor first though, to see if it can do 50Hz. I haven't run into a game i couldn't somehow unlock v-sync for, either. Getting the modes would probably be easiest using crt_emudriver. The GroovyMAME subforum on here has a sticky on monitor presets, which is a good place to start looking for information on modelines.

640x480p is going to use a lot less GPU power though. I find a big advantage of running in 15kHz is that you can run most things fine on a potato, once you get over the long load times

[Retro77]

Hi buttersoft,

It is an arcade monitor. 31khz only (possibly a Nanao).

I am currently using CRTemudriver with an AMD card. This and Groovymame work incredibly well on 2 15khz cabs I have but for this 31khz cab I think it isn't so necessary.

Just so I understand fully, does this means that I can make a note of the video modes that are proven to work on this card then as long as I only use those resolutions on the new (Nvidia) card
I shouldn't have any out of range issues?

I find arcade resolutions and the threat of expensive damage quite confusing and worrying.

Hopefully that makes sense.

Thanks

[buttersoft]

Just so I understand fully, does this means that I can make a note of the video modes that are proven to work on this card then as long as I only use those resolutions on the new (Nvidia) card
I shouldn't have any out of range issues?

Yes, but making note of the resolutions here might not be just writing down 640x480p. You might need to record the timings. You can use VMM from the crt_emudriver package to do that:
Open VMM.exe
Into the prompt, type: modelist import
then: modelist export whatever.txt

You should now have file called whatever.txt where the VMM executable is, that contains the timings of all your modes (all of them, including any non-working ones) and that will allow you to recreate them in a tool like CRU or even the Nvidia CP, if you need to.

[Retro77]

Great stuff. I look forward to giving this a go.

Thanks buttersoft