ArcadeVGA tearing and format

[Level42]

OK, I've got my system running for some time, and so far I've thought it would be some kind of setting but I've got those questions now:

I'm using an arcadevga with Mamewah and a "plain" mame version.

Now I keep having the problem of what I guess is called "tearing". F.E. in Galaxian, the ships are not coming down in a straight line but seem to "skip" over something, my own gunship is doing the same when I move it from left to right.

The other problem is that the vertical games simply don't fit my horizontal screen. Is there no other way to get better results apart from using stretching. Stretching ruins the picture IMHO.

I thought I'd have perfect arcade pictures from the ArcadeVGA and am somewhat disappointed by this.

[Grasshopper]

My understanding is that tearing occurs when the game's refresh rate is slightly different to the screens refresh rate. Many early games were designed on the assumption that the screen would refresh at a particular rate.

Do you know your monitor's scan range?

Some custom MAME builds (AdvanceMAME?) allow you to set an exact refresh rate to match the game's rate, assuming of course that your monitor can handle it. But the problem is that very few non-VGA monitors seem to be multiscan, and most VGA multiscans won't scan below 31.5 khz.

If you have a VGA monitor then I'd suggest you try setting the scan rate to be a multiple of the game's rate.

[Level42]

Sorry no, it's a pure Hantarex arcade CRT (CGA) monitor. (As it should be IMHO).
I'm not sure of the exact model really, will put up some pics.

[Brad]

Sounds to me like you haven't used a resolution tool to generate custom resolutions for your Mame games.

http://mamewah.mameworld.net/downloads.htm

Brad

[miles2912]

That and there is a setting in mame.ini  (you did make an ini file right?) to disable stretching.

Don

[Lilwolf]

Turning on triplebuffering will remove this.

I use hwstretch + triplebuffer and all games look great (that should look great that is)

[krick]

Turning on triplebuffering will remove this.

I use hwstretch + triplebuffer and all games look great (that should look great that is)

I have a standard res arcade monitor and an ArcadeVGA.

I only use hardware stretch on games that switch resolution mid-game like Xevious 3D/G because they do not work properly without it.

As for triple buffering, it will help with tearing in most situations, but be aware that there is a performance hit.  On my old system with a P4 2.8GHz, triple buffering made the sound in MK3 choppy.

I have the original ArcadeVGA 7000.  I'm not sure if the newer version would help with triple buffering performance or not.

[thebrownshow]

This article is pretty helpful in explaining what causes tearing:
http://retroblast.com/articles/winmamemon_1.html