MAME, Soft15-Khz, and VSync

[isucamper]

For a few months, I've been running my MAME cab at 640x480.  On a lot of games, I would use "-video ddraw" and -"nohwstretch" and "-waitvsync" so there wouldn't be any artifacting.  It would look great most of the time, but a lot of games would not be proportioned correctly.

Last night, I rolled back from Vista 64 to XP 32 so I could use Soft15-Khz.  Things look spectacular now, but I'm running into a few strange throughput issues.

Some games, such as Shinobi, and TMNT, don't run at full speed when I run them at their native resolution AND turn on "-waitvsync" or "-tb".  This is odd to me, because they run just fine at 640x480 with "-video ddraw" and "-nohwstretch" and "-waitvsync."  I don't understand why running them at their native resolutions causes them to slow down.

I'm running on and 4000+ Athlon 64, and on board video and recent versions of MAME.  I really don't think processing power should be an issue.  It seems like far more complex games (Street Fighter 3 and Neo Geo games) run just fine at their native resolutions and vsync turned on. 

[Minwah]

Could be to do with refresh rate.

eg Shinobi runs @ 60Hz, so if the video mode you are using for this game runs (even slightly) below 60Hz then you will probably see/hear missed frames.

This might not appear as a problem for SF3 as this runs at 59.58Hz, and your chosen video mode's refresh rate might be higher than this.

It's worth noting that many supposedly 60Hz modes on various video cards are in fact 59.something. Maybe you can tweak this if neccessary in Soft15khz.

If the problem games are running much worse than this (>1 dropped frame/second I suppose) then it could be something else...

[isucamper]

Could be to do with refresh rate.

eg Shinobi runs @ 60Hz, so if the video mode you are using for this game runs (even slightly) below 60Hz then you will probably see/hear missed frames.

This might not appear as a problem for SF3 as this runs at 59.58Hz, and your chosen video mode's refresh rate might be higher than this.

It's worth noting that many supposedly 60Hz modes on various video cards are in fact 59.something. Maybe you can tweak this if neccessary in Soft15khz.

If the problem games are running much worse than this (>1 dropped frame/second I suppose) then it could be something else...

I've got a feeling it is something like this.  If vsync is off in Shinobi, the screen tearing is really really bad, which tells me that the game is running at an obscenely high frame rate.  If I turn vsync on, then the framerate locks in at 98 percent and doesn't change.  I get sound stuttering though and it's annoying.

I'll look into the refresh issue and see what I find.  Thanks for the suggestion.

[isucamper]

Looks like SailorSat has my back again.  The issue is exactly that the display mode doesn't quit match the original, causing the game to run slow (or fast in some other cases).  Has nothing to do with processing power.

http://community.arcadeinfo.de/showthread.php?t=9555

If I get through this whole cab building process alive, I'm going to have to hit his donate button a few times. 

[ahofle]

If I get through this whole cab building process alive, I'm going to have to hit his donate button a few times. 

Yeah, SHE is in my mind a hero to this community.

[Ummon]

That's the thing with current Mame is it seems to be geared towards non-native application. Many games still work, but more seem like they're not. That's one reason I use Advancemame (although I'm skeptical about the latest/current build, 106.1, for native use).