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Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: jimmer on April 10, 2014, 07:27:31 am

Title: Tweaking MAME for Defender on LCD - Tearing
Post by: jimmer on April 10, 2014, 07:27:31 am

Before I give up and resort to a CRT, I'm thinking there must be some way to tweak my LCD system.
I don't need a general solution, just looking for a specific fix for Defender on my current system.
Dell Optiplex 745 core2duo 1.86GHz,  WinXP 32bit,  Dell 1707 LCD 1280x1024.

I've tried:     mame.exe -video ddraw -nohws -triplebuffer
It solves the tearing but crashes every so often. And people say it introduces lag. I'm not sure if I can sense that or not, on a bad day I blame it.

I currently run MAME as:    mame.exe -video ddraw -nohws
I like this except for the tearing I get which moves slowly down the screen.

As an experiment I changed the video frame rate of Defender from 60.096Hz to 60.000 Hz. This caused the tear to move very slowly downwards instead of slowly up. Therefore if I tuned the game to my monitor I could probably get the tear to stay still, but that's not a solution.

But this got me to thinking about triplebuffer. How does it work?   And might it work better if I slightly slowed or sped up Defender's video rate?

I could just experiment, but I'd prefer to understand how MAME works.

Any ideas?  or other MAME options I could try?

Title: Re: Tweaking MAME for Defender on LCD - Tearing
Post by: Sjaak on April 10, 2014, 07:31:52 am

I don't think you should use -nohws

Title: Re: Tweaking MAME for Defender on LCD - Tearing
Post by: Generic Eric on April 10, 2014, 09:41:15 am

I have a lot of problems with this too.  I've yet to resolve it, because I want to play games on it.  That the mame computer is still the fastest Desktop in the house.

Best of luck.

Title: Re: Tweaking MAME for Defender on LCD - Tearing
Post by: BadMouth on April 10, 2014, 10:14:21 am

triple buffer and vsync, but it adds lag to the controls.

Title: Re: Tweaking MAME for Defender on LCD - Tearing
Post by: Generic Eric on April 10, 2014, 10:20:59 am

can you overclock to compensate for lag on the controls?  I remember reading about overclocking years ago, but I don't know if that is still a thing or not.

Title: Re: Tweaking MAME for Defender on LCD - Tearing
Post by: DeLuSioNal29 on April 10, 2014, 11:04:55 am

Have you tried GroovyMAME?  There are settings for LCD setups.

Title: Re: Tweaking MAME for Defender on LCD - Tearing
Post by: jimmer on April 11, 2014, 10:22:02 am

hmm maybe I haven't got a problem.

-triplebuffer
This hasn't crashed on me since yesterday, and I can't spot any obvious lag.

-waitvsync
Seems to work fine as well. So if triplebuffer crashes, I'll use this.


I don't quite understand what waits for what with the various options but I guess a 60.1fps game on a 60Hz lcd works OK.