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Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: buck16 on June 03, 2007, 08:45:18 pm

Title: Tempest running slow on my Althon 1800+ under XP. Normal?
Post by: buck16 on June 03, 2007, 08:45:18 pm

Should Tempest be running so slow under XP on my Athlon 1800+?  It stinks.  Am running MAME .99 and the latest WolfMAME.

I don't think my soundcard will work under DOS either though it will in a DOS window ... which I think makes it run faster.

Options without upgrading the PC?

Title: Re: Tempest running slow on my Althon 1800+ under XP. Normal?
Post by: Dervacumen on June 04, 2007, 04:08:08 am

That's not a hardware issue.  I run Tempest at full speed with a P3-800.  I'm not familiar with WolfMAME but I'm pretty sure this is a software issue.

Title: Re: Tempest running slow on my Althon 1800+ under XP. Normal?
Post by: buck16 on June 04, 2007, 04:42:31 am

What version/OS are you running?

Title: Re: Tempest running slow on my Althon 1800+ under XP. Normal?
Post by: Havok on June 04, 2007, 07:49:04 am

Try dropping down a few versions of Mame - most likely that is your problem. I would try something in the range of Mame .84.

Here's the link for older versions of Mame:

Previous Versions (http://mamedev.org/oldrel.html)

Title: Re: Tempest running slow on my Althon 1800+ under XP. Normal?
Post by: Thenasty on June 04, 2007, 09:03:54 am

set sound to 22050 instead of 44100. That also should help speeding it up a bit.

Title: Re: Tempest running slow on my Althon 1800+ under XP. Normal?
Post by: FrizzleFried on June 04, 2007, 09:16:39 am

I've run Tempest at full speed without changing the sound quality, etc,  on a PIII 933mhz CPU...something is amiss..

Title: Re: Tempest running slow on my Althon 1800+ under XP. Normal?
Post by: Dervacumen on June 04, 2007, 11:03:34 am

BTW I'm running MAME32 version .96 and run it with no adjustments so I still say it's a software thing.

Title: Re: Tempest running slow on my Althon 1800+ under XP. Normal?
Post by: RayB on June 04, 2007, 11:10:43 am

What resolution? What level of antialiasing?

.99 is a little too recent a version too...

Title: Re: Tempest running slow on my Althon 1800+ under XP. Normal?
Post by: buck16 on June 04, 2007, 03:03:15 pm

I tried it on .60.  Worked at 100% in that.  But only getting 55% of so in the higher up versions. 

UPDATE: I changed MAME to use Direct 3D for Tempest.  It's now working at 100%

Guess my 1800+ (1.5 ghz or so) is too slow to run those versions normally?  Don't know why my PC is listing that machine at 1.15 ghz though.  (ANOTHER UPDATE: I'm a bit of a novice here but it appears I must have PC100 RAM and my machine won't run the processor at a frequency of 133 if the RAM is at 100).

Also, I had to stop using bezel/overlays/etc. for Asteroids.  No matter what I did with it, I couldn't get it to run over 75% using those.  I got rid of 'em and it runs at 100%.

Title: Re: Tempest running slow on my Althon 1800+ under XP. Normal?
Post by: RayB on June 04, 2007, 05:58:00 pm

Many computers now have a setting in BIOS called the FSB (front side bus) which controls the clock the CPU runs at. You probably have it set wrong (and yes, you would need the RAM to match, I think).

Don't just "try" different settings though... you could overheat your CPU.

Title: Re: Tempest running slow on my Althon 1800+ under XP. Normal?
Post by: buck16 on June 06, 2007, 11:01:32 pm

I just ordered some DDR memory.  From what I've read in some forums specific to my motherboard, putting that in and removing the SDRAM should solve my problems ... at least as to why my PC is running 400 mhz slower than it should be.

Then we'll see if going from 1g of SDRAM to 512mb of DDR despite the speed upgrade will help or hurt.