Guys this was thought to be a long post and ideed it was
... unfortunatelly, after writing for half an hour, I got logged out and I lost everything
!!!!
Let's try to start from scratch, but I'm not sure I'll remember everything.
First of all: we made it
!!! ... thanks to RataPlan kind assistance I got what I was doing wrong
In few words, the resolution I put inside CRU, was my monitor native one (1600x1024@60Hz) and Windows/CRU was not picking it up as a real
custom one and, as such, it was not adding the EDID_OVERRIDE key inside the registry.
Adding a more 'exotic' refresh rate (59.59Hz) made the trick
!
After configuring everything as Rataplan suggested, I prepared myself to enter the truth test: running a game with a non 60Hz refresh !
I used Ghost 'n Goblins as my benchmark since this was one of the main reasons for embarking into this 'refresh rate' adventure !
Unfortunatelly results were good but not what I was expecting (slightly better that running @60Hz though)
.
What I mean with poor results ?
I mean that the scrolling is not 'smooth' but a bit 'jerky' ... not excessively but still something noticeable
.
Now how can I know there isn't something wrong in my procedure and this is the reason for the disappointing results ?
Just because many, many games are now really close to perfection as never before, no matter how hard I played with the MAME settings
!
... here I must thank really much RataPlan for the hard work and I won't quit stressing how this guy didn't (so far) receive the attention and
gratitude he deserves
!
How well now Neo-Geo games run, how smooth are Mortal Kombat side scrolling portraits (the ones of the characters when you insert coin)
!
So what about GnG
?
To be honest I got few ideas about it which I'd like to share with you; according to my opinion there could be three reasons:
- my LCD doesn't like/pick up the 59.59Hz refresh rate
- MAME GnG driver is not optimized (other games behave similarly while others are simply perfect)
- the original arcade was exclty the same but I never noticed it (I was 8 at the time!)
To rule out the first one, I ask you the favor to do a test:
could you please run Gng (bootleg @59.59Hz) and compare it to Black Tiger (bootleg @60.00Hz) ?
Have a close look at the background: in GnG, tombstones or the far mountains for example, don't move smoothly while in Black Tiger everything is silk smooth !
Since I'm still stuck in finding a way to check my 'real' monitor refresh rate, I did some research and find a little tool, presented inside this same forum.
The tool is FreqTest and you can find it here:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,135230.0.htmlIs it reliable ? Can I succesfully check if my panel took the refresh rate I put inside RatRefresh ?
Now for the to do part
:
I noticed, as RataPlan himself said in the beginning, that my MAME frontend (FEEL), whenever I switch refresh rate, crashes (it goes black screen eventually crashing in a couple of minutes)
.
Now, if there's no way to prevent this behavior, I'm scr**d
!!!
Indeed, it won't be feasible, inside a cabinet to manually start/stop applications.
Please tell me there's a solution since I cannot believe we went so far just to surrender now to evil windows events
!!!
One last thought:
I tried the same procedure on a laptop with Intel graphics; I managed to get the EDID_OVERRIDE key and to run RatRefresh but, according to the tool above (and also to various web based testers) I'm still at 60Hz ! ... obviously I tried mame, just in case, and results were trash (same as without RatRefresh), confirming I'm still at 60Hz
.
I'm afraid there's not so much to do with my portable rig since probably the vendor locked something to prevent users tampering around with video settings !
I'll leave you alone guys for the moment, hoping that when I'll come back, someone will have really good news for the front end issue
!
Don't forget I still have some room, on the left of the cabinet, for a second statue (the one on the right is already booked for RataPlan's)
Cheers
!