A few general MAME queries by a relative Noob.

[dailygeek]

Hi folks,

I'm around a week into converting my JAMMA cab to MAME and have a few questions.

I was planning a reasonably quick AMD 64 PC to go in the cab but have had problems with that so for the moment I'm running

P4 1.8Ghz
256Mb RAM
ArcadeVGA ver 2 AGP
Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS.

Now i've mostly been testing out games like final fight, sfa3, xmen vs sf, tmnt and simpsons.
I've got frameskip on and very few of these games run even near 100%.  They start off that way, running silky smooth etc and after a few minutes start lagging like crazy.  Is this due to the spec of the PC?  Would more RAM help or is it totally a lost cause. I can put up to 1Gb in this system.

Is there anything I can do to help the situation?  Lots of audio lagging on these games too.

More to come, but thats the biggie for now!

[venkman]

more than 256Mb RAM is always a good idea these days.

[Hoopz]

What version of Mame are you running?

[dailygeek]

I've tried 127, 120 and now trying 118, all about the same tbh.

[HaRuMaN]

Try going to an older version, like in the .60's or .70's.

[CheffoJeffo]

Also, what OS ?

[dailygeek]

will an old version like that play sf2, final fight and sfa3?

I'll give it a go.

Running XP home

Thinking of trying Tiny XP?

[Hoopz]

You may read through this thread regarding XP:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=59373.0

It may help you strip out some services that don't need to be running that will affect performance.  I agree that 256mb is probably too little for XP.

Regarding Mame versions and the games you want to play, you can look at Maws to find out what version(s) the roms were updated in and try those versions.  It's also possible and probably likely that they had roms change in different versions.  You can run multiple versions of Mame so that the games you want to play, perform better.

I'd also suggest making sure that you don't have a bunch of crap starting up when the pc boots.  Anti-virus, Quicktime crap, etc.  Launch MSCONFIG and select the startup tab.  You can eliminate alot of the crap that starts when XP boots.

[Turnarcades]

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=85859.0

See this and my billion other answers recently. Seems like everyone is asking this question at the moment.

[HaRuMaN]

With those PC stats, I would recommend Windows 98 SE.  I've built a bartop out of a PC with worse stats, used command line MAME and MALA and had very good results.

[emb]

Generally I have similar specs as you do (except mine are a bit slower). I am running a 1.5ghz AMD Duron with 256MB memory running Windows XP.

I am using mame version .109. All 2-D games (including the ones you specified) run at 100% speed with this version my PC. Any newer versions after .109 I tried I encountered some slight slowdowns (e.g. Mortal Kombat)


If that is still too slow, drop down to about .106. If that's too slow, then give .92 a try. That should do the trick. Odds are .109 would work for you as your PC is faster than mine.

[dailygeek]

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=85859.0

See this and my billion other answers recently. Seems like everyone is asking this question at the moment.

You see I clearly meet that second spec, yet if i switch between a couple of games, or play for 5-10 mins, I start getting slowdown, frameskip and soundstutter?

I'm guessing its the RAM (or lack of) it's a pretty basic fresh xp install so there isn't much else going on.  I was using maximus arcade but i'm getting the same thing through the native mame menu too.

[jharris]

Try going to an older version, like in the .60's or .70's.

With those PC stats, I would recommend Windows 98 SE.  I've built a bartop out of a PC with worse stats, used command line MAME and MALA and had very good results.

I think the OP's hardware specs are just fine for Windows XP and way overqualified for Windows 98. He should be able to run anything over mame version 0.80 as well. Doubling his RAM wouldn't hurt. Unless the OP wants the latest and greatest his system is okay IMO.

[DaveMMR]

Try going to an older version, like in the .60's or .70's.

With those PC stats, I would recommend Windows 98 SE.  I've built a bartop out of a PC with worse stats, used command line MAME and MALA and had very good results.

I think the OP's hardware specs are just fine for Windows XP and way overqualified for Windows 98. He should be able to run anything over mame version 0.80 as well. Doubling his RAM wouldn't hurt. Unless the OP wants the latest and greatest his system is okay IMO.

My cab's first computer was 1.8Mhz P4 and I was able to run a lot from .116 with no problems (though a few games - Donkey Kong comes to mind - were slow enough to necessitate having .99 handy).   

Definitely throw some RAM in there.  512MB total is the minimum I would say. 

[DeLuSioNal29]

My P4 1.7ghz was able to run Donkey Kong in .119 of MAME just fine once I cut the sample rate for sounds in half.

You have to edit your mame.ini file (If you don't have one, type mame -cc at the command prompt to make one).

It defaults to:

Code: [Select]

# CORE SOUND OPTIONS
#
sound                   1
samplerate              48000
samples                 1
volume                  0

Change it to:

Code: [Select]

# CORE SOUND OPTIONS
#
sound                   1
samplerate              24000
samples                 1
volume                  0

That will speed everything up, without having to skip frames.

Tiny XP will help a lot too.

[DaveMMR]

Thanks - I'll give it a shot during my next update.  Maybe I can get all my games in one MAME.

[Turnarcades]

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=85859.0

See this and my billion other answers recently. Seems like everyone is asking this question at the moment.

You see I clearly meet that second spec, yet if i switch between a couple of games, or play for 5-10 mins, I start getting slowdown, frameskip and soundstutter?

I'm guessing its the RAM (or lack of) it's a pretty basic fresh xp install so there isn't much else going on.  I was using maximus arcade but i'm getting the same thing through the native mame menu too.

See this thread for an answer to that:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=85929.0

[cmoses]

My P4 1.7ghz was able to run Donkey Kong in .119 of MAME just fine once I cut the sample rate for sounds in half.

You have to edit your mame.ini file (If you don't have one, type mame -cc at the command prompt to make one).

It defaults to:

Code: [Select]

# CORE SOUND OPTIONS
#
sound                   1
samplerate              48000
samples                 1
volume                  0

Change it to:

Code: [Select]

# CORE SOUND OPTIONS
#
sound                   1
samplerate              24000
samples                 1
volume                  0

That will speed everything up, without having to skip frames.

Tiny XP will help a lot too.

Can you elaborate a little on what that change does?  Not sure what samplerate is.  Would this be helpful for anyone running MAME or just in this case with the smaller amount of RAM.

[HaRuMaN]

The higher your sample rate, the better quality sound you will have.

[u_rebelscum]

Can you elaborate a little on what that change does?  Not sure what samplerate is.  Would this be helpful for anyone running MAME or just in this case with the smaller amount of RAM.

Samplerate: times per second the sound is sampled, or in mame's case, emulated.  If the CPU is just barely not able to emulate the sound cleanly, reducing the samplerate might free up the CPU enough to clean up the sound.

It's not a memory thing (AFA mame goes).   (The mame docs/config.txt file talks about this a little.)