CHDS, ie Killer Instinct

[WhereEaglesDare]

Okay I got me some CHDs and I booted up Killer Instinct 1 and 2 and played them with my wife.  I noticed on 1 that the sound was skipping even though video was fine, but in the fighting part of the game it was great.  in 2 the sound skipped throughout the game.

I understand that CHDs dont always work right, but my question is what could I do to fix these?

Win XP Pro
512 MB RAM
1.8 GHz P4

I could upgrade to 2 GHz, but will that help?  Does Killer Instinct do this on your cabinet? 

Thanks.

[HaRuMaN]

Try more RAM first.

[Frigo]

Are you running KI 1&2 from MAME or U64 (just curious)?

Either way, yeah, try more RAM.

[WhereEaglesDare]

MAME  should I try U64?  I never fooled with it.

I dont think it is the RAM because my netbook is a 1.6 GHz Dual Core with 3 GB RAM and it does it there too, so it wouldnt make sense that it is the RAM.

Does it run smooth on your cab?

[HaRuMaN]

What version of MAME are you running.  You may need to go back to an older version.

[WhereEaglesDare]

Hmm didnt think of that, I am running 138.

I'll give that a try, If it works I guess I'll have to figure out in GameEx how to set it to launch Killer Instinct from a different MAME.  Probably have to add it as a second emulator.

[Frigo]

Hmm didnt think of that, I am running 138.

I'll give that a try, If it works I guess I'll have to figure out in GameEx how to set it to launch Killer Instinct from a different MAME.  Probably have to add it as a second emulator.

that's what I did for my Mortal Kombat ROMs (even though they still don't work right... grrr) - I added in a 2nd MAME emulator with the proper version and added it into GameEx under Mame 0.78, and kept the original one named MAME 0.135 or whatever version it is. It works out quite well, aside from the emulation issues of MK that I believe no version of MAME could ever fix. 

[Thenasty]

try lowering samplerate to 22 first instead of 44khz in ini/cfg file.

[Howard_Casto]

These guys are nuts ... sound stuttering is a symptom of having too puny a processor.  Ram will NOT help.  As a matter of fact ram never helps in mame unless you have so little ram that the game won't start.  It only really helps with long load times.

Thenasty's suggestion is the good one.  Lowering the sample rate relaxes the stress on your processor and thus helps out a lot. 

But the reality of it is KI and KI2 aren't going to run well on your system, at least not in mame.  U64 is an option, but in all honesty, with spotty emulation, reliance on really old images and it's fe-unfriendly-ness, you are probably better off just kissing them goodbye.  And older version of mame is an option as well, but ki2 always ran slowly/poorly afaik. 

Oh and btw, weather or not a game has a chd image has NOTHING to do with speed issues and/or emulation issues.  It's just a concidence due to the fact that chd games are generally more modern, and/or are 3d and have multiple processors to emulate.

[Haze]

Thenasty's suggestion is the good one.  Lowering the sample rate relaxes the stress on your processor and thus helps out a lot.  

It might have made a difference when people were running old versions of MAME on Pentium 1/2s, but these days it changes almost nothing.  The same processing is going on in the background, it just resamples to a different rate.  You might even see a slight performance *drop* and worse sound because many cheap onboard sound solutions will just resample it back again to whatever their native output rate is (which isn't going to be lower than the default)

It's CPU pure and simple, a 1.8 (or 2) ghz P4 isn't going to cut it.

[WhereEaglesDare]

Hmm didnt think of that, I am running 138.

I'll give that a try, If it works I guess I'll have to figure out in GameEx how to set it to launch Killer Instinct from a different MAME.  Probably have to add it as a second emulator.

that's what I did for my Mortal Kombat ROMs (even though they still don't work right... grrr) - I added in a 2nd MAME emulator with the proper version and added it into GameEx under Mame 0.78, and kept the original one named MAME 0.135 or whatever version it is. It works out quite well, aside from the emulation issues of MK that I believe no version of MAME could ever fix. 

MK works fine on my cab, infact i just whooped up on some MK3.  I cant get MK4 or UMK3 to run properly but maybe you shoudl update your MK, MK2, and MK3 roms

And about the processor, thats fine its an old board so I can probably get a 2.8 or a 3 for less than 50 bucks.  KI1 runs fine in the fighting parts its just teh pregame character selection and KI1 is better than KI2 anyways so maybe it wont even be a real issue, but now I know that processor does matter, I imagine since it is emulation that a lot of the graphic processing takes place in the CPU as opposed to the graphic adapter.

[Frigo]

MK works fine on my cab, update your roms maybe.

What about MK 2 and 3? what romset are you using?