Sega Model 2 Emulator Skipping.. on an i5??

[retrorepair]

It seems all I ever talk about these days is M2Emu 

Anyway, I've got a bit of an odd problem. I have a twin cabinet set up and have different spec PCs in each side as follows:

side 1: core2duo E8400@3ghz, 2gb ddr2, radeon hd 4850, crappy biostar motherboard.
side 2: i5 2500k@4.4ghz, 4gb ddr3, radeon hd 4850, nice z68 gigabyte mobo.

Both are running xp 64 and both running the emulator in 24khz using calamity's custom radeon driver. All settings are identical (I've checked like, a lot!).

Here's the thing, I'm trying to link them but not having much luck. Yes, one side is slower than the other but as it turns out, it's the i5 side not running fast enough  Networked or not. I'm using Sega Rally as my test game.

It's visibly skipping, audio and all, it's got me totally stumped. It's as if the refresh was off but testing sega rally in mame with the same video mode it runs at a silky smooth 60fps.

Does anyone have any ideas why this is? It took ages to get the cash together for that machine and now I'm wondering if it was even worth it. I just can't see the reason for it, it's an imaged hdd too so the setup is 1:1.

[Howard_Casto]

Well that's a wierd problem. 

I would say it's the processor, but I've have m2 running on really really crappy hardware (that's kind of the point). 

Are you running the multi-cpu version on the crappier one?  You might want to try running the other one (which ever you are using).  Dual cores is definately different than quad core.  and beyond. 

Other than that, it might be the MB.  a slower bus speed or inadequate power could make the card run slower in one machine compared to another.  That sort of issue doesn't effect mame all that much. 

I hope some of that helps anyway. 

[retrorepair]

I'm running the multi cpu version but now I think about it, there's a chance that's what my issue is. I think you are right, it's got to be a CPU issue.

It's a good motherboard and I'm using a 500w PSU so I doubt it's to do with those.

I'll post again if it resolves my issue.

[retrorepair]

The regular emulator.exe is the same and in windowed mode v0.9 is too. In full screen mode however, v0.9 is just fine 

Especially weird since the C2D machine has no trouble at all with v1. Nothing else has any problems either.

Howard, will your troubleshooter app pull lamp data etc from v0.9? Having stereo sound again is quite nice too.

[RamjetR]

Motherboard drivers and or possibly sound card drivers. I've had stuttering before with poor sound card drivers especially when it tries to sync the sound to the frame.

Worth a shot?

[retrorepair]

It turns out it was a motherboard option. Most likely C1E or some other CPU throttling option. For reference, on this motherboard you have these:

C1E-DISABLE
EIST-DISABLE
C3, C6 States-DISABLE
CPU Thermal Monitor-DISABLE

Also:

Real time ratio change
Turbo boost tech

Since I've manually overclocked the i5 I just went ahead and turned all of these off and the problem went away. I guess the emulator wasn't around when some of this came about and it had an allergic reaction. 

All sorted now

*Edit: I might add MAME is running about 20% faster now as well. Lesson learned I suppose.

[RamjetR]

I haven't OC'd since the Celeron 300A days. I thought you had to disable turbo boost and other throttling for a manual OC on an i5 because it would overboost beyond the set level when using less than 4 cores?

Anywho, great to hear you got a result

[retrorepair]

I'm with you so I'm not really sure. Seems the guys who know what they are talking about recommend it and others say it doesn't matter. For my case it certainly did matter!

[edekoning]

I haven't OC'd since the Celeron 300A days.

I think I stopped at the celeron 566, but I will never forget that 300a. Combined with a 'Whopper' cooler you had an almost guaranteed 50% overclock to 450Mhz! Quakeworld ran so smooth afterwards 

[vandale]

I'm with you so I'm not really sure. Seems the guys who know what they are talking about recommend it and others say it doesn't matter. For my case it certainly did matter!

Hi Retro. Occasionally on my rig (i7 master, dual core slave) I have a weird issue where Sega rally drops frames on the slave unit. I have switch the master and slave over to rule out the rig and it follows across to the i7 when it is slave. Its like Sega rally is dropping frames and jerky when linked. You can still race fine and everything is in sync. Only happens in sega rally, works fine in daytona, indy and manx tt.

Have you come across this before?

Thanks
Gene

[RamjetR]

Vandale, Have you tried adding FrameSync=1 to your network.ini file? Retro indicated this in another thread, haven't tried it but it's supposed to help?

[retrorepair]

It is supposed to help but I've tried it now and it doesn't seem to do much of anything. You will want gigbit eithernet though even on that system. It helped me out a lot.

FWIW linking two machines here is disappointing at best. Jerky cars in Sega Rally, flicking cars in Daytona, link not working on indy500 and rarely on Touring Car.

If you find a solution I'd be interested to know.

[Howard_Casto]

I think any hope of getting networking to work properly in model2 is virtually non-existant.  The networking feature was kind of beta when the author stopped working on it.  Now supermodel... that's another story. 

[vandale]

Vandale, Have you tried adding FrameSync=1 to your network.ini file? Retro indicated this in another thread, haven't tried it but it's supposed to help?

Hi, yes I put that in a few weeks ago when I saw the post about it, whats cool is it now allows me to play Indy 500, Motor Raid and Manx TT whereas prior I could only play Sega Rally and Daytona.

I dont get the flickering in Daytona that Retro speaks of, it seems to run flawlessly and we have given it a hard time too, I think the longest session was approx 30 people playing Daytona twin over a 14 hour time frame, no issues, disconnects or bluescreens.

I have gigabit hardware installed so there is no issue there. We have TB hardware at work that I might do a quick test on but thats really pointless for the average joe blog due to the cost of such hardware.

Off topic, I see that Sailorsat has posted vids of Virtua racing networked in MAME, is this still under development and will be a reality or is it crude hacks that wont ever make a MAME release?

Thanks

[RamjetR]

That's good to know Vandale, I shall try to set that up this weekend (being Australia Day weekend!). I hope the flickering stops with the framesync for me also.

[SailorSat]

Off-Topic: Well, since that videos, we've come a long way. I doubt the m1comm will be in base MAME for a while, but I'll post a "linkable" build of cabmame soon.
However, Virtua Racing suffers some "random" emulation flaws that crash mame on coining up. Sometimes I can play like 30 games without crash, sometimes it crashes 5 times in a row.
Not the best for cabinet use

[retrorepair]

Great to hear you are still working on this Sailorsat, I'd be interested to see the latest code and look forward to something we can test out

In regards to m2emu I'm still unsure what's causing it to run so badly on my system. While the CPU is now set up properly I still don't get a good link on any m2 game.

[Andypc]

It turns out it was a motherboard option. Most likely C1E or some other CPU throttling option. For reference, on this motherboard you have these:

C1E-DISABLE
EIST-DISABLE
C3, C6 States-DISABLE
CPU Thermal Monitor-DISABLE

Also:

Real time ratio change
Turbo boost tech

Since I've manually overclocked the i5 I just went ahead and turned all of these off and the problem went away. I guess the emulator wasn't around when some of this came about and it had an allergic reaction. 

All sorted now

*Edit: I might add MAME is running about 20% faster now as well. Lesson learned I suppose.

I know this is an old thread, but I am running Model 2 Emu on an i7 and am getting audio skipping. Have been running model 2 on other PC's with no problems. Tried changing the option above in the bios, but am still getting audio skipping.

Any Idea's

[haynor666]

The same situation on windows xp x64. On G3258 sound is skipping but on old E8500 everything is fine. I'll try modify BIOS settings as suggested.

[bulbousbeard]

The same situation on windows xp x64.

I don't know. XP64 is pretty suspect. Since GroovyMAME works on 7 now, have you considered upgrading? Windows 7 is just way better than XP64 in terms of driver support and overall performance.

[haynor666]

Right due to problems with vector games and Taito Type X games I prefer to stick with xp. I've tested windows 7 with model 2 and the same situation with interlaced resolutions (30Hz mode) but work fine on low progressive resolutions like 320x240.

[bulbousbeard]

I don't see how you could run Model 2 games properly interlaced.

Model 2 games weren't interlaced. They run at 57hz. It would make sense that they'd skip and run like chunky ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- at 30hz.

[haynor666]

But model 2 works fine on XP x64 even with interlaced resolutions but on E8500 and P35 chipset board. Does not work correctly with the same graphics card but different board and processor.