MAME Audio Skipping fixed by Auto Frameskip?

[ParryPerson]

I've run games on this system before with older versions of MAME (3.4 single core, 2GB RAM, internal audio, old Sapphire Radeon 9200SE) and it has been fine.
I recently installed the newest version of MAME because of issues with different ROM dumps (I own many CPS2 system boards, and want to just have a front end and the ROMs for them).
It seemed to running fine, but the audio would sk-skip or replay itself. I set AUTO FRAMESKIP on in the INI, and the problem is less, but games are now running frame skipping all OVER the place.

Is it something I changed in the INI? Is MaLa taking up to much of the systems resources? Should I delete the INI and force it to make a new one?

I tested on Windjammers, and before auto frameskip, the game was slower, and the audio was skipping. After, the sound was fine, and the game ran at normal speeds.
However when I loaded Street Fighter 2 Turbo (a game I play all the time) it was extremely choppy, as if the autoframe skip was cutting a million frames to keep the game at speed.

Is there some other non-MAME settings I can do to enhance the performance? I'm running from the S-Video out, so I set the resolution from AUTO to 640x480, and I'm not sure if that was a good idea. I installed my old Windows XP on it, is there anything I should do as far as performance goes for it? I've set everything to "performance" in every setting I could.

[lamprey]

There seems to be some major performance differences between older version of MAME and newer version that vary on a game by game basis. Since you are using an older machine, double check your HLSL settings. This can sometimes cause performance issues on older cards. So, you can try toggling that and see what happens. Or even go try the difference between Software and DirectX rendering.

I haven't had issues with sound in mame, but with SDLMame I do. Other people have advised me to adjust the frame-skip (F9). If you press F11 you will get a little informational "window" at the top that has percent run speed and frame skip. I think frame-skip has settings from 0-10. So, you can try tapping F9  and see which, if any settings make a difference. I've also heard that turning off the waitforvsync can also help. But, I can't confirm that.

[P.H.U.]

Enable Multithreading in the ini file. Especially if you are using HLSL.