Running slow

[kahlid74]

The computer :
Intel pentium III 667 MHz
128 MB ram
sound disabled - Sound card Sound Blaster Live Value

Emulators :
DosMAME
MAME
AdvancedMAME

The problem :
I am in the process of building an arcade machine out of an old cabinet.  The problem is the games seem to be running slow.  Double dragon 2 for example runs pretty slow.  When just my character and 1 other person is on the screen, it runs fine, but as soon as multiple people come on the screen it slows down heavily.

I have run them from thier command lines as well as from ArcadeOS and have run them from Windows 98 and from MS-DOS - The computer is set to boot WITHOUT the GUI so it is true dos.

Does anyone have any suggestions?  I am in the mind set now to buy an Athlon XP2000 and 256 ram.  Will that fix the problem?  Iused to play mame games about 3 years ago on a Pentium III 500 with NO slow down at all, did the MAME engine change that much or what?

Am I missing TSR's in the dos environment that enable the handling of higher states of memory?

Thanks for all advice and help.
Andy

[SirPeale]

I note you said 'sound disabled' this can actually slow the games down.  

[kahlid74]

I more mean in the config file i leave mame sound to 0 or silence.

That can slow it down?

[PacManFan]

What version of MAME are you using? I just set up a MAME cab using the latest mame version on a PII 450, and it was so slow, most of the games were unplayable. I then switched to v36R2, and the difference is incredible. I think you might be better off with a version prior to v36r16.

-PMF

[kahlid74]

I am using the newest version across the board.  Where could I get the older versions?  On thier websites?  I think I remember they had ana rchive feature, not sure tho.

[PacManFan]

http://www.mame.net/oldmame.html

-PMF

[EtherHawk]

I was having slowdown problems on an older machine and did some tests a couple of nights ago, going back to version .53 from .80 sped things up by a factor of about 2.  Dropping back even farther will speed things up more from everything I have heard.  I'm getting a new motherboard & cpu early next week, that will give me 3 systems that I'll post timing info for next week using the http://benchmark.mameworld.net benchmarks.

One note when if you look at the database they have posted for their benchmarks, the games often run much slower when you play them than the listed FPS values on the site.  This makes sense, since a lot of the 10,000 frames they test are going to be on menus and startup.  Anyway, don't assume that if their benchmark results say 60+ fps that things are going to be smooth during the game.

[kahlid74]

Sounds like a plan, i will roll back my version of Mame tonight and see how it operates.  My next question would be how do Front Ends work with older versions of mame?

How doed ArcadeOS work with Mame .53 ??

[Lilwolf]

btw... version .36 is a good place to start.  That was when they changed the bpp (now they are all forced much higher then needed).

basically... to speed things up

1) Go with another emulator (if one exists)
  (good ones.. REM! is a GREAT rygar emulator, Gauntet has one, TMNT has one, neogeo should go through any of the others... same with cps2)..  Basically a TON of games where first emulated in standalone emulated before being assimulated by the Morg.
2) Go with a version of mame when your computer was considered normal... Mame unoptimizes to add stability or to become more accurate as computers can handle them.
3) Configure it... No hwstretching, Nothing extra (joystick, ect), basic only... add features back afterwards.
4) Dos is faster.. you will get a decent jump (10% ish??)... SDD (sci display doctor?  is that the acry?)  is now free and will give you native resolutions on most games.

Any others anyone?

[Howard_Casto]

If it were me I would run 98 on that machine because it can handle it.  I would also have at least 256 mb of ram in the machine because I would be running 98.

Confuscious says upgrading to windows will solve all dos related problems.