Speeding up Mame cab system

[LeedsFan]

Just set up my cabinet PC and things are a little slooooow.
I'm using Mame32 v.88 (latest one) with a fresh install of Windows XP Home (with Service Pack 2) and the system itself is a Duron 800 MHz with 512 Mb of RAM in a KT7A Raid motherboard.  Once all done I defragged the 20 Gb drive to be safe.

Firstly... what teaks can I use in BIOS to get the boot time down?  I've selected HD0 as the only boot device.... but are there other things I can do?

Also, how do I get Mame32 to boot up straight away?   I really would like to use MameWah but I just can't get the thing to work at all. (I'll leave MameWah queries for another thread  )  I'll probably try again later once I'm happy with a Mame32 setup.

However, jwithin Mame32 I'm not even getting full FPS in the classics. The hard drive is always being accessed for some reason and the FPS moves slightly. Surely an 800 MHz Duron should play classics like Pac-Man and Galaxian with no problems?

Any help greatly appreciated. (Hope I've posted in the right section)

[dreamcastninja]

don't use winxp
use win98se

run dos mame and use mamewah or some other fe

all that other stuff is overhead...

[lokki]

Strange with 512 MB you should not be accesing the HD too much (I assume you mean during play).
Probably means you are swaping to disk. Remove any services that are running in memory that you do not need.

Run msconfig and remove non escential apps from services and startup.

If you start XP and are not running any programs How much memory is your system using?

[LeedsFan]

don't use winxp
use win98se

run dos mame and use mamewah or some other fe

all that other stuff is overhead...

Well.... I already have my copy of XP from my other system. I've already tried MameWah but I find it really complex to set up (perhaps I'm just dumb  )  I'm quite happy with Mame32 on my other system so it will do for now.

I'm back on my desktop at the mo so will try the msconfig later and let you know Lokki

[Crazy Cooter]

You shouldn't be hitting the hard drive like that while playing.  You have something running (or several) that you should disable.  I've run a duron like that with 98se and only 128mb ram.  No problem.

Boot time is boot time.  Just keep trimming all the extra crap out.  Place a shortcut to mame32 in your startup.  If you don't like it like that, you might be able to replace the shell in XP.  (I haven't tried customizing XP)

[londonbabe]

In the bios disable the floppy, CD and any other drives, any on board devices like network or sound if you are not using them. make sure it's not doing the full POST.

In XP go into the services control panel (under administrative tools) and disable everything or set it to manual startup, except for the following -

Cryptographic services (may not be necessary)
Plug and Play
Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
Security Accounts Manager
Shell Hardware Detection
System Event Notification
Themes (if you want to make it look a little less windows-like)
Windows Audio
Windows Management Instrumentation
Workstation
COM+ Event System

If you need a service, such as networking then obviously don't disable it. If you are using networking, hardcode your IP address, don't use DHCP.

Delete all your fonts except the system ones.

don't install anything except your cab software to keep the registry small.

You can run WinXP with just that for a Mame cab. should boot and be a hell of a lot faster.

I have heard that 0.88 is a lot slower than older versions of Mame, so try using an older version. would be interested to hear other people's opinions.

I put Mamewah in the startup folder,  but it can be set as the windows shell, which takes Explorer out of the loop too.

[londonbabe]

Oh, and NTFS disc format is way faster and more reliable than FAT32.

[lokki]

Oh, and NTFS disc format is way faster and more reliable than FAT32.

I think it is the other way around.

Fat has usually better performance that NTFS but this depends on alot of factors

http://www.ntfs.com/quest2.htm


http://www.digit-life.com/articles/ntfs/index3.html

[Minwah]

I think it is the other way around.

Fat has usually better performance that NTFS but this depends on alot of factors

http://www.ntfs.com/quest2.htm


http://www.digit-life.com/articles/ntfs/index3.html

'Usually' being the important word perhaps.  Although I would probably disagree with that, at least on todays spec PC's and say NTFS is usually better (IMO).

[turboc]

On newer hardware with at least 256MB RAM, Windows 2000/XP is much faster and more responsive than Windows 98.  Especially if you are running all Windows applications and disable all the unneccesary services that automatically start.

My arcade system is a Duron 900 on a KT7-raid with 384MB RAM and a GeForce 256.  I'm very pleased with the performance using Windows XP Home.

[cdbrown]

In terms of services -  I originally changed all my services to manual start, rebooted the machine and then ran mame32 played a couple of games then exit out.  Check which services are running - most of these can be set to Automatic as they were required to start during the bootup or during mame32.  However there may be a few in there which are unnecessary yet XP still starts them up.

Check out the pages on here for advice on services as well as some tweak guides.
http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/winxp.htm

[LeedsFan]

Thanks for the advice. I'll check a lot of that out soon. What I have done is uninstall Windows Service Pack 2. This has resulted in a much faster system overall. I couldn't even get onto the net with that installed. As soon as I removed it things were 100% better!

The games in Mame are playing OK but they are taking a bit of time to load. On my other system they are almost instant.

I'm thinking of upgrading the processor to a 1400 as the MB will take this. It should improve things but I'll try the advice above first.

[Minwah]

The games in Mame are playing OK but they are taking a bit of time to load. On my other system they are almost instant.

Make sure you have 'skip_validitychecks     1' in your mame.ini.

[Witchboard]

Is that only in the windows command line version?  I haven't seen that line in the DOS mame.cfg file.

[papaschtroumpf]

how old is your mame.ini? This option was introduced fairly recently and mame doesn't add entries to the ini file, so if your ini file dates from MAME 0.76 for example, the entry will not be in the ini file even though it's supported by MAME.
Because of this issue, when I upgrade MAME I alwyas save my config file, then do a mame -cc, then compare the two files to see if anything changed.

[deoblo85]

I'm running a 2.8 pen with 800 side bus and 512 ram it runs just about anything   if it does'nt run a game then the processor does'nt exist !!you can get one from dell for about $375 that's what i payed for mine.(server)

[LeedsFan]

The games in Mame are playing OK but they are taking a bit of time to load. On my other system they are almost instant.

Make sure you have 'skip_validitychecks     1' in your mame.ini.

This is by FAR the best bit of advice so far. What an improvement!  

[Minwah]

This is by FAR the best bit of advice so far. What an improvement!  

Yep, we are lucky.  The MAMEdevs' didn't really want to add this option after they hardcoded the validitychecks in 0.87...

[Scoobie]

Is this option in 0.83?  I didn't see it...

[paigeoliver]

skip_validitychecks    1

This is another example of the fact that the base mame configuration is for some strange reason set up to be as unfriendly as humanly possible.

Think about it.

By default mame

doesn't work with joysticks
doesn't work with mice
selects incredibly strange resolutions
makes most other options that cause poor performance the default.

[Minwah]

Is this option in 0.83?  I didn't see it...

The MAMEdevs' didn't really want to add this option after they hardcoded the validitychecks in 0.87...

[Witchboard]

how old is your mame.ini? This option was introduced fairly recently and mame doesn't add entries to the ini file, so if your ini file dates from MAME 0.76 for example, the entry will not be in the ini file even though it's supported by MAME.
Because of this issue, when I upgrade MAME I alwyas save my config file, then do a mame -cc, then compare the two files to see if anything changed.

Sorry, been a while since I dropped in the software forum.  I'm currently using .087 and I created a new config file.... I think.  I'll double check by creating another one and see.  Thanks.