MAME-Last Vers with speed tweaks?

[Demon-Seed]

Hi
I got a 1.8 celeron with 256 ddr and 32mb onboard video.. running mame (Pentium pro) v.89 and I find newer games runnn very sloooww.. someone suggested going back to an older mame where speed tweaks were built in? anyone advise what version? / how it worked? I recall playing MK2 at full speed on my old duron 1ghz.

thx
JIM

[Tiger-Heli]

Probably around 0.55 - 0.60 or so.

Probably the reason no-one else replied is -

It really isn't a matter of speed tweaks were built in.  It's a matter of four things:

A couple of years ago, the devs were just starting to emulate the hardware.  They took some shortcuts/hacks to make the display work, but it wasn't really accurate (but most users wouldn't be able to tell).  Later, they learned more about how the real games worked and revised the code to be more accurate, at the expense of speed.

A couple of years ago, the devs were working on Thunderbird 1.4 Ghz Processors, now they're using Pentium 4, 3.4 Ghz's, so a little performance slowdown was considered acceptable.

A decision was made to optimize the code for newer games, so MK might have gotten faster, and PacMan probably slowed down.

Finally, as each version of MAME adds new games, the whole program slows down slightly due to software bloat.

[TheOtherBob]

Have you tried fastmame?

[SirPeale]

Specifically, what games?  Some games will always be slow under *any* current hardware.

[Demon-Seed]

Well I used to run mame on a 700 mhz duron and it ran Mortal kombat 1 and 2 perfect.. now a 1.8 celeron wont with (88) I would like to find out what version i need go back to.....  I was told they sued to design it so that it had tweaks.. then they stopped for more accuracy.. what was the last versions?

[Tiger-Heli]

I was told they sued to design it so that it had tweaks.. then they stopped for more accuracy.. what was the last versions?

No, see my initial reply - they used to design it with hacks (which were faster) b/c they didn't know how the actual hardware worked.  Then they took those out for more accuracy.

Then didn't say "As of Version 0.7x, we will no longer use hacks so MAME will be slower but more accurate".  Hacks were removed on a game by game (or driver by driver basis) as each MAME revision was released.

[Howard_Casto]

The midway drivers used for the mortal kombats specifically had horribly bad sound drivers.  They played faster because they sounded like crap.  Imho they really weren't worth playing with the bad drivers.  I don't enjoy the blaring sound of static every time I uppercut someone.