Problem fixed! Thanks gentleman ;)

[SkateDetroit]

Hey guys,

[delta88]

More memory + faster pc = mame fast

 

[elvis]

From the MAME FAQ:
http://www.mame.net/mamefaq.html

T10. Why do some games run so slowly on my system?
http://www.mame.net/mamefaq.html#t10

T11. How can I get <insert game here> to run faster?
http://www.mame.net/mamefaq.html#t11

M14. Why does MAME become slower all the time?
http://www.mame.net/mamefaq.html#m14

And because these answers inevitably lead onto the next set of questions, the following are also recommended reading:

M15. Why is MAME so slow? These games ran at less than 10 MHz, and my CPU is 500 MHz!
http://www.mame.net/mamefaq.html#m15

M13. When will MAME use Direct3D/OpenGL to emulate <insert insane 3D system here>?
http://www.mame.net/mamefaq.html#m13

M16. Why don't the developers put more hacks in MAME?
http://www.mame.net/mamefaq.html#m16

And while I'm here, a shameless link to my own website which benchmarks MAME on some older hardware (not updated in a while, but as mentioned in the FAQ, MAME tends to get slower over time, not faster, so expect lower framerates, not higher):

http://benchmark.mameworld.net/

[JCKnife]

The above post oughtta be tacked. Thanks, E.

[SkateDetroit]

None of your links to the FAQ explain away this problem.

I am not having a problem running a CPS2 game with FBA

[lokki]

Hi,
You are assuming that FBA and MAME are the same, which they are not.

MAME is all about accuracy and emulation of the hardware. FBA takes advantage of your video card harware and not sure what other hacks it uses. so it is not a fair comparison.

Try an older version of MAME and see if you have better luck

[Dire Radiant]

Here's a perfect solution. If FBA works better, use FBA. Problem solved. This is why I use Kawaks for Neo Geo games.

[elvis]

Hi,
You are assuming that FBA and MAME are the same, which they are not.

MAME is all about accuracy and emulation of the hardware. FBA takes advantage of your video card harware and not sure what other hacks it uses. so it is not a fair comparison.

Try an older version of MAME and see if you have better luck

Exactly.  FBA, Kawaks, Nebula, etc all add speed hacks to games.  The links I posted above explain why MAME does not and will not add speed hacks.

As mentioned, if you want to use older hardware, then don't use MAME.  To play a good 90% of MAME games on a modern MAME build, you'd require at least a 1.5GHz processor.  End of story.

You can't compare old versions of MAME with new ones.  The sheer volume of changes the MAME Devs have put into MAME in the last 12 months is mind boggling.  Just sit down and take the time to read the changelogs, and you'll see what I mean.

Other than that, I can only recommend the following:

1) Turn your video card's vsync "off by default" in your specific control panel (at an operating system / video driver level, independant of MAME)

2) Set your monitor's refresh rate to 60Hz.

3) Make sure you are using the latest available drivers for your video card.  DO NOT use the default Windows drivers, as they often severely blow goats.  Also ensure you are running the latest drivers for your motherboard and AGP chipsets. (Via 4-in-1/hyperion drrivers, Intel INF drivers, SiS AGP drivers, or whatever is particular to your board's chipset).  If the information can't get to the video bus quickly enough due to poor system drivers, you'll also see terrible slowdown.  Again, don't rely on the default Windows drivers all the time, as they are often out of date.

4) Do not use Direct3D for MAME.  Use DirectDraw.

5) Within MAME, turn vsync OFF, triple-buffer ON.  Also set options like "nosleep" ON, so that MAME is a bit more agressive when asking for CPU time.  Likewise, turn all the Windows background crap off.  Don't have disk indexing on, and eye candy maxxed.  Doing so is a waste of CPU time when you don't see any of it while playing fullscreen games.

6) Ensure all other MAME CPU wasters like scanlines, blit effects, blah blah are all turned OFF.

7) Some people also recommend turning frameskipping off.  This sounds counter-intuitive at first, but realise that CPU power is often wasted trying to calculate a constantly changing frameskip level.  Hard set it to 0 (no frameskip or the "-noafs" flag in command-line MAME).  Games like Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam and others are known to run a touch faster on "borderline" hardware with AFS turned off.

With all that done, try MAME again.  If you *still* can't get the performance you desire, then I'm afraid it's FBA/Kawaks/Nebula for you.  Either that, or grab a legacy MAME build and use it instead.

[lokki]

Also use

-rdtsc
-high_priority  (low by default, has issues on win 98 and lower set this only if nt or above)

[ahmer]

None of your links to the FAQ explain away this problem.

I am not having a problem running a CPS2 game with FBA  which would show the system has some muscle.

When trying to play games I know are tried and true on a much lesser system I.E. a 333 celeron I am getting poor performance.

There is an logical answer, and I believe it lies somewhere in the software configuration. version of MAME, romset, etc.

What I would like to know (and what would be actually helpful) is an example of someones configuration with a similiar system. That I could then test against to discover if it is really software or an underlying hardware fault.



               Thanks again!

                        A

I hope you will find a better answer here.
http://retroroms.foreverchat.net/modules/news/

[delta88]

All of you are so funny.. at least a 1.5. more liek at least a 1.5 for stun runner, the newer mk games... stuff like that...

 for him Simpsons is running slow, SFII.. that era of game. I have a slower pc then he is using on my desk at the moment and I can play more than him on it.. 734mhx over 300mb ram and the rest onboard and it cna play ms ms 23x, SFII and on and the stuff he cant.. jst gonna reinstall on it and configure it like mine.. see ifthat werx.  For pretty much all of the classics you cna get away with a 350-400 celery/pentium with at least 256mem.

-d88

[elvis]

delta88, I think your keyboard is broken there, friend.  Either that, or you were slightly under the influence while typing.  Either way... ouch my eyes!

My old MAME box from years ago was a Celeron 566 overclocked to 850MHz with 256MB RAM.  It let me run most of the games I enjoy (SF2 being the newest game I play, and then anything older that that era, pre-1990).

But again, that was back in the 0.56 days of MAME.  That machine has since been retired.  My MAME cabinet is an AthlonXP 2000+ which runs everything quite well, no hassels.  Probably a bit overspecced for the games I enjoy, but the speed is there if I need it.

I'm currently putting together a vertical cocktail cab, and struggled to get games running on a recent version of MAME under 1GHz.  I ended up settling on an AthlonXP 1500+ (1.3GHz) I had lying around which runs everything including the newer Psikyo games which seem to need a bit more grunt.

If I have the time and inclination I'll try to see if I can resurrect that old 850 box and benchmark it under a more modern MAME to see how much things have changed in the last few years.

[APFelon]

When the XORs first came out and MAME added the CPS2 stuff to MAME, everything ran fine on my P3 800. When I first built my MAME cabinet, that is precisely the machine I used in it (and it ran all of those games you listed full speed).

I'm not sure MAME has changed so much as to completely bork playability of those ROMs, but you might remember that Haze has rewritten a lot of the sound drivers for accuracy (I may be wrong here, but I seem to recall that the changes he made require more CPU horsepower to run).

These changes were made WELL after the .80 release, so I'm not quite sure why the problem (if the sound IS the problem) would follow.

So try a few things here...

Run those games with the sound off, and make note of the speed increases (if any).

Check the OS overhead. Is this computer dedicated to MAME / emulators? If you have a lot of stuff like virus scanners and the like, you'll take a speed hit.

Have you checked your system for spyware / malware / scumware lately? If you have some bloated spyware on your system (or a LOT of spyware) you'll take a HUGE performance hit. (I once cleaned over 80 instances of spyware off of a friends computer. The performance increase after the clensing was amazing).

Try that stuff and check back. That software SHOULD run on that system, and there has got to be something holding it back. Be patient and we'll get it figured out.

APf

[gravity242]

I totally agree with APFelon's last post. 

He's already covered quite a few things to check, but here's a catch-all simple one:  When you run a game in MAME are you seeing much hard drive activity while playing the game?  I know with 512MB RAM, MAME should have no trouble fitting the entire ROM set in physical memory...but with WinXP things can get quite unpredictable. 

If you see little or no hard drive activity during gameplay, *then* it may be a CPU speed issue.  I'm seriously doubting that however.  Even with all the changes to MAME in the last couple years, it should still run The Simpsons at full speed with an 800MHz processor.

[APFelon]

Problem fixed, eh?

Care to share the solution so we can all go, "AAh, I thought so"?

APf

[SkateDetroit]

Hardware malfunction. Replaced the motherboard and voila.

[APFelon]

AAh, I thought so!

In other words, you replaced the mobo, the CPU and the memory, right? 

APf

[SkateDetroit]

No, just the motherboard. Every other component tested and is working just fine in the current setup.

[delta88]

a.k.a. : PC swap Cause he couln't even play things on his 800mhz pentium with 512 ram that my 700mhz pentium w/ 256 could play.... That was the issue.. plays on everything else but this pc.

[SkateDetroit]

I say motherboard, you say PC.  I think I now know why it was so cheap at the garage sale. At least the other components are good!

[delta88]

hmm, Other parts good... like the HD and the power supply

[SkateDetroit]

HD, PS, CPU, RAM, CD Rom, Floppy, uh... power switches? The case? The scews that held the mobo in?

[wakerlet]

Skate,

Did the mobo you originally used have onboard video?  I've had issues with MAME if the video driver is not updated or installed.

-Todd

[SkateDetroit]

Hey Waker,

     Both that i'm using are onboard, the suspect board was a cheapo crapo SIS onboard card. Hence that thing is getting tossed out of the window.

[wakerlet]

Ahh...yes. 

I imagine the issue was DirectDraw support or something like that.   For example, I had an ATI Rage Pro card in one machine I was working on and even though XP had a valid driver for this card, I was getting low frame rates on games like galaga (.60 romset).  Once I installed the latest Rage drivers from ATI, BAM, full frame rate on almost all games.

As a rule, be sure that you have the latest drivers for your video processor.  Do not trust the XP default driver to run anything well.

Thanks,
Todd