Best picture settings

[gingerone]

Hi all, this is my first time posting here and I figured you guys know your stuff.
I've just built my first cabinet and I amusing a 21" pc monitor but I'm finding it difficult to get a picture I'm happy with, I keeping chopping between using rgb6 which is sharper looking but a little artificial and using no effect at all which blurs the edges nicely but is too soft.
Anyone care to share what effects they have settled on when using a pc monitor?
I'm using the windows version of mame 96, running at 800x600 and mamewah as my frontend on win xp.
Thanks in advance.

Gingerone

p.s. anyone know how to get full screen scan lines using D3D?

[richms]

800x600 is too low for the fake monitor effects to work. I had to increse it to 1800x1440 or 1600x1200 for it to look anything like an arcade monitor.

[gingerone]

That's interesting, I had not considered increasing the resolution I'd always tried to go as low as possible.
What effects do you use as well?

[richms]

In mame classic front end I have

direct 3d ticked
texture management ticked
filtering anisotropic
prescale none
intensity - feedback 0 scanline 100
effect RGB16
effect rotate ticked

not sure what the intensity lines do - this gives me a soft picture that appears more arcade like to me, but it still lacks the punch that the colours of the real arcade screen has.

[gingerone]

I've got the same as you but with rgb 6.
I've tried the higher resolutions and they look a lot better, the colours seem deeper and there's less blockiness, however I have two problems.
1. It does'nt run as well as it does at lower res, I get sound breakup and it seems a bit slower.
2. My monitor is tucked up inside my cab so I can't adjust the screen size now!

I think the performance is down to my graphics card which is only a 32mb ati radeon 7200.
If I could get it running smoothly I'd pull monitor out and redo the screen position.
I did find that I could only use it at 1600x1200 mind , any higher and I could'nt see all the picture even though I had black borders around the screen.

Do you think a better graphics card would do the trick or will it make little difference?

p.s. I've tried your settings and at 1024x768 and they look a bit obvious ( chiken wire effect) but at 1600x1200 they look very good indeed, probably the best picture I've seen on mame yet.
I think I'll be pulling my monitor out tonight.

[richms]

I have a raedon 9200 in my desktop machine, and it seems ok. CPU does hit 100% sometimes, but it is an old P4 2.533 with that rambus crap on it. When I get the cab made will se how it goes on the athlon xp 2800.

[gingerone]

I've got a p4 2.8 with 768meg of ram, you can pick up 128mb 9200's on ebay for about

[RayB]

Note that the classics won't run at full frame rate if you use Direct 3D...

[gingerone]

It's not that noticable though is it?
I think it's the lesser of 2 evils to be honest.

[RayB]

Sure it's noticable. Play Robotron at the full 60fps it requires, and then play it again at 20 or 30... Every split second matters in high-reflex games.

[richms]

It seems to give the full 60Hz when I try it, if the game doesnt take too much CPU, like puzzle bobble 1 is fine, but 3 and 4 do lag out quite frequently

[RayB]

I don't know why, but for me, 90's games run at full FPS with the "effects" on, but the old old classics don't. So what I do is turn off Direct 3D and BOOM, they run full FPS (but don't have any of the monitor effects). Could be I have other settings misconfigured...
 

[gingerone]

I've been trying this and I get the opposite effect, When I use D3D I don't get any juddering or drop outs at all on pretty much all games, however when I turn it off even simple games like outrun have problems.
For my set up D3D is the only way to have a stable game without stuttering and break ups.

On an unrelated topic I'm debating whether or not to change my 21" phillips monitor for a 21" TV instead. Will this be closer to the arcade feel and what's a recomended card for RGB out?