GameEx BULKY

[highland04]

has anyone else had this problem?!

[Goz]

I have GameEx running on a 1.2Ghz VIA mini-itx system and 512MB RAM and doesnt seem choppy at all. Generic onboard video as well.

[Howard_Casto]

Maybe this is just me, but it seems like gameEx is more of a media center and less of a front end.  (That isn't a bad thing, I'm just saying.)

I don't think it's exactly built for speed so a fancy skin might slow it down.  Are you doing anything fany that could be causing issues?  (extra large artwork... ect)

[headkaze]

Try these two options in the config..

- Tweaks/Performance / Dont Wait for VSYNC : Dont Wait
- Tweaks/Performance / DirectDraw Dont Wait : Yes Dont wait for blitting

Also, go into your THEMES\* directory, open the Theme.ini file for your selected theme and make sure  that AniBak=False.

Also the following setting will reduce CPU usage by quite a lot. You can download Process Explorer from SysInternals to watch the change in CPU usage by the following setting. The only problem is, this may make the display even more choppy.

- Tweaks/Performance / Reduce CPU Utilisation (MS) : 16

All of this info is in the GameEx forums, so it might pay you to make a post on there if you still have troubles.

[Necro]

Use a theme that doesnt animate.  Speeds things up a ton.

[highland04]

thanks for all that...

that speeds things up a lot.

i also realized that it was really only choppy in the emulator lists with lots of roms...  960 nes roms makes it choppy, lol... i cut this list down to the ones i mainly play and it helped a lot.

[Howard_Casto]

i also realized that it was really only choppy in the emulator lists with lots of roms...

[vibez]

I've had a list of over 3000 roms in gameex & it never caused a slowdown.

I'm thinking it might be better to downgrade your .NET framework. Or atleast post your setup on the official gameex site. Tom the author is usually quick to solve these kind of problems

[tspeirs]

Hi, its Tom here. Yourll get more help on the official GameEx forum, but I was lucky to find this post.

There is an issue with certain NVidia drivers and GameEx (caused by Nvidia). I think that's the problem you have (it in the FAQ too BTW). Try getting the latest drivers for your video card.

GameEx does not need the latest hardware run. It will normally run at 60 FPS on a 1000MHz, and is very usuable normally on anything down to a 500MHZ if you have an OK video card too.

[highland04]

thanks for all that.

the machine listed is the test machine, my actual mame computer is in the mail now...

[duckpatch]

It runs sluggish on my computer too. Maybe is it just media center? How does the FE run in plain old Win XP Pro? Does it still have that Media Center feel?

[wrench]

It may be the .net 2.0.I know Tom was working on getting 2.0
to work but that was a beta so if you don't have the latest release of gameex you need .net1.1 for sure.Also there have been some problems with nvidia drivers and gameex causing choppy or slow menu navigation.There has been some reports that the newest nvidia are working properly but I haven't tried them myself yet. The nvidia driver v66.93 was the one that seems to work the best.
This is from gameex web site:
Q: I have a good system, but GameEx runs terribly slow or freezes up (I have an NVidia video card)?
A: NVidia unified drivers newer than 66.93 and older than 81.85 seem to have serious bugs with DirectX 2D support. Get the latest NVidia drivers or alternatively you can get 66.93 drivers here. 66.93 was released November 2004.

[duckpatch]

Well I have ati.. I would like to know how thr FE looks in WinXP Pro.

[Goz]

Well I have ati.. I would like to know how thr FE looks in WinXP Pro.

It looks eactly the same in XP Pro as it does in Media Center

[Roughy]

I've got the same problem--only moreso.

Choppy, yes.  Like a pig, yes.

Granted, I'm the first to admit that there's more than likely a lot of user error here and am going to try some of the mods listed above.

I'm running on a 1.5 machine (athlon 2200+) with 512mb ram and it's very, very choppy.  The set-up seems pretty sluggish and the form elements don't seem to retain information--maybe that's normal, but it makes me quite miserable when I re-enter setup and I cannot see the settings that I previously made, so that's a huge usability issue to me.

I like the look and feel of WinMC a lot; it's easy enough to get around in, but I keep finding oddball errors about 20+ exceptions being met when I try to exit a game or even when trying to get out of the screensaver thing.

And, again--this isn't to ride on gameex; I'm sure there's not a lot I've done to help the cause in making it right since I was tinkering around 2a last night, but I'm willing to get some more advice!

[Goz]

Have you tried completely removing GameEx and re-installing or installing to a different base directory? Might be worth a shot.

[Roughy]

I'll give that a shot.  I'll try anything!

[Todd H]

Yep, it's the same for me.  I'm running a 1.8 Ghz machine with 512 megs of ram and a GeForce4 card.  It runs ULTRA slow.  I've tried the various hints with no effect (except the re-install trick).

It's no big deal since I use Mamewah, but I do like to try the other front ends out of curiosity.

[Howard_Casto]

Maybe it's a porcessor issue?  I know at one point Dk was very processor hungry.  I've slimmed it down a great deal since then, but my point is even something as simple as a fe can eat up the resources.