What are the best settings for mame in a lcd monitor?

[Denverlatino]

Hello guys and thanks for your atention, i am building a new small bartop cab and its allready looking nice, however, i had to use a 17" lcd monitor due to the cab being small, i didnt whant my screen to be like 8", so i was just wondering , what are the best settings in mame for an lcd screen? i mean i want the games to look the best as posible, also my monitor and my video card have a dvi connection, if i use that instead of the regular vga conection, will that give me a better image on the games? thanks for your time...

[Howard_Casto]

Dvi is much better because dvi monitors automatically adjust themselves to fill the screen regardless of the resolution.  In general vga models don't look as good and are very limited as to the amount of resolutions you can show. 

[Denverlatino]

cool, ill look to buy a dvi cable, and what about the settings? with a dvi any settings will look good?

[u_rebelscum]

cool, ill look to buy a dvi cable, and what about the settings? with a dvi any settings will look good?

DVI (actually any LCD monitor, VGA or DVI) will run best at the native resolution of the LCD monitor.  IOW, if you have a 1280x1024 monitor, run mame at that resolution (and set mame's -screen_aspect to 5:4), if you have 1280x768 monitor run at that res (and set -screen_aspect to 8:5).

DVI looks sharper than VGA on LCDs at the same resolutions since VGA has to convert from digital to analog (in the card) and then back from analog to digital (in the monitor), while DVI stays digital.  It's not that much difference (except DVI probably with fit the image to the screen better like HC said), and if running at native resolution usually you can't tell that much a difference.

Not that "sharper" means "more like the original" to everyone, but that's an opinionated debate I won't go into.


Besides the fixed res, the rest is the same opinionated stuff you'll see on any other monitor.

[Howard_Casto]

My desktop monitor is dvi, and believe me, the picture looks great at any res.  Also "probably fits better" isn't the case, by default any dvi enabled monitor takes whatever res you are actually running, converts it to the native res digitally, and displays it on the screen.  My monitor, for example doesn't have any adjustment settings at all (except for color/brightness adjustment).  Afaik all dvi screens are like this... the image is handled digitally so there is absolutely no adjustment.  I have every resolution available that I would with a traditional crt, unlike a vga lcd where I might have one or two that actually work.  You don't want to run mame at the lcd's native res, simply because some of the newer mame games will slow to a crawl at such a hi res.  I run mame on my desktop pc at 640x480 for speed issues.  I've ran it at native res though and the picture looks identical with all filters turned off. 


In the case of lcd displays, you do want a sharper picture because lcd's dot pitch is different and having a blurry lcd won't blend the graphics well like it does with a crt screen.... it'll get blurry AND jagged.  You almost have to use filter effects if you wish to get some resemblace to a traditional screen.  But honestly it just isn't going to look right regardless of the settings because it is the wrong monitor style.

[Denverlatino]

ok dokey , thanks alot for all the info guys... its always good to learn something new