Mame sound stutters/echos please read

[CitySlicker91]

OK here's my problem. I bought a Pentium 3 800 MHZ processor, 256 MB of ram, 10 GB of hard drive computer off of eBay. It's a dell optiplex gx115 if that helps. when i try to run any games on Mame (any version even the old versions of Mame, also even the oldest games like Mrs. Pac-Man) The sound stutters horribly rendering the game unplayable (This-his is street-reet fight-ighter). The framerate is fine usually running at a silky smooth 60 FPS. I have tried to mess around with every setting... nothing seems to work. I have a AC '97 integrated sound card, but have even gone to the extreme of buying a cheap soundblaster audigy with the same results. The only other thing I can think of doing is upgrading my windows 2k to xp. I have no idea why i am having these issues it seems like other people have worse specs and are running games fine. I'm sorry if this question has been asked before but I can't find any solutions.

[gamecreature]

Might be your graphics card. Also, what version of Mame are you running?

[Havok]

I would check the goofy things that can mess up any program first:

• Run a Windows update
• Update all your device drivers
• Defrag the hard drive

[CitySlicker91]

Thanks for replying guys. I'll try all of that. I am running an older version of command line mame so i don't think it has anything to do with that ts version 0.96 i think.

[ppilot]

.96 is only a year or so old, isn't it?  There's no way your computer is going to run that.  Try like the 0.53 version.

[krick]

.96 is only a year or so old, isn't it?  There's no way your computer is going to run that.  Try like the 0.53 version.

Yeah, with a computer that the MAME devs call "ghetto hardware", I'd go back to at least 0.92 which was the last version before Aaron's major sound re-write.  If it's still too slow, keep going back until you find something acceptable.

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah, this is exactly the problem you are having.  With the new sound system mame echos/skips when the processor is being taxed too hard.


Also this is a stupid one, but just in case.... ac97 drivers have "environment effects" one of which is a echo.  Make sure that crap is turned off. 

[eweaver6089]

I had similar results with certain games that were graphic intensive such as Mortal Kombat, etc.  I was running a P3 1ghz with 1 gig ram.  I upgraded to a P4 3.2 ghz. and it fixed my problem.  I would make sure that there is not a lot running in the background that could be taking away from your system resources.  Free up as much ram and cpu usage as possible.

[CitySlicker91]

Thanks for all the replys. Just had to get an older version of mame, thanks  .