performance question mame under xp

[dreamfreak]

hi,
my mame pc runs under xppro and has the following specs:
a shuttle barebone with amd athlon 2200+, 512mb ddr, arcadevga ...
I

[JoeB]

dreamfreak..

my box is an AMD 2400+ with 256MB DDR RAM..

I started with Windows XP but switched to Windows 98.  I can truthfully tell you that windows XP is as fast as windows 98, if not faster.

Plus, the noticable stability is like night and day!  For example, if you are in the process of upgrading your ROMs on the HD inside the arcade machine, under XP you plug the cable, and off it works (as long as you give it static IP) and you can still do stuff on the machine while it transfers.

Under Windows 98, you will need to reboot to have the network work, and the performance is going to be terrible while you transfer data.  

Plus, I like the overall stability of windows.. MAME never hangs the way it did with 98 (on loading some games).

But I highly suggest you install the latest fixes for XP, and try to disable as many services as you don't need to maxize the system performance.

[dreamfreak]

@ joeb
hi,
I installed smoothmame (amd optimized) instead of mame and now the performance is much better  

what win xp services did you turned off and how does it works ?

thx

[dreamfreak]

could someone please post how to switch xp services wich aren

[Carsten Carlos]

could someone please post how to switch xp services wich aren

[JoeB]

Under control pannel, look for administrator section, and click on services.

Be careful here!  If you turn off the wrong service, your PC might not boot up normally.

There are THOUSANDS of web sites that tell you what services you can turn off..

Google for them.

[Howard_Casto]

thousands yes, but only one that is actually useful.  

www.blackviper.com

[Lilwolf]

BTW, whenever doing this stuff.

Do 5 - 10 at a time.  I searched around and did everything that every website basically said... and the whole system was completely hosed... and it took less time to reinstall... (yes, I was playing).

but turn off 5 at a time... read what each does... test the system... go to the next 5.

Many take about 5k or memory (if you have 500mg... thats not much).  Others are really running and doing nothing...what you really want to get rid of.

Also, the group that does 98lite has a XPlite that has very easy select / deselect for a ton of things.  I haven't played with it yet, but it looks like a nice app.

[Minwah]

START/AUSF

[Howard_Casto]

Your correct it's much safer.  Unfortunately, the major resource hogs are services that m$ deems crucial but in reality they aren't.  Windows update, system restore and windows time are prime examples.  I don't think services.msc will allow you to turn those off, but under most circumstances they are pretty useless.

[Minwah]

Your correct it's much safer.  Unfortunately, the major resource hogs are services that m$ deems crucial but in reality they aren't.  Windows update, system restore and windows time are prime examples.  I don't think services.msc will allow you to turn those off, but under most circumstances they are pretty useless.

You can turn these ones off in Control Panel > System, which is probably the safest way I guess.

[grafixmonkey]

I think it's more likely that the original game processor couldn't handle the load of sprites than your system not being able to handle them.  There are lots of games where the original system slowed down in certain places, especially with lots of sprites on the screen, so Mame of course emulates true to the original and also slows down at those regions.

[cdbrown]

The way I did mine (probably not the best) was to make all of the services manual start, reboot the machine (took a very long time) and then which ever services were shown as started after booting, I made these automatic.  I also had to select one or two others which didn't start such as the sound service, but this wasn't a problem.  And everything seems to be working well and smooth

[Howard_Casto]

I think it's more likely that the original game processor couldn't handle the load of sprites than your system not being able to handle them.  There are lots of games where the original system slowed down in certain places, especially with lots of sprites on the screen, so Mame of course emulates true to the original and also slows down at those regions.

Who exactly are you referring to?  Nobody mentions performance issues once in this thread.  Quite the opposite actually.  

[Minwah]

I think grafixmonkey is referring to this part HC   :

I hadn