Jump to content
IGNORED

BigPEmu - why does it not run well?


Class316

Recommended Posts

5 hours ago, Class316 said:

YES! I finally figured out the solution to getting BigPEmu working properly! And sometimes we overlook the simplest solutions. 

 

Basically all I did was disable VSync! That solved the problem! It's running great now! Everything is smooth! 

 

I guess I can retire Phoenix for good now. Besides the fact that all of a sudden it crashes when trying to open a file, it has been superseded. For the longest time it was the only emulator that could properly play Jaguar and 3DO. But now BigPemu is clearly superior for Jaguar (and basically the world's only option for Jag CD), and 4DO seems to be on the par with Phoenix for 3DO. 

 

For other systems that Phoenix emulates, there has always been better options. For Colecovision I use ColEm. And for Sega 8bit there's Kega Fusion and Meka.

do you know refresh rate of your windows desktop?   If vsync is causing issues then I wonder if it's syncing to an odd refresh rate

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For sure you will have a better having experience with everything with your monitor running at the higher frame rate. 30hz is basically only sufficient for watching TV. Sometimes a 4k resolution can reduce to the refresh to 30hz if the bandwidth of the video connector in use is insufficient for 4k60.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, crash said:

For sure you will have a better having experience with everything with your monitor running at the higher frame rate. 30hz is basically only sufficient for watching TV. Sometimes a 4k resolution can reduce to the refresh to 30hz if the bandwidth of the video connector in use is insufficient for 4k60.

I can't believe for years I had it at 30hz and didn't notice. And yes I enabled Vsynch back on and it works fine now!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, crash said:

For sure you will have a better having experience with everything with your monitor running at the higher frame rate. 30hz is basically only sufficient for watching TV. Sometimes a 4k resolution can reduce to the refresh to 30hz if the bandwidth of the video connector in use is insufficient for 4k60.

Yeah that's what made me think of it.    Sometimes my emulation PC gets switched into 4K/30 instead or 1080p/60  and the emulators run like crap.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

So I'm trying to run BigPEmu 1.054 on a Atari VCS with 32GB ram running Windows 10. And something is not right but I don't know what to do about. You can see in the video when I try to start a Jaguar game, the sound is of, it has static and some sort of other sound and odd behaviour, the sound is broken in the games as well and everything runs really really slow. The other day I wondered why the VLM didn't seem to be in synch with the music but I guess that might be the reason too. Does anyone here have an idea how to solve this?

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, CyranoJ said:

 

Stop using a potato to emulate? :D

 

I thought it was a taco... :grin:

 

Seriously though, is there anything else running in the background that could be slowing down the emulator?  Sometimes I have that problem with RetroArch running so slow unless I restart it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hehe,

Well I was under the impression that the VCS should be capable of running it and others wrote that it runs ok for them so I thought it might be something else. I mean I got a Jag here so it's not a big problem, but i thought I might take the vcs with me on trips and having a well running jaguar emulator on it would have been cool.

 

No, there is nothing running in the background. Hm bummer, I thought there might be some settings maybe that do the trick, but if it's the machine not being able to run it properly then I'm out of luck here I guess.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 2/22/2023 at 8:20 PM, Class316 said:

Indeed it's not for some reason. So I should change to 60 then!

refresh.jpg

So this was the solution. My TV was set to 30 Hz as well and it seems I ignored a warning by the emulator because it told me that something is not right with the refresh rate.

 

Happy to report, that the emulator works very smooth now.  And the VLM is in synch with the music. (Listening/watching Pneuma by Tool right now, being a very happy puppy.) 

 

Probably should have checked that first because it was already in the thread, but thanks for chiming in (and making me laugh) anyway. Jaguar runs on potatoe.:D

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, PeterG said:

So I'm trying to run BigPEmu 1.054 on a Atari VCS with 32GB ram running Windows 10. And something is not right but I don't know what to do about. You can see in the video when I try to start a Jaguar game, the sound is of, it has static and some sort of other sound and odd behaviour, the sound is broken in the games as well and everything runs really really slow. The other day I wondered why the VLM didn't seem to be in synch with the music but I guess that might be the reason too. Does anyone here have an idea how to solve this?

The two main causes of problems with the VCS that I have seen are:

 

1. Not all AMD drivers are automatically installed during Windows 10 installation or even with AMD driver installers. In particular, there is an audio accelerator driver that when missing seems to cause audio processing to be offloaded to the CPU. Please check the device manager to see if there are any yellow exclamation points in the Device Manager, particularly something called "Multimedia Controller". A specific AMD driver is needed. I think this is the correct link if that device driver is missing:

 

https://www.amd.com/en/support/embedded/amd-ryzen-embedded-r-series-processors/r-series-r1000-radeon-vega-graphics

 

2. Running while connected to a TV or monitor that is forcing 30hz rather than 60hz or above.

 

Let us know if you can verify if either of these are related.

 

Cheers

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, PeterG said:

Hehe,

Well I was under the impression that the VCS should be capable of running it and others wrote that it runs ok for them so I thought it might be something else.

As far as I know, the VCS can run BigPEmu fine under both Windows and Linux/Proton with sufficient amount of overhead to avoid slowdowns or issues even if the OS has some background nonsense going on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, PeterG said:

So this was the solution. My TV was set to 30 Hz as well and it seems I ignored a warning by the emulator because it told me that something is not right with the refresh rate.

Glad you got it sorted!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, madman said:

That's good to know the emulator runs on the VCS, I haven't had a reason to tinker w/my VCS yet, I bought it on sale just for kicks, but it might make sense to upgrade the memory, SSD and pop Windows on there. 

Yeah that was the first thing I did as well after getting the VCS to run with the new OS update and getting rid of the bios password. Nice little project.:)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, cubanismo said:

Someone should edit this thread subject to read "... Because the monitor refresh was <60Hz"

I agree.  I've tried running BigPEmu on three different machines, and it ran great on all three.

The subject line leaves a negative impression that this emulator doesn't deserve.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...