MAME performance questions

[Avid Fan]

I'm going to slowly build my MAME cabinet in around tax return season. I already have a computer that I'm going to use for it but I have a few questions?

 

My processor is going at 950, and some games dont run fast enough (I've tweaked with setting many times) and the only games I cant get to run at the proper speeds are Asteroids and Narc. And Many various Mortal Kombat and NBA Jams, but those are newer, and may not be emulated correct yet).

 

Now, I cant get asteroids to go ad the correct speed nomatter what I do. I can get NARC running decent if I cut the resolution, but I hate doing it. But Narc will always run at the proper speed, but it will be choppy (make any sence, characters move just as fast, it just seems that the framerate is lowered, when it isnt)

So is this an issue of my processor not being fast enough? or not having a good enough video card with enough video memory?

I dont know anything about my video card, but I can run FMV on it, so its decent, but I wouldnt really say anything positive about it

[PacManPlus]

What Kind of video card is in your system? I have a 1ghz system (128Mb of RAM) with an ATI Radeon video card and all MKs (1, 2, and 3) run smoothly (as well as Asteroids) - I'm also running DOS MAME version .56

 

http://pacfan69.tripod.com/cabinets/index.html

[Avid Fan]

I'm running MAME32 6.2

I use mame32 because its the only one I figured out how to work. I thought all versions of mame ran like MESS but I guess not

[Avid Fan]

My video card is a 3D Rage Pro AGP 2X, have no idea how much video memory I have.

 

I also have sound issues with some games. My sound card, again I have no clue, but the device manager says SIS 7012 audio driver. I know my sound card is built into the motherboard. Its not soundblaster compatable (for old school games anyway, win 98 games fork flawlessly).

But could the sound be from emulation, or my processor not being fast enbough

[Room 34]

I don't know what the deal with Asteroids is. I have a lot of trouble with it in MAME as well being jerky and slow, and I don't have that sort of trouble with any other games (including Asteroids Deluxe).

 

Granted, I'm on a much different set-up than you... running MacMAME on a 500 MHz G3 iBook. But I find it interesting that you're also having trouble with Asteroids. What is it about this game that is so taxing for MAME?

 

(Fortunately for me, Asteroids is the one game I don't care about playing in MAME, since I actually own an Asteroids machine! And yes, I feel compelled to mention it at every opportunity.)

[liquid_sky]

the vector games seem to have alot of extra "effects" that mame has to try to reproduce a vector screen effect phosphor trails ect.. you can turn some of those options down and the games SHOULD run better

[Room 34]

I've cranked Asteroids all the way DOWN and it's still jerky. Meanwhile, I can play just about every other vector game with the effects on and it works fine! Weird.

 

Oh well... the main vectors I want to play (in MAME, anyway) are Space Duel and Tempest, and they work fine.

[Avid Fan]

Asteroids is the only vector game I cant get to run properly. The empire strikes back, star wars and star trek all run flawlessly (BTW Star Trek the game rules, never played until a few weeks ago) with good sound even. But is this a video card issue? or speed issue?

[Avid Fan]

Bump. I finally got Asteroids to work. I'm now running all of the games in a window instead of full screen, and it seems to help on most games (Narc still wont work, but thats what Midway Arcade Treasures 2 is for) but I'm running Windows XP, is that the problem

[Ze_ro]

There are some MAME drivers that just happen to have bugs in them that cause performance issues... I think Asteroids is one of them... Gorf is another. You might want to try a different version of MAME to see if the bug still happens. Incidentally, I'm using MAME 0.78, and Asteroids is perfectly playable on my 400MHz dinosaur (I'm using the Unix version of MAME though... perhaps MAME32 has a bug or two in it's vector code that the Unix version doesn't?)

 

One of the problems with a lot of the newer games is the complicated sound hardware. If you don't mind sacrificing sound, you can turn it off to get newer games to run full speed. This is kind of a big tradeoff, but it's certainly better than playing a game at 25% speed with a huge frameskip. Just turn on the radio or something.

 

You might want to be careful with this though, since some games will complain when their sound hardware isn't emulated, since they can't "talk" to the sound chips. There's an option to do "fake sound" that might help here (It emulates the bare minimum of the sound chips to convince the game to work anyways). There's also the option to use a lower sampling rate... ie, 22kHz sound instead of 44kHz. The lower the frequency, the better the performance should be... at the cost of sound quality of course.

 

--Zero

[Avid Fan]

The thing is though, I dont play new games. Asteroids works great in a maximized window. The only games that give me problems are games with samples (the sound get garbled, but it may be old samples). The newest games I have are some Capcom fighters from 1998, but they run flawlessly.

I'm thinking that my computer has too much background shit going on in XP. This is why I'd love a computer with Windows 98, MAME, CD player and thats it. No modems, routers, virusscans, updaters, internet browsers, just something for games. I really do hope that the people who made MAME32 do a port for the ApeXtreme, if that happens, I will be one of the poor schmucks who buy one