Help to configure ATI rx500 crt emudriver-15khz

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ThreeToSeven
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Help to configure ATI rx500 crt emudriver-15khz

Post by ThreeToSeven »

Greetings:

I recently obtained an ATI RX 500 to boost performance of Naomi roms on my arcade.

I followed Calamity’s installation guide for crt emudriver, in its version 18.5 for GCN cards and so far my pc recognizes the GPU.

I then installed Super resolutions (as recommended by calimoty for newer GPU’s) using the .txt file included in crt emudriver’s folder using vwmaker, selecting Arcade 15khz and selecting static option. Later lines are generated and installed.

All the above steps executed as administrator.

When switching to my crt/tv monitor, the image is replicated three times. Previously used an hd4780 and image was cristal clear but for some unknown reason with the new GPU I’m unable to get a clear image.

I was wondering that perhaps I missed some step when configuring or maybe used an old .txt file but at this stage I’m quite lost.

Any help to get through the finish line would be much appreciated.
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Josh128
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Re: Help to configure ATI rx500 crt emudriver-15khz

Post by Josh128 »

AMD does not make an RX 500. Are you using an RX 550 perhaps?

Make sure you have CRT Emudriver & CRT Tools 2.0 beta 15 (Adrenalin 18.5.1 for GCN cards) for Windows 10 64-bit driver.

Also, being the RX 500 series doesnt output analogue video, your HDMI>VGA adapter might be causing some issue. So you cannot even get a visible desktop?
What resolution did you set to on a PC monitor before connecting to the 15KHz monitor? Can you post a photo of the image you are getting?

You could also try selecting the dynamic option in CRTEmuTools, but I dont know if that would work with the HDMI>VGA adapter.
ThreeToSeven
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Re: Help to configure ATI rx500 crt emudriver-15khz

Post by ThreeToSeven »

Thank you Josh for taking your time in reading through this thread.

My apologies, I own an RX 550 2GB.

I installed CRT emudriver in its version mentioned by you albeit fit to Windows 7, not 10, for running my pc under such OS. Perhaps I should try instead with such other version you mention?

I tried the HDMI to VGA adaptor and seems to work (in its own way). From the time I first posted, I experimented with Arcade OSD and after set the desktop resolution to 2056 x 480 (or any resolution within the range of 240 to 580) x 15 khz, I was able to get a single video image in my crt (although the folders seem to be stretched as when entering a black hole). When launching Hyperspin, all seems to fit in its place, but when launching any game (Naomi or mame for instance) I continue getting one single video image (not 3 as before) although 1/3 of its size right in the middle of the screen.

Needless to say that after rebooting the arcade pc, the single video image gets lost and the 3 video images come back to life.

I tried to upload a picture of this daunting process but was unable to find the option when posting. Will pursue to try send some images.

About resolutions with my LCD, it handles easily 640x480 but when swithching to 15khz need to pit my hands into the crt as the lcd no longer supports such frequency.

Thank you
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BazookaBen
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Re: Help to configure ATI rx500 crt emudriver-15khz

Post by BazookaBen »

Josh128 wrote:Also, being the RX 500 series doesnt output analogue video,
Actually, some models of the RX 550 do have analog out. Yeston's low profile 4GB 550 has a VGA port (attached via removable ribbon cable) and Sapphire's low profile 4GB 550 has a DVI-I.

I don't know if anybody's tried CRT Emu Driver on one though. It could end up being one of the most future proof cards for Emu Driver.

https://www.sapphiretech.com/en/consume ... 0-4g-g5-lp

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/c ... ot_yeston/
ThreeToSeven
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Re: Help to configure ATI rx500 crt emudriver-15khz

Post by ThreeToSeven »

Lovely, Josh.

Seems a good option the VGA Yeston Rafon Rx 550.

Will play a bit more with the configuration and if unable to put it straight will sell out my RX 550 hdmi and auction for the Yeston.

Thanks a lot for all your helpful advice
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Josh128
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Re: Help to configure ATI rx500 crt emudriver-15khz

Post by Josh128 »

BazookaBen wrote:
Josh128 wrote:Also, being the RX 500 series doesnt output analogue video,
Actually, some models of the RX 550 do have analog out. Yeston's low profile 4GB 550 has a VGA port (attached via removable ribbon cable) and Sapphire's low profile 4GB 550 has a DVI-I.

I don't know if anybody's tried CRT Emu Driver on one though. It could end up being one of the most future proof cards for Emu Driver.

https://www.sapphiretech.com/en/consume ... 0-4g-g5-lp

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/c ... ot_yeston/
Ben, word is that from Polaris architecture forward, true analog out was removed from all AMD cards-- the ones (like the Yeston you are referring to) that do have VGA ports or DVI-I, supposedly do not output true analog out from the GPU, but have circuitry similar to an active HDMI>VGA adapter on board to enable the output, similar to how newer AMD Vega based APUs can output video from a mobo VGA port but dont play very well with CRTEmudriver.

This is from Calamity in 2018, he's speaking of Vega and Polaris:
So we finally have a consistent answer. New AMD gpus (same with Nvidia) don't have analog support any more. This means they don't have the actual circuits to output an analog signal, regardless of what connectors you may find on the video card.

This is not new, we all knew that. The doubt was caused by these new motherboards for Ryzen APUs that do mount a VGA connector. It turns out these motherboards also support much older APUs that included R7 graphics which did support analog output. This is because AMD decided to keep the socket compatibility for several generations of processors.

However the Ryzen APUs include Vega graphics which doesn't support analog. So what happens if you plug a monitor to the motherboards' VGA output? According to the link above, this results in no video during BIOS post but surprisingly the VGA was usable once Windows starts. This suggests there's an additional chip on the motherboard, similar to those in active HDMI->VGA adapters, that performs the conversion. Probably, the chip requires drivers that are not available during boot.

Probably these chips and their performance will vary among different vendors. Also, probably they suffer from low bandwidth limitations, same as their dongle counterparts.
That said, he DOES include drivers for the RX 500 series on his page, so they may still work perhaps, but are not recommended over the older series (hence the warnings about the operations at low pixel clocks and super resolutions). Im curious if OP can get this to work.
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Josh128
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Re: Help to configure ATI rx500 crt emudriver-15khz

Post by Josh128 »

ThreeToSeven wrote:Lovely, Josh.

Seems a good option the VGA Yeston Rafon Rx 550.

Will play a bit more with the configuration and if unable to put it straight will sell out my RX 550 hdmi and auction for the Yeston.

Thanks a lot for all your helpful advice



DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT go for another RX 550 if you cant get this working (see my response to Ben above as to why). Get an HD 5450, its pretty much the de-facto standard option for CRTEmudriver and I can confirm it works beautifully on my setup. $10+ shipping, you cant go wrong.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-ATI-HD-545 ... SwpwVej75C


About your LCD monitor-- what I meant was, did you try selecting a 15KHz resolution while on the LCD? When you do this, you will lose image on the LCD, but thats OK. When that happens, accept the resolution by pressing "Enter" ( I think that will do it, you wont be able to see the "Yes" button to accept) then you can power down /unplug and move the system to the 15KHz CRT. I recommend trying 512 x 448i or 512 x 384i as they seem to allow for a decent looking desktop in Windows. You can then see what you are doing and configure your system game by game. Once you go into Arcade OSD, find some good matching resolutions for games and try them to see how they look on your CRT. You can tweak them to center etc and then hit "SAVE". After that, you can select "Copy Modeline" from ArcadeOSD and paste it into an .ini file in GroovyMAME on a per-game basis. That way you can test each resolution individually-- if you let GroovyMAME do it, you never really know what resolution it will select for a certain game.
ThreeToSeven
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Re: Help to configure ATI rx500 crt emudriver-15khz

Post by ThreeToSeven »

Thank you all for your advice.

Josh - I tried to switch to the crt employing 640 x 480 x 15khz resolution without success.

The lcd works fine with the above resolution using 30khz.

Seems like the GPU does not allow low resolutions. With 2056 super resolutions crappy image is displayed by the CRT except for Hyperspin frontend that shows decent image.

If I do not succeed might be going back to my old ATI.
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Josh128
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Re: Help to configure ATI rx500 crt emudriver-15khz

Post by Josh128 »

Sorry to hear that mate. If you can see the frontend picture Ok on your CRT, your card must be outputting some 15KHz resolution that the set is compatible with. What resolution is that? That is your Windows desktop resolution I assume?

If you note that resolution and insert the modeline into mame.ini, all your games should display at that resolution, and it *should* be visible if your frontend looks OK with it. Once you do that, you can create individual "romname".ini files in the ini folder. The file can be empty other than the modeline option followed by space and then the actual modeline info you want (you can copy from ArcadeOSD clipboard). You may be able to pick and choose working resolutions this way.

I honestly have never tried on any other card but an HD5450, so I dont really know how the RX 500 series will react. I re-iterate though, for a dedicated MAME machine, go for a used HD 5450 and it should work fine.
ThreeToSeven
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Re: Help to configure ATI rx500 crt emudriver-15khz

Post by ThreeToSeven »

I guess the CRT and GPU output 15khz for the reason you mention.

I’m able to see my desktop at 2056 x 240. Such resolution makes it difficult/impossible to human eye to set-up any configuration. Once launched Hyperspin frontend (640 x 480) the CRT displays a cristal clear image. When getting into any game the resolution 2056 x 240 displays and ganes are squeezed to one third of its size approx.

I tried to modify Naomi and Mame .ini files but unable to see any reference to resolutions. The drop down menu of Demul (for Naomi games) for instance allows changes albeit seems like it takes by defect the resolution for the desktop (2056 x 240). Any idea where those working .ini files may be found within Hyperspin forlder?

I also own an ATI 7000 series low profile (no external supply) with 1gb DDR3. It works fine with CRT emu driver but because I intend to boost more power for running better Naomi games (i.e Soul Surfer or Gugawings) any idea if there is in the market an ATI with VGA output treasuring 2gb DDR5? Perhaps that would be a good solution if I consistently face these “inconsistencies” with my RX 550
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Josh128
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Re: Help to configure ATI rx500 crt emudriver-15khz

Post by Josh128 »

You are using GroovyMAME, not regular MAME, right? Because the mame.ini of GroovyMAME definitely has a place for the resolution/modeline while the normal MAME does not. The switchres options wont work correctly without GroovyMAME.
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buttersoft
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Re: Help to configure ATI rx500 crt emudriver-15khz

Post by buttersoft »

If you followed the proper setup guide, your desktop should set itself to 640x480i. If you installed all the super resolutions at first, when you're not meant to, windows just grabs the one with the most pixels and turns it into the desktop. But there's no lasting effect. You can use ArcadeOSD to set the desktop resolution to something manageable - ArcadeOSD should always appear legible and scaled for 4:3 no matter the actual resolution.

To use super resolutions you need switchres/modeline generation enabled in mame.ini, and super_width set to 2560 and resolution to 2560x0 (if that's the width of your super resolutions, which is the case in the guide). The 2560 tells switchres to go into super resolution mode when the resolution is 2560xsomething. The x0 bit of the resolution tells switchres to get busy and calculate it's own vertical resolution based on the crt_range lines.

From my mame.ini for a horizontal cab with no rotation and 4:display aspect (ignore the range line being customised - yours should say Arcade15 or Generic15 or whatever, unless you customised it too)

#
# CORE SWITCHRES OPTIONS
#
modeline_generation 1
monitor custom (((yours may not be custom, remember!)))
orientation horizontal
connector auto
interlace 1
doublescan 1
super_width 2560
changeres 1
powerstrip 0
lock_system_modes 1
lock_unsupported_modes 1
refresh_dont_care 0
dotclock_min 0
sync_refresh_tolerance 2.0
frame_delay 0
vsync_offset 0
black_frame_insertion 0
modeline auto
ps_timing auto
lcd_range auto
crt_range0 "15400-16200, 49.50-65.00, 5.000, 4.459, 9.349, 0.064, 0.192, 1.024, 0, 0, 192, 300, 384, 600" (((again, yours will be different!)))
crt_range1 auto
crt_range2 auto

And further down the same file...

#
# OSD PER-WINDOW VIDEO OPTIONS
#
screen auto
aspect auto
resolution 2560x0

(My frame_delay settings are done per game, in individual ini files, in case you were wondering :))

Lastly, for Windows 10, make sure to tick the "hide modes this monitor cannot display" box in windows display properties, and to stop and disable the windows service called AMD External Events Utility. You can just type "services" into the start menu to get to the services options. Then search for and open “Power options” in the Start Menu. Click “Choose what the power buttons do” on the left side of the window. Click “Change settings that are currently unavailable.” Under “Shutdown settings” make sure “Turn on fast startup” is disabled/unchecked. The former stops programs grabbing higher res video modes they once used despite the fact those modes are not meant to exist now, and the latter stops your computer from ever starting up with a letterbox crush, where the whole vertical resolution is compressed into half it's size in the middle of your screen.
ThreeToSeven
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Re: Help to configure ATI rx500 crt emudriver-15khz

Post by ThreeToSeven »

I got installed MameUI the reason might not be displaying Mame.ini all relevant info. I also experienced that without edid emulation resolutions do not stand after a restart.

I’m think in selling out my Rx 550 and put my hands into an AMD R5 340 2gb ddr5. Seems to be crt emudriver compatible and has a DVi output. Similar to my Amd series 7000. I hope i can manage to at least see an analog 0/1 option with vm maker. With my current rx 550 all I see is hdmi and dvd outputs and when pressing EDID emulation my crt and lcd go black.

Will post if succeed with this new enterprise and thanks again all for your assistance during this journey.
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