Groovymame build recommendations in 2019

[philexile]

Hello,

I wanted to let people know that if you want a mostly lag free experience with GroovyMame, you should be looking to build the most powerful PC that you can – and not for 3D games. There are two things that you want to enable which are very CPU intensive: frame_delay and portaudio.

There are two videos below that describe what each does:

frame_delay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHXfsDAknBs

portaudio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVPSlPnUxew&t=63s

In the past I had a 20th Anniversary Intel 3258 CPU built into a nice little Windows 7 ITX case. I tried pushing frame_delay up to 9 on a game like Ms. Pac-Man and as I recall I couldn't even get it to 5 without frame drops. Portaudio also proved to be an issue.

I don't have the room for or interest in a Supergun – so GroovyMame is the only way for me! It was really important that I build a PC once that I knew would play most of the arcade games that I want with frame_delay set as high as possible and portaudio enabled.

I decided to build a full tower based around an overclocked i9 9900k, but I probably could have downspec'd to a 9700k. The video card is an AMD R9 380, which has analog on one of the DVI outputs. This seems to be the last AMD card supported by switchres for the time being due to the analog output. It also supports the lower pixel clocks.

It plays great, but even with an insane PC some games can't run without frame drops when frame_delay is set 9. A good example is After Burner II (from 1987) – I had to step down frame_delay to 7 or 8 to get it to run at 100%.

Anyway, I wanted people to know that because it was sort of a rude awakening for me after hearing for years that an old PC will work just fine. It will, but if you want to push the emulation to be close to real hardware, you need to invest in a great build.

I also plan to use this with modern PC games playing games at 720p on my BVM – as well as Dolphin.

Just something to consider.

[Taiyaki]

Thanks for the info and links.
I watched the video and still am not sure I understand what frame delay does.
I'm not really trying to improve upon the original hardware, my goal is more akin to getting something as close as possible to the original hardware emulated, but frame delay appears to be an improvement isn't it? Or is there some input lag anyway when going from a pc through analog connections to a crt?

[Xyga]

my goal is more akin to getting something as close as possible to the original hardware emulated

This is the purpose of GroovyMame and the frame_delay feature.

but frame delay appears to be an improvement isn't it?

No it's not. What you're thinking of is called 'run-ahead' and is a RetroArch feature, which you can use to get similar results to frame_delay, but also to get lower-than-original delay, an improvement, kind of.

Big Blue Frontend's videos are a bit messy but kinda explain how it works if you can follow.

[philexile]

It doesn't improve the original hardware – and this stuff is tough to wrap your head around!

Watch this part again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHXfsDA ... u.be&t=206

Basically, frame_delay can be set between 0-9 and each number is 10% for a total of 100%. If each frame is 16.7ms and you set frame_delay to 9, which is 90%, then the CPU pushes the emulation to delay to approximately 1.67ms.

This makes GroovyMame output the games pretty damn close to the original hardware. You should also get an Ipac to ensure that the controller lag is as minimized as possible.

At this point, I can't tell the difference between GroovyMame and a real arcade machine for a lot of games.

The game I always test is Ms. Pac-Man. I've been playing it since I could walk and can get a score of 140,000 after a few bourbons. I could NEVER get beyond 120k with emulation in the past. With this new build I was able to score 150,000 at 2:30am after spending the day building a computer and setting up GroovyMame.

It isn't a scientific evaluation, but it seems to be working for me at least!

[buttersoft]

Calamity has been making some posts lately about GPU workload increasing with super resolutions, so i imagine the frame delay factor will scale that too.

[BazookaBen]

So do they have a minimum spec to do frame delay=8 on something like a late 90's SNK game? I was going to build something with a 3rd-gen Pentium or i3 but no I'm having second thoughts.

[justice99]

So do they have a minimum spec to do frame delay=8 on something like a late 90's SNK game? I was going to build something with a 3rd-gen Pentium or i3 but no I'm having second thoughts.

I'm also interested. Btw what frame_delay is acceptable for playing games correctly?

[Taiyaki]

Big thank you to all who contributed since in particular both PhilExile and Xyga for the explanations on framedelay! I'm not sure how much I can spot the difference but now that I understand it better I definitely look forward to trying out this feature. From what I read if one uses groovymame d3d9ex version it will adapt the frame delay automatically (seems to be for Windows 7).

I apologize for not coming back sooner. So anyway the update:

- I put together the PC, working on mini itx is actually more challenging than working on a big workstation which I'm more used to, so this was actually the first challenge but ultimately got everything together. I did have to put in a starter cpu to update the asrock bios to work with 7th gen intel but everything went well and I proceeded to put in the i3 7350k and the Noctua cooling system.

- I installed Windows 7, but had some big complications during the process because the CPU (kaby lake) doesn't officially support Windows 7 so these smart people decided to require usb 3.0 ports be used which means getting stuck at the install screen of Windows 7 since 3.0 is not compatible out of the box. I had to work around this the long and tedious way. If anyone needs to know because they are in a similar situation I can write up the solution I went through next time.

- I went on to install crt emu drivers and it went through smoothly (first try, and even recognized the HD6450 correctly), then I proceeded to the VMMaker to go through those settings, then finally the OSD in which I selected the the 15khz compatible setting at 640x480 for the crt (I wasn't sure whether to pick 480i or 480p but my hunch is that it probably makes no difference so I opted for the 480i), but then when it came to hooking it up via the vga to component transcoder I had some issues.

First of all the image on the crt was a flickery mess (although from some reading online this appears to be normal behavior on the Windows OS), but also the geometry was completely wonky with overscan all over and even the picture being off center (pushed to the right), but most importantly after booting a game to test and leaving due to some other obligation I could never reboot cause the transcoder appears to have died, or at least malfunctioned. It was a Retrotek model from ebay and I have no idea if I did something to cause it to malfunction or if it was just faulty so I had to contact the seller tonight to ask about it. In the meanwhile I also bought a Audio Authority transcoder so I can continue on with this project. So in other words I stopped at the finishing line and have to wait a week or more to get over it.

[Dochartaigh]

First of all the image on the crt was a flickery mess (although from some reading online this appears to be normal behavior on the Windows OS), but also the geometry was completely wonky with overscan all over and even the picture being off center (pushed to the right), but most importantly after booting a game to test and leaving due to some other obligation I could never reboot cause the transcoder appears to have died, or at least malfunctioned. It was a Retrotek model from ebay and I have no idea if I did something to cause it to malfunction or if it was just faulty so I had to contact the seller tonight to ask about it. In the meanwhile I also bought a Audio Authority transcoder so I can continue on with this project. So in other words I stopped at the finishing line and have to wait a week or more to get over it.

Flickery mess just about sums up how horrible mine always looks on the desktop - like the worst flicker at 480i I've ever seen, even when it's set to a progressive mode. I tried every single resolution available too, on multiple monitors, different cables, etc. Majorly overscanned as well which is drastically different than the 15 actual consoles I run on these same monitors so the signal from the PC must be different somehow (I even made an underscan mode on my 20L5 just for GroovyMAME so I can see the windows icons or menu item I need to click on).

This is ironic because once you enter a game it's rock-solid, proper 240p(ish), with no flicker. I really can't comprehend why the desktop would be such a mess. I also haven't figured out (or honestly even messed around with for more than 10 minutes yet) how to properly use the OSD at all - anybody have a good tutorial? I always wondered if I could load the OSD while in a game (or the GroovyMAME frontend) and adjust the H and V centering and size, and do that for every single resolution so they're all perfectly scaled and centered per-resolution...

Anyway, your Retrotek (it's the VGA to YPbPr/Component one, right?) should not break - and it should work on 240p and 480i resolutions. I would definitely wait to hear back from Retrotek.

[Taiyaki]

Flickery mess just about sums up how horrible mine always looks on the desktop - like the worst flicker at 480i I've ever seen, even when it's set to a progressive mode. I tried every single resolution available too, on multiple monitors, different cables, etc. Majorly overscanned as well which is drastically different than the 15 actual consoles I run on these same monitors so the signal from the PC must be different somehow (I even made an underscan mode on my 20L5 just for GroovyMAME so I can see the windows icons or menu item I need to click on).

This is ironic because once you enter a game it's rock-solid, proper 240p(ish), with no flicker. I really can't comprehend why the desktop would be such a mess. I also haven't figured out (or honestly even messed around with for more than 10 minutes yet) how to properly use the OSD at all - anybody have a good tutorial? I always wondered if I could load the OSD while in a game (or the GroovyMAME frontend) and adjust the H and V centering and size, and do that for every single resolution so they're all perfectly scaled and centered per-resolution...

Anyway, your Retrotek (it's the VGA to YPbPr/Component one, right?) should not break - and it should work on 240p and 480i resolutions. I would definitely wait to hear back from Retrotek.

Yes exactly, worst flicker I've ever seen on my crt's as well. I did get to boot a game for a couple minutes and it looked amazing, solid 240p, but unfortunately the image being off center and the overscan continued even in GroovyMame, so I'm guessing this needs to be configured somewhere. I wasn't very handy with the OSD either, it didn't help that I was concerned I'd end up flashing some 31khz back the tv's way. I too wish there were a good tutorial, I'm pretty sure the geometry fix (probably something to do with adjusting to NTSC tv standards) is either in there or in some text files needed to be edited somewhere but I have no idea at the moment.

[Taiyaki]

EDIT to the previous post. So actually the video is now working just fine. I had some difficulties getting everything working properly but things ended well.

[Taiyaki]

Been a few days but long story short everything is working and working fine. I'm still learning to make some adjustments to the porches and such to center the image but aside from that everything is working beautifully. I can't run the Mortal Kombat (1~U3) games properly but that seems to be a common issue on later Sony consumer tubes, hopefully there's a way to fix this even if it breaks accuracy to at least play them. I used Atom-15 and although the install through DOS is a bit tricky it worked fine. So all in all a very challenging project but succeeding is very rewarding (and now I get to play some great games on a near arcade perfect PC).

[digitron]

delete

[Xyga]

BTW I don't know if you guys have given the new/upcoming 9th gen Intels a look but some of them are very interesting.

4 cores i3-9100, 9300, 9320, now all feature Turbo and climb above 4GHz without OC.
i3-9350K/KF up to 4.60GHz, that's something that'll let you play most games in MAME and benefit from good frame_delay at the same time.

6 cores i5-9600 (also K/KF) also shoot to 4.60GHz w/out OC, the basic model being less power hungry might be the most interesting price/performance-si even though it doesn't overclock.

Thing though, is I can hardly find any reliabe prices and availability yet, at least not on my local market... if any of those drops below 200 it might be a great choice for a rather high-end MAME/GroovyMAME setup.