Desparetly need help with mame.

[trydowave]

Hi. Ive been a user of mame from what seems the very beginning. I have had troubles with various versions in the past but have always been able to resolve them. This time however i'm stumped.

Im using mame32XT 0.135. been running great on my laptop for months but recently the frame rate has been at %99 and occasionally going to %101 for example.

I've had this before and I've corrected it but nothing im doing now seems to work.

Id just like to get it running at a stable %100 again so the music doesn't skip.

My settings are as follows:
ticked:

display:
enforce aspect ratio
throttle
fame skipping set to 0/10 draw every frame

advanced:
dx3d version 9
bilinear filtering
wait for vsync
sync to monitor refresh rate
triple buffering
hq2xbold

screen:
default

rest default.

My laptop is an HP probook 4510S and is running correctly.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[Fudoh]

The 100% will depend on the game you're running. 99% or 101% implies that the game is originally running slightly slower or faster than your monitor refresh rate. Without this you'll get stutter and possibly tearing.

To disable the speed up (or slow down) you have disable vsync, wait for monitor refreh and triple buffering. I would advise against it though, unless you're running games that are further off than the 1% you're seeing.

[Xyga]

Or you can leave only throttle and triple buffering ticked.
It won't be butter-smooth, but the games will run at their original speed and you won't see any tearing.

[trydowave]

I get this %99 problem with all games. Be it SFIII or 1942. Age or category of game dosent seem to make a difference.

Or you can leave only throttle and triple buffering ticked.
It won't be butter-smooth, but the games will run at their original speed and you won't see any tearing.

I've tried multiple configurations including triple buffering and throttle only. I still get %99 speed.

I have all settings enabled on my main pc which is connected to a Samsung Syncmaster P2770 and it doesn't exhibit any of the problems of the laptop. I also don't understand how the laptop was running fine before and now isn't. This happens with all versions of mame that I run on it, old or new.

Ive also tried uninstalling the graphics drivers and completely reinstalling mame, as well as resetting all settings to default.

It doesn't make any sense?

[Xyga]

It doesn't make any sense?

Possibly the problem isn't Mame but your laptop.

IIRC some programs like antivirus for instance can affect Mame's speed directly (experienced this once; constantly varying speed... µtorrent running in the background was to blame).

Check your processes and cpu usage in the task manager. See if something smells fishy, kill the processes you know aren't essential, and see if it changes anything for Mame.

By the way do you have the 'sleep when possible' option ticked ?

Can't think of anything else... or maybe the way vertical synchronization is set under your graphic card's settings (forced, auto, off?)

[trydowave]

It doesn't make any sense?

Possibly the problem isn't Mame but your laptop.

IIRC some programs like antivirus for instance can affect Mame's speed directly (experienced this once; constantly varying speed... µtorrent running in the background was to blame).

Check your processes and cpu usage in the task manager. See if something smells fishy, kill the processes you know aren't essential, and see if it changes anything for Mame.

By the way do you have the 'sleep when possible' option ticked ?

Can't think of anything else... or maybe the way vertical synchronization is set under your graphic card's settings (forced, auto, off?)

Went into msconfig and disabled everything that I could for startup. Same with processes. Also unticked sleep when possible option and vsync in the graphics options are set to let application decide. I have tried the other settings.

Tried it with antivirus disabled.

None of this made a difference.

I,m at a loss.

[Xyga]

Reinstall Windows lol.

Sorry dunno...

[Pasky]

Try enabling multi-threading if you have a CPU with multiple cores.

[Xyga]

By the way could you screen-capture all your Mame default settings tabs and show us ?

(display, advanced, direct3d, sound, miscellaneous)

This way we may be able to spot something none of us though about until now...

[trydowave]

Try enabling multi-threading if you have a CPU with multiple cores.

Ive tried this... made no difference.

I will get onto screen capture for my next post.

As for reinstalling Windows. I'm considering it Good to have a complete clear out once in a while.

UPDATE: Just reinstalled windows and installed mameXT afterwards. Nothing else could be interfering with it now, on a software level. im still getting the %99 speed?!?

Im going to try other emulators like Finalburn etc.

UPDATE:

Ive managed to fix this. Sort of.

After using nearly every version of mame ive settled on Mameplus32 0.95.

I have to run the newer versions of mame with vsync off now for some unknown reason or the sound will stutter as it runs at %99. The problem still eludes me!

However. The old version of mame has no stutter, even though the framerate reports %99 59/60 all the time.

If I just hit F11 and hide it I wont know any different. This version of mame has adequate filter effects for use on my projector so its a win win situation.

Not the outcome I had hoped for but its good enough.

Thanks all for your help and suggestions.