VBA runs slowly on my Sempron2400 system

[lotus49]

I have run VBA without any problem on several PCs, but I have just installed XP onto a Sempron 2400 with 1GB of memory so my son could have his own desktop.

For some reason, VBA runs really slowly. If I have frame skip set to any less than 2 it runs like a dog. At 2 it is just about bearable most of the time, but the music (eg on Pokemon games) stutters and the performance varies between 95% down to 82%.

AFAICT the PC is fine. So far the only other application I have installed is WinDVD, which runs perfectly well. I know emulating is processor intensive, but shouldn't this system be easily powerful enough? My PocketPC can run a GBA emulator and that's nowhere near as powerful.

Firstly, can anyone with a comparable system let me know how well VBA runs on theirs.

Secondly, does anyone have any suggestions for tuning VBA or what to look for in terms of the hardware. I am a very experienced computer user (>15 years), but I have never been interested in hardware so I at a loss to know where to start looking.

[hagbard]

Have you auto fps enabled? I think not, but it slow downs the emulation a lot. Also set "no throttle", this makes unstable the fps on my PC. You might check the Options -> Video and try from GDI (should be slow), directdraw, d3d or opengl. The 2 last options are the best imho, pretty fast and nice. Disabling Vsync sometimes helps too. I like to set Options -> filter to normal, because I prefer the opengl output that filters the image much faster because the gfx card hardware does the job.

[montpics]

Probably higher screen resolution would slow the game. (As I once tried with older PC before)

[hagbard]

I'd also say that set 32-bit color deep truly slowdown the emluation

[lotus49]

Thank you both for your help.

The option that really made a difference was rendering. Using Direct3D I can turn frame skip to 0 and it runs at 98-100% all the time. This is at full resolution and colour depth so I can keep those settings and still have it all working perfectly.

I appreciate your help.

[hagbard]

No problem, I figured out that it was the problem. Thank you for your feedbak