MAME Performance Help Suggestions ?

On some games that don't run well due to my computer limitations, I use settings such as . . .

ddraw 1
switchres 1
resolution 640x480x16
triplebuffer 0
frameskip 6
hwstretch 0
scanlines 1
rdtsc 1

and it makes the game totally playable, MAMEs README states frameskip operates at (1-12frames/sec) X out of every 12frames per sec. So setting it to 6 turnes the game from 60fps to 30fps. Altho now at 30fps it plays consistent and normal speed so no more studdering.

However, I notice the above method only seem to work for me so far on FPS games that use the LightGun, just for example the Alien3 game.

Other types of games like 2d fighters or sidescrollers or even racers, don't seem to have the desired affect mentioned above. Instead of being 30fps and smooth, just for example - if it were running 40x or 50x fps, with the previously above mentioned settings, it would still appear to run at the same speed and studder. But WORSE, instead of ~40x fps it would then studder at ~20x fps. And thats with VSYNC, SYNCREFRESH, etc all disabled. So I'm a bit confused on MAME's behavior here.

If anyone knows how to fix this? Is there a magic setting I'm overlooking? or perhaps is this just a big MAME limitation due to halfass emulation performance dedication.

If there are known good emulators for some of these arcade games I would be using them indevidually instead of MAME, I mentioned in a different thread MAME seems to perform consistantly worse than other emu's. For some of the games tho I don't see much options except finding them in different platforms, such as PS1 or Dreamcast ports just for example.

On that note If anyone know of a good emu for fighting games such as Primal Rage and Mortal Kombat, lol pritty much the ones that cant be run on winkawaks. And Racing games.

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or perhaps is this just a big MAME limitation due to halfass emulation performance dedication.

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Na MAME is just a decoder really. They clearly state that MAME has no direction in terms of speed. The hacks are just hacks and help where they can. A few old arcade emulators did aim to fix speed by using 3d acceleration like Zinc. The best performance for MAME itself will come from the CPU. I'm not sure if there are certain ports that use multiple cores or not as I have not research it much in a few year. Zinc is old but it did run the fighting games a lot better.

Thx for the info. I notice zinc is dedicated to sony arcade, I'll definitly save it for those games. Regarding the rest that MAME doesn't seem to work very well for lower powered hardware(within reasonable extent), I'll probably have to go through and sort them out according to vendor, and see if there's an Emu dedicated to that Vendor, such as Zinc is to Sony.

I actually avoid 3d roms on this low powered setup, but I had noticed some of the Zinc roms i tried randomly in the past such as Strider 2, did run in MAME but not full speed. I wouldn't be saprized if Zinc ends up running them fine even on low powered systems lol

Just bothered me, all other non-3d Fighters for example that i tried in other Emu's such as winKawaks or KI series with U64emu, run Fine with adjusted settings, but other fighters not covered in such Emu's that i knew of just for example the MortalKombat series, Studder in MAME and seems to be absolutely no way to improve that through any settings MAME has as mentioned in my above post. Kind of a rant I know, and nota big deal if i get it setup on a more permanant higher power setup, But annoying. How much more difficult could it be to implement even a most basic acceleration feature that apparently every single other Emu besides MAME seems to have LoL. Not really a question sorry just Ranting

ok does it have directx installed as in a decent version im on 9.0c but im in xp ,,im just running through faults that i have come across by past experience mate..if that doesnt help try a graphics card in that pc .. anything will do to run mame try again should work ok

yup those are all ok. I don't think a gfx card would do much tho. as mame has little or NO accelleration features and is highly CPU dependent. But I appreciate the suggestion.