(SNES emu) Lag/slow down during specific periods/sections of games

[ZeReLioN]

Hi there.

ZSNES and Snes9x were both fine with no issues the last month or two. Lately, I've been experiencing significant and irrefutable lag or slow downs during certain sections of games. They almost always seem to be during high amounts of effects or activity on screen, but not always. Sometimes a single laser being shot by an enemy can cause the game to slow down or lag even if I am not doing anything and standing still. These games include A Link to the Past or Mega Man X games for eg. What I'm experiencing is very similar to an extreme drop in frames (feels like 10 fps or so) but the thing is when I put up the fps counter in game, it shows a constant 60 fps no matter what!

I have tried many things in the settings. I have experimented with different resolutions and aspect ratios with or without stretch, full screen and windowed. Tried with both vsync and triple buffering on or off and with either on. I have tried putting it on very low resolution with no HQ filter or any type of image enhancer and makes no difference. Auto frame rate or the amount of frame skip also make no difference. I am very easily able to recreate/replay these issues since they happen at the exact same spot/sequence or action every single time no matter the settings.

My PC specs are

i5-4670 3.40GHz
8.00GB Ram
GTX 760 2GB
16:9 60Hz monitor

I have the latest windows and drivers and runtimes.

At first I tried to simply ignore it and figured it was part of the emulation but it seems to happen fairly regularly now and it is really breaking timing, speed and immersion.

Is there anything out there I haven't tried yet or anyone have any idea what might be my particular problem here?

Thanks for the help!

[malloc4096]

First verifying your stuff isn't corrupt

Use any app of your preference to verify, my example uses Fsum. Tho note Fsum may not be compatible with win8.

[1]You'd need to pick the hash you want to use from the list bellow, copy it to a file
(ex. C:\directory_path\zsnesw_md5.txt).

[2]Open Command prompt goto
>Start\Run "cmd" [enter]

[3]From Command prompt type
>"C:\Fsum_Directory\fsum" -c -d"C:\Program Files\zsnesw1.51" "C:\directory_path\zsnesw_md5.txt"

#NOTE - Mind the quotation marks around paths with spaces " "
#NOTE - And Please Do change the PATH names where appropriate

sfv, crc32, md5, sha256, sha512 (in that order from Top to Bottom) [zsnesw.exe (v1.51)]

zsnesw.exe 9CAFB85D
9cafb85d ?CRC32*zsnesw.exe
8e3f9f4ba68261d9976a79f842b2ecdd *zsnesw.exe
fcc9c75f44bcfc3a5c7f1b8d8bed6b2cba95ecb80531a57351f006883b47b52e ?SHA256*zsnesw.exe
ae369dd43f344a501953fe60fa692e8a25ae41bb8ab935edaa1fad8e6935a182cfa4c5ab604feb5b7dea29340da81bf6f4463f4132f8e5954e0ff3a62cd57834 ?SHA512*zsnesw.exe

use NSRT to verify your rom(s).

From Command Prompt (single rom)
>"C:\nsrt_directory\nsrt" -info "C:\rom_directory\rom_name.zip"

From Command Prompt (multiple roms)
>"C:\nsrt_directory\nsrt" -info C:\rom_directory\* >"C:\choose_directory\nsrtlog_info.txt"

#NOTE - Don't use any quotation marks with wildcards(*) with NSRT. Even if there are spaces in the Name or Directory. Thats the only way it worked for me anyhow.

Here are my failsafe zsnesw settings. Can simply Overwrite the settings in zsnesw.cfg with these.
#Change the Rom Path(s) to the appropriate directory tho.
They are also consiquently the settings i use most often because IMO, the Low Resolution stretched to full screen actually looks better than High res with scanlines, with the lower cpu resource benefit. Also #NOTE (triple buffering) eliminates the need for (vsync), however (triple buffering) only takes affect in FULL Screen mode.

For your own reference to truncate your config files like this.. is how you do
From Command Prompt:
>cd /D "C:\zsnesw_path"
>ren "zsnesw.cfg" "zsnesw.cfg.bak"
>For /F "eol=;" %a IN (zsnesw.cfg.bak) DO echo %a>>zsnesw.cfg

### IF everything checks out good after this and you still encounter slowdowns, the cause is unrelated to zsnes
### Could be Operating System issues, Driver issues?(controller drivers?) conflicts, etc.

GUIComboGameSpec=0
GameSpecificInput=0
AllowMMX=1
PauseFocusChange=0
HighPriority=0
DisableScreenSaver=0
newengen=0
bgfixer=0
ScreenShotFormat=0
AutoPatch=1
DisplayInfo=1
RomInfo=0
FPSAtStart=0
TimerEnable=0
TwelveHourClock=0
ClockBox=1
SmallMsgText=0
GUIEnableTransp=0
cvidmode=1
PrevWinMode=21
PrevFSMode=1
CustomResX=320
CustomResY=240
antienab=0
NTSCFilter=0
NTSCBlend=0
NTSCRef=0
NTSCHue=0
NTSCSat=0
NTSCCont=0
NTSCBright=0
NTSCSharp=0
NTSCGamma=0
NTSCRes=0
NTSCArt=0
NTSCFringe=0
NTSCBleed=0
NTSCWarp=0
En2xSaI=0
hqFilter=0
hqFilterlevel=3
scanlines=0
GrayscaleMode=0
Mode7HiRes16b=0
vsyncon=0
TripleBufferWin=1
ForceRefreshRate=0
SetRefreshRate=60
KitchenSync=0
KitchenSyncPAL=0
Keep4_3Ratio=1
gammalevel=0
SPCDisable=0
soundon=1
StereoSound=0
RevStereo=0
Surround=0
PrimaryBuffer=0
SoundQuality=5
MusicRelVol=100
SoundInterpType=1
LowPassFilterType=0
EchoDis=0
RewindStates=8
RewindFrames=15
nosaveSRAM=0
SRAMSave5Sec=0
SRAMState=1
LatestSave=0
AutoIncSaveSlot=0
AutoIncSaveSlotBlock=0
AutoState=0
PauseLoad=0
PauseRewind=0
per2exec=100
HacksDisable=1
frameskip=0
maxskip=1
FastFwdToggle=0
FFRatio=8
SDRatio=0
EmuSpeed=29
ROMPath="C:\\insert_path\\roms\\snes\\"
SRAMPath="C:\\insert_path\\zsnes151\\saves\\"
SnapPath="C:\\insert_path\\zsnes151\\capture\\"
SPCPath=""
BSXPath=""
STPath=""
SGPath=""
GNextPath=""
FEOEZPath=""
SJNSPath=""
MDHPath=""
SPL4Path=""
guioff=0
showallext=0
GUIloadfntype=0
prevloadiname=0"|\"
prevloaddnamel=0"LV
prevloadfnamel=0"LV
prevlfreeze=1
GUIRClick=0
lhguimouse=0
mouseshad=0
mousewrap=0
TrapMouseCursor=0
MouseWheel=0
esctomenu=1
JoyPad1Move=0
FilteredGUI=0
newfont=0
savewinpos=0
GUIwinposx=0,6,65,33,42,5,34,6,64,8,5,33,56,64,56,5,3,28,48,6,28,53,0
GUIwinposy=0,20,70,20,20,20,20,20,30,30,20,20,60,30,60,20,20,60,60,20,30,20,0
GUIEffect=0
GUIRAdd=4
GUIGAdd=8
GUIBAdd=12
GUITRAdd=0
GUITGAdd=0
GUITBAdd=0
GUIWRAdd=8
GUIWGAdd=8
GUIWBAdd=18
AlwaysOnTop=0
SaveMainWindowPos=1
MainWindowX=78
MainWindowY=0
AllowMultipleInst=1
AutoLoadCht=0
CheatSrcByteSize=0
CheatSrcByteBase=0
CheatSrcSearchType=0
CheatUpperByteOnly=0
MovieDisplayFrame=0
MovieStartMethod=0
MZTForceRTR=0
MovieVideoMode=4
MovieAudio=1
MovieAudioCompress=1
MovieVideoAudio=1
KeyExtraEnab1=0
KeyExtraEnab2=0
KeySaveState=0
KeyStateSelct=61
KeyLoadState=62
KeyIncStateSlot=0
KeyDecStateSlot=0
KeyStateSlc0=0
KeyStateSlc1=0
KeyStateSlc2=0
KeyStateSlc3=0
KeyStateSlc4=0
KeyStateSlc5=0
KeyStateSlc6=0
KeyStateSlc7=0
KeyStateSlc8=0
KeyStateSlc9=0
KeyRewind=0
KeyFastFrwrd=41
KeySlowDown=0
KeyFRateUp=0
KeyFRateDown=0
KeyEmuSpeedUp=0
KeyEmuSpeedDown=0
KeyResetSpeed=0
EMUPauseKey=25
INCRFrameKey=0
KeyBGDisble0=2
KeyBGDisble1=3
KeyBGDisble2=4
KeyBGDisble3=5
KeySprDisble=6
KeyDisableSC0=63
KeyDisableSC1=64
KeyDisableSC2=65
KeyDisableSC3=66
KeyDisableSC4=67
KeyDisableSC5=68
KeyDisableSC6=87
KeyDisableSC7=88
KeyVolUp=27
KeyVolDown=26
KeyQuickExit=0
KeyQuickLoad=0
KeyQuickRst=0
KeyResetAll=7
KeyQuickClock=0
KeyQuickChat=20
KeyQuickSnapShot=16
KeyQuickSaveSPC=0
KeyUsePlayer1234=0
KeyDisplayFPS=0
KeyDisplayBatt=0
KeyNewGfxSwt=9
KeyWinDisble=10
KeyOffsetMSw=11
KeyIncreaseGamma=0
KeyDecreaseGamma=0
KeyInsrtChap=0
KeyPrevChap=0
KeyNextChap=0
KeyRTRCycle=0
TimeChecker=241
PrevBuildNum=0
FirstTimeData=1
debuggeron=0
cfgdontsave=0

__________________________________________
Incase it helps anyone. This is how I clean my roms...
Do note all Directory_names are just examples.

From Command Prompt:

>"C:\nsrt_directory\nsrt" -deldup -rename -lowext -nospaces -deint -remhead -savetype zip C:\rom_directory\*

Or For better compression ratio:

>"C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z" e "C:\rom_directory" -o"C:\temp_rom_directory" * -r
>"C:\nsrt_directory\nsrt" -deldup -rename -lowext -nospaces -deint -remhead  C:\temp_rom_directory\*
>md "C:\new_rom_directory"
>cd /D "C:\new_rom_direcotry"
>FOR %a	IN ("C:\temp_rom_directory\*") DO "C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z" a -tzip "%~na.zip" "%a" -mx=8 -mm=Deflate

If NSRT reports rom(s) CRC Failed (and/or) Not Found in Database. Could try:
>"C:\nsrt_directory\nsrt" -safetrim "C:\rom_directory\rom_name.ext"
>"C:\nsrt_directory\nsrt" -fix "C:\rom_directory\rom_name.ext"

If not working after that, its Corrupt, Hacked, or Fake.