Posted by Prophet on 15, 2000 at 1:43 AM:
In Reply to: Re: Mames, refresh rates, scrolls, vsyncs etc. posted by Havelok on 14, 2000 at 1:21 PM:
Very simply:
The way to get perfect scrolling is to use Advance MAME and make modes using triple buffers at double refresh (i.e. 120Hz, 110Hz etc.). The results are perfection, which the added bonus of "hardware" scanlines and no loss of brightness. This is what I use on my 27" SVGA display.
As I said, vsync sucks because it solves one problem and creates another. If one's card supports triple buffers, it's FAR superior.
The final word on all this is that if you want perfect displays and best speeds, you need to drop MAME32 and learn Advance MAME. I have nothing agains MAME32, but people interested in using arcade cabinets and having true-to-arcade experiences aren't going to find it in MAME32. Not to mention that DOS frontends like mm and ArcadeOS kick MAME32's butt as well IMO.
-P-
: I also knew that dos mame has better performance, but I didn't knew that specific versions for your microprocessor would improve fps that much. I tried dos mame with my Celeron and the fps were the same, so I turned back to mame32, which has many advantages, despite if your using frontends for the dos version. I never tried a the specific version for my celeron, but now I don't really need it. I've tried what you say about triple buffer, but I don't notice any difference. The scroll is almost perfect, very smooth running at 60fps, but there are two little things that ocur sometimes: when a very fast scroll is moving, you can notice a very very brief interruption; second: when a scroll is moving, either vertically or horizontally, sometimes you can notice that there's a line very slightly displaced moving vertically on the screen. I can't explain it better, but I think it's a little defect that has to do with the syncronism of the monitor. That's why I was asking about vsync. I've heard some people complain about these effects when turning arround in Quake3, a game that always works without vsync. Finally, although performance is not a problem for me now, I would use dos mame if I could avoid this imperfections, but I have some doubts to solve. Maybe the scroll would be absolutelly perfect if games run at 60 fps and the refresh of my monitor is set to 60. Maybe that's why dos versions of mame work so fine with scrolling. However, I'm not using 60hz in my 17' Flatron monitor. I'm using 120hz of vertical refresh, and if I used dos mame, I would also try to set it to 120 or 140hz with unirefresh or any simmilar program (I have Raine working at 120hz too) because my eyes cannot stand low refresh rates anymore. Now... am I wrong if I say that this difference between vertical sync and fps is the cause of imperfect scrolling? So, dos mame wouldn't be a solution? May the solution be vsync?