SentaiBrad

Because that's the number thrown around, but the CPU does much more. The speed is the same, but how many instructions per second, and various other details and capabilities are something you have to dig to read. You also need to look at needing a GPU for sure with some CPU's. Some variants don't have integrated graphics, and some low cost builds go that route. You'd want a slightly beefier CPU to offset the double load too. A CPU from 10 years ago will one only fit in a motherboard of that era, and also cutting down on everything else like RAM, but it's absolutely not the same. Those frequencies are the same, but the speed at which it does everything does not compare. It's the same with RAM, the amount is one part of the equation and how fast it is is the other. DDR3 to DDR4 too, even if you found the "same frequency", we're talking about two completely different things here. The same "speeds" don't mean anything in this scenario. Realistically, no, you don't need a top of the line CPU, and that's not what I am trying to get at either, it's left up to the user and your needs. However, if you want to emulate some newer stuff, potentially do some gaming, or you want your computer to be somewhat future proof and have use for the next few years, then you don't want to settle, necessarily, for the cheapest option. It's like going 80MPH in a Porsche, or going 80MPH in a Pinto. Same speeds, completely different experiences.

Ah, then yea, this totally depends on each theme. If you have the knowledge you can modify the themes to do this, but that will require knowing how to work with XAML. Cid, or any other Theme creator can give you more information regarding that. You might even try requesting that the creators make an update with that in mind. Some of them I know don't mind taking some requests.

It might just be that other themes need to update for compatibility. I'm not 100%, but @CriticalCid might be able to answer that when he's available. As for if a wheel should be using specific artwork, and it's not, some themes can tell Big Box to use specific art for a wheel, and If I recall you can't change that otherwise. You can edit a platform and playlist clear logo, you can change them in LaunchBox by going to Tools -> Manage Platforms. In here, you can add and remove images. Just remember to set the category of image before clicking ok. This is the method that I've found to work the most. Once you've changed them, you may need to also reset your cache in Big Box. In the options menu is a Cache menu, and you can reset it in there.

So, it could be a few things. If your other platforms are working properly though, then chances are it's not a permissions issue with Windows. Lets check the XML and see if it's set to read only some how. Close down LaunchBox or BigBox, then go in to your LaunchBox/Data/Platforms folder. Right click your PC XML (it will be named what ever you called the platform), and go to properties. If it's set to read only, then uncheck it and click apply. If it's not set to read only, then it might be XML corruption and it will require a bit more work. Make a copy of your PC.xml. With a copy, delete the original. Re-open LaunchBox, then import your PC titles again. During the import use the uncheck all button for the images, so none of the images re-download. All of your previous images will re-attach to each of your games. Try editing a title or deleting it, and let me know if it works now. You'll also need to go to Tools -> Image Cleanup if you didn't import some games, or if you removed them after the fact.

Have you checked out the Controller Automation menu? Some emulators will still have some odd issues, but the Controller Automation stuff will solve a majority of the problems. Some arcade boards emulate a keyboard, and in which case you can't assign Controller Automation buttons to that, but only a small few do this if I recall properly. Set your hold button in Controller Automation, then set the other buttons like exist. Press the hold button then the exit button.

Yea, LaunchBox will recreate several things like your Cache folder. Do what the others have suggested.

Sure, the comparison videos are great when comparing a bunch of different games together, but it doesn't tell the complete story. Chances are, your system, or any other system, is setup that way. So you have to consider what OS you're running, and other software you need and use. Completely perfect NES emulation (100%, etc), will require a decent CPU surprisingly. The SNES for example, Bsnes Accuracy (RA or otherwise), requires about a 3Ghz CPU, and that's just for that. Again, the full environment, OS and other software require some CPU power to. So a 3.4Ghz + would be my minimum there. To be honest though, I don't know if that 3Ghz spec assumes your PC, and means 3Ghz total, or if it's just 3Ghz required for just that. I would assume they don't assume the rest of your PC setup cause that seems impossible. While most emulators don't take advantage of multipe cores, quite a lot of software and your OS does, so it would be best to go for a Quad core. At a certain point, even if the Emulator requirements are not as high, you still gotta make sure the OS, LB, etc, have room to breathe a bit. When you start hitting your limits, the system starts to become unstable. I've ran out of RAM a lot while editing and rendering, and everything on my system comes to a crawl. If you found hardware that works for you, the system runs reasonably well, then it doesn't really matter in the end. I just know what I see people complain about all the time in regards to performance. There are certainly times where it's an issue with the software, or a bug, like this new potential 0 byte image bug that may be causing crashes that @syntax_X randomly found. In most other cases though, it's usually down to hardware and software. I am cautious when it comes to this subject too, because people feel attacked or like they made a bad decision and they spent money on it, but PC's just work this way. My 970 was already not the best, the 980 was out, then the Ti variants followed 2 months later, then 4 months later the 1060-1080 line was announced.

Yea, I don't know whats up, but ours aren't going anywhere.

SLI is actually very poorly supported. A shockingly small percentage of games even utilize the extra GPU, let alone your OS or regular applications. Emulators certainly don't use SLI setups. It's been a very common point of conversation about SLI setups, that they do cause performance degradation more than they increase performance. If you're playing the games that support it fully, then that's awesome, but the more cards you add to your PCI slots, the slower each subsequent device gets, and on some motherboards even the earlier devices will get slower. So you're adding in double the power, but then it's being cut off to only a portion of it's power due to PCI Lanes, on top of only some software utilizing it. On some motherboards, I saw scenarios where the single GPU was at 16x, but putting in a second GPU for SLI dropped each down to 8x, effectively nulling the effect of ever adding in a second GPU, and now causing issues because it's present. It's not exactly that cut and dry, especially because some of the ogod motherboards now will not drop as many lanes as fast anymore, but still. The issue is still there.

Yes, right now LaunchBox doesn't know the difference yet.

It doesn't really matter which roms are what, you honestly don't need to know that. When you import in LaunchBox, it will give you various import options and only import what you want based on those check boxes. Region is included there. Once imported, you can edit a game and see what rom it picked and you'll know that it's a ______ Region rom, but there isn't too much reason to know whats what unless you're modifying your set (and you really shouldn't be).

Yea, I agree, their failure rates are still much higher than anyone else's. Toshiba drives are good too, if you can still find them. I'm not sure they're making them anymore, or WD bought that as well. I have 2 Toshiba drives that are champions, an HGST drive, and the rest are WD. I have debated going with the Red drives myself, but the black ones have a high life and are faster too, so it's a toss up, but that price difference is fairly big from blue to red / black. Also above, when I said I have none of my Seagate drives anymore, I do mean they all failed.

While I agree, I do honestly hear more horror stories from Seagate drives. It's one thing to get a defective product, that can happen from anyone, anywhere, but when it's consistently Seagate that I only hear crap about, and I also have hard data to backup their failure rates, then I am led to believe their drives are not worth the money and I would rather pay the extra bit of money for peace of mind. I still have every Western Digital drive I've ever bought, and none of the Seagate ones, and I've owned several over the years.

It sounds like a good request! Click Issues/Requests at the top and put your feature request in there. Normally, I would make a search to see if it's been asked for before and vote on that one instead, but I think this is a new request. Don't forget to vote on your own ticket.

Yea, Image Priorities was next.

I'm not 100%, but I assume old versions yes. As long as you're paying for the service, it should stay.

Of course! No problem.

The files last for 30 days I believe. Otherwise, yea, you can tell it's program to back up as much or as little as you want. There is a file extension exclusion list, and I had to remove some file extensions from that list so it would also backup exe's and dll's, but otherwise it was ready to go right away. I've also excluded certain folders myself.

Actually, yes, LaunchBox does use multiple cores. I've heard Jason talk many many times about putting different operations in different threads. So yes, LaunchBox can take advantage of your CPU's multiple threads. I'm not sure how many, but. A lot of emulators wont, but that's to be expected. Some have options to enable multiple cores for use, and it can create some issues. Emulators are much much harder to get going multi-core. Hyperthreading was just the example I went to, but they're often Dual cores right? The i3 does have similar speeds, but they're in a class of their own. If it's a good deal though, and you want to go for it, then go for it! I'm just not sure the price difference is enough to make up for the complete lack that the i series gives. Remember, it also needs to power everything else your doing, not just a game. Part of the reason I don't like thos comparison videos is because they don't tell you anything about anything else, other than that single game, or maybe even a few games. The i5, i7 and i9x series are certainly overkill. The i9x is a $2k enthusiast CPU that requires a special motherboard. All I am meaning by that, is the expectation is an announcement within the next several months about the i9 coming down to consume level. There is also an odd shift in hardware expectation. People assume that the GPU is the most important aspect, and to go for the top, and while the GPU is certainly very very important, the CPU is just as important. The last few years, CPU upgrades from generation to generation have been tiny, while GPU's have been making giant leaps. I notice very very frequently that people talk about poor performance, their GPU is good but their CPU is several generations old and an i3 or an i5. While the i5 is what I consider the bottom of the barrel for gaming, for which ever generation you have for your motherboard, the farther back you go the worse off it gets. It's not just about the amount of cores and the raw speeds, it's how many instructions per second it can get through, it's multi-tasking capabilities, and so on. This all obviously doesn't start to get near what you have for hardware lying around and what price point you want to be at, but that is how I feel about the hardware talk.

You should certainly put that in a request on our BitBucket page. You can get there by clicking Issues/Requests at the top.

Yes, most thumb drives aren't going to have enough IO, or read write to be able to keep up. I've said in various places on the forums that the hard drive speed isn't TOO necessary, but that's when we're talking about full hard drives, 5400rpm vs 7200rpm, SATA 3 and full USB externals (USB devices that aren't skimping on the USB3 spec). When you start getting in to thumb drives, the speeds start to fluctuate wildly and the drives aren't going to be able to handle all the read / write at the same time. A Sandisk extreme performance thumb drive or SD card might work well enough.

I wouldn't personally go any lower than an i5, especially with the i9 announcements. I don't know if they're dropping i3's all together, but when i9's hit the consumer level its going up. Benchmarks are good and fascinating, I like them too, but they don't tell a complete picture about the hardware. I don't think the Celeron's have hyperthreading or anything else like that.

Have you forced the cache of Big Box to generate in the options? Otherwise take a look here:

If you have a Desktop or Laptop then you can transfer your license, but LB and BB do make a GPD Win run overtime, and it's not the same as a regular PC.

I let Alex know about this (@Vlansix) and he's made some changes regarding 0byte images just in case, or he will be.