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Yup, i also use Blackviper's guide since years ago. My current Windows 7 setup only has 45 processes when it loads. I tested this new behavior and it does indeed eliminate scrolling lag on my mechanical drive, after restarts. Although, now i get images pop as i scroll (as if the images were never cached) but it's the preferred "poison" for me since it;s less annoying. I think the best solution would be an option to allow the program go through all pictures automatically while it's open, without needing to manually scroll in order for pictures to appear. Sort of like popping in the background. It shouldn't take more than 1-2 minutes (depending on the size of the collection and speed of drive) to complete and since it doesn't lag anyway during this period it won't have a side effect. So you just get this popping effect during those first few minutes if you scroll. Otherwise you just leave it open for a minute without using it and then you get a lag-free pop-free experience. Also, is there a chance for an option to get the previous behavior? You know, before this update. It was better on the RAMDisk, there was no popping or lag, now there is popping even in the super fast RAMDisk. Just an option, it doesn't have to be completely eliminated or changed, more options are good.

Well, it's weird, but for me it's smooth during caching with no lag whatsoever. Also, i'm on an older CRT, using 1024x768 resolution so even with small icons my screen can only fit 12 boxes. The lag only happens after the cache is completed and i restart the machine. If i don't restart there are no problems even if i close LB and open it again later on. So basically, it reads the cached files from RAM while the PC is open but it clears after the restart and then LB has to read those tiny files from the cache folder on the disk. Is that correct? That would explain why i don't have this problem when i put the cache folder into the RAMDisk. Because, basically, i force the program to read those files from the much faster RAM, even after the restart (the RAMDisk application allows me to save everything from RAM to disk before restart and it load them again into RAM after the PC starts). It reads from the RAM for as long as the PC is turned on. But what happens after you restart? It needs to read the cache files from the disk until they get into RAM again. During that time i get scrolling lag (if i use the default folder from the mechanical disk that is) Is that correct? Anyway, that automatic background caching to RAM sounds good to me. Thanks for all the replies so far by the way.

Edit: OK it worked. But i had to create the destination folder manually. But it works so now i only need to keep the cache folder in the RAMDISK. And LB is smooth even after i restart. Thanks for the tip!

Thanks, i will try that and report a bit later

My cache folder is 15.800 files at around 250 MB. That's on a collection of 8.000 games in LB. I had already disabled most of what you mentioned. I have 16 GB, RAM cache is set to 2 GB. Behavior is the same always since i ever started using LB. Every time i restart the OS, LB lags a lot if THE CACHE WAS ALREADY COMPLETED BEFORE (if i refresh the cache, LB becomes smooth again, even though the pictures are loading). After i scroll through all the images, it's smooth again, until i restart the OS and then it lags again. That's with my regular setups in the mechanical disks, in both computers. So basically, in ordet to make LB smooth i either have to: -refresh my cache -go through every picture while it lags, until everything is shown. My copy in the RAMDISK does not have this problem. Even after OS restarts, LB is smooth when i browse through the whole collection of boxarts. Actually, i decided to use this setup instead as my main from now on because of this. Unless i find a way to move my cache folder in the RAMDISK so i can continue to use my regular setup in the mechanical HDD. I will do the same test on a mechanical drive on the windows 10 setup. If it's the same then i don't know what to say.

Can you give me some details in how you moved your image cache folder please? If it's easy that is...

Current search function got silly on me again... i wanted all the NBA games to show up and there were a bunch Pinball games in the lot... because, you know, Pi nba ll Here is the bitbucket request about this issue.... https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/530/advanced-search-options Dunno if there are enough votes by now and how hard a proper search function is to be implemented so i don't know how the priority works with the list.

Ok you guys had me worried about bad sectors but that's not an issue. I moved Launchbox to another drive (i have 3 internal 1TB drives) and generated a fresh cache folder. Then i restarted the computer and the program was again lagging while browsing the already cached (to disk) box arts. By the way, the same exact thing happens with my older Core 2 Duo PC. But at first i assumed it's because the PC is slower. If i had to describe the lag it would be like the program having trouble to keep up with me as i scroll using the "scrolling stick" on the right (the one you click and drag). As i move it up and down all the way a few times so it can "see" all the pictures again, it lags and does mini "freezes" that last half a second or so. Only after it sees all the pictures it becomes smooth again. You can imagine though that this is annoying when you have a lot of games. The original hard drive i use is in the antivirus's exclusion list. But i disabled it altogether for this test so that's not the issue either. It's also my main internal drives, no network, not even external ones. The only way i managed to fix this issue was to move the program into my RAMDISK. While general performance is the same (even fresh cache generation speed is the same), this particular "lag after cache is generated when i restart the PC" is not noticeable there. I assume that, because the files in the cache folder are thousands of little files (mine has 15k little files for a 7k collection of games) it's a bit too much for a mechanical drive to go through fast enough. I suspect that an SSD drive won't have a problem because it doesn't have to deal with random access latency. But i'm surprised you guys can't reproduce this. Do you all have SSDs? How big is your cache folder? I also use Windows 7, i'm not sure if the same happens on Windows 10, i'll have to test when i get access to my Win 10 PC. Also, just to avoid confusion, this is about the normal GUI mode, not big box (i still can't use it).

Doesn't disable hard disk cache. It will still generate files regardless.

Launchbox creates a cache folder in the images tree where it saves thousands upon thousands of tiny files, as you use the program. These files are also re-created every time you change some options or refresh your images. This seems like too much of a stress for an HDD, especially an SSD drive where you don't want so many writes to happen. Unfortunately, it seems you have no control over this folder. You can't disable it and you can't move it without moving everything else with it. I'd like to just move it into my RAMDISK so i won't have to worry about needless wear and tear on the HDD. Is there any other way to do so? Thank you.

Launchbox has two different behaviors with the artwork (in my experience). When images are cached on the disk and when they are not (like when you refresh them). When the images are not cached you can see them as they load while you are browsing. During this, Launchbox does not lag as you browse the pictures/games. You can see as the pictures load but at least the program is smooth and responsive. When all the images are cached it's all good and you can continue browsing the images without lag even when you close the program and open it again. However, it's when you restart your OS when the problems start. When you open Launchbox after an OS restart (and the images are cached during a previous session) then Launchbox lags badly when browsing the images/games. You don't see the images appearing/load (because they are cached) but the interface lags and freezes whenever you view new images during that session. The lag/freezes are so bad that i'd rather just refresh the images from the options and let the program load them again as i browse because at least then there is no lag/freezes. Also, RAM cache doesn't seem to make a difference in my system. Having said that, is there a way to disable caching on the disk? Like, refreshing the images every time i open LaunchBox so that i don't need to go to options/refresh images? Or just just an option to save the cache on the RAM only? Saving tens of thousands little files in a cache folder in the HDD doesn't seem to healthy IMO, especially for an SSD. I hope it reaches OpenEmu's performance at some point, which behaves like LaunchBox without images being cached (the pictures load when you reach them) but it does it so fast that you can barely catch the empty artwork.

There are some really bad quality manuals that LaunchBox downloads: As you can see (or can't see) this is unreadable. There are plenty of manuals like this on the NES collection and i don't know if other systems suffer from this. The worst thing about this is that you can't tell until you open them. So until then you think you "already have them" but in this condition you really rather don't. Not to mention that you might skip proper quality ones because you think you have them. I already deleted more that 30 manuals. I don't understand what's the point of lowering the quality that much? I have scanned and uploaded a lot of stuff in my day and i can assure you it's a long and tedious process. So why would anyone upload manuals in this state, all the work they done goes to waste.

Yeah, i can confirm those spikes, i go from 1-2% CPU usage to 15-18% every time i click a different platform. That's total CPU usage on a 4 core CPU with no hyperthreading (i5 4670).

It sure is. It's at least twice as fast as the previous version for me. Versions 6.4 through 6.6 were the fastest though (less than 1 second in the systems list for me, same collection) so i wonder what was so different about those and if the same performance can be achieved. If not, it's fine really. 6.10 performance is OK. As long as it doesn't slow down later on that is

Let me detail my test a bit more. First of all, my HDDs are all mechanical. I don't have an SSD. So with a RAMDISK test, i would be able to see the biggest possible difference. I created a 4 GB RAM disk. Then i copied-pasted my Launchbox setup (it's portable) without the manuals or the pictures folder. Then i copied the picture folders of 3 systems (less than 2.000 pictures). The whole setup was less than 2GBs in the RAMDISK. I opened the program in the RAMDISK and refreshed the image cache. I made sure all the images were cached and then started browsing. The performance was the same. It takes a bit less than 2 seconds to change systems in the list in both the RAMDISK or the mechanical drive. It takes a second to change games in the games list in both mediums as well. Overall, i couldn't tell i was running this on a RAMDISK. Even the image caching on startup was only a tiny bit faster. So from my testing, in my system (i5 4670) the mechanical drive is not a bottleneck. I can't comment for slower systems though. Keep in mind that it's not a complaint. The current speed of the program is acceptable. I'm just trying to clear things up about supposed bottlenecks.

Just wanted to say that i tested LaunchBox into a RAMDISK. This is, of course, MUCH faster even than the fastest SSD drive (like several factors faster). I also removed most of my pictures and left only few of systems to browse. Basically, i tried to make it as fast as it can possibly go. The results were, well, there was no difference. The program is exactly the same as in my mechanical HDD, with my complete collection. In other words, it doesn't make a difference how fast your HDD is or how big your collection is. At least on a decent CPU. I don't know if slower systems can benefit from faster storage/smaller collections. But my i5 4670 definitely doesn't benefit at all. It runs the program as fast as it can possibly run it, despite the storage/collection size. So the responsiveness/quickness of the program depends on the program itself and the CPU, from my testing, not the HDD or the collection size.

But the size of my collection is always the same since version 5.0. Since the program is portable, i'd like to get version 6.4 and test it again, to see if it's indeed a change in my system that causes the lag. Is there anywhere i can download it? I know i should have backed it up before updating : /

Yeah there is a definite improvement with the beta. Time it takes to browse through systems is a little less than 2 seconds for me now. Any chances the stable version reaching version's 6.4 to 6.6 performance? With these versions it was a joy to browse through your collection because it took less than a second per selection. If not, it's ok. "less than 2 seconds" is an acceptable speed (as long as it doesn't slow down again in the future ) Edit: Holy crap at those 9.43 seconds ckp! (how did you even measure it with such precision?). For me the program would be completely unusable this way. In what system you run it?

Performance peaked at version 6.6. After that it got progressively worse. And now i wonder if i could find that version instead. I don't remember any features that were useful to me in newer versions so i could just stick to that, at least until advanced search options is implemented.

6.9 seems to be the slowest version yet. It takes 3 full seconds (sometimes 4) to change a system list. I'm assuming performance/optimisations is on a low priority lately?

correct path should be C:\Users\lukel\RetroArch\saves\MAME2014\nvram\tektagt. The cfg path is a separate one.

Ok i found it. The emulator generated the cfg somewhere else outside the root folder. I put it back in the config folder and it works now.

It doesn't work anymore? The config file doesn't seem to do anything : /

Aren't the hotkeys the same for every core then? As far as i know, all these functions are handled by RetroArch, not from each individual core. Which means you can just setup the hotkeys in the main retroarch.cfg and you are done. All cores will use the same. No need for other cfgs or overrides.

Im not sure because i don't use hotkeys. But if you could do it in a separate cfg, i'm sure it can be done with an override. The main thing i'm trying to say here is that the less stuff you load manually through commands, the better. Overrides, controls and shaders are all automatically loaded by RetroArch itself so all you need to do is load the core. A separate cfg should be the last option, in case anything else doesn't work (like having different shaders for different systems using only one core).