Blinking/Flashing game image

[draxxdk]

Every 5-10 seconds the first game or two first game, will lose their image, and then a second later get them back. It seems random when it happens. I have tried switching all images from jpg to png, that didn't change anything. I also tried making all the images smaller 400x600 approximately, with same result.

I have launchbox installed on two computers. On the laptop, that are 3-4 years old, this bug doesn't happen.

This bug only happens on my desktop computer that has the following specs: GTX 980 TI, Intel i5-6600K, 16 GB DDR4-3200.

Could it be caused by the monitor maybe? My desktop monitor is: Samsung S34E790C 34.0" 3440x1440 60Hz Monitor.

I have installed Launchbox on the desktop computer today. So it uses the newest version available.

Edited December 1, 2016 by draxxdk

[SentaiBrad]

The only thing I could think that would affect that is the cache, because that's pretty much always been directly cache related. Have you tried resetting your cache in the options? You can also manually delete the cache folder as well. It could still be related to the cache, even if resetting it doesn't fix it, the hard drive could be failing in the sector that the cache is on, so changing your LB location could also be a potential step.

@Jason Carr is this ringing any bells for you?

[Maddoc1007]

@draxxdk @SentaiBrad is right your default cache in LaunchBox is set to probably 300mb it must be set to at least 512mb in order to stop the flickering

[SentaiBrad]

Just now, Maddoc1007 said:

@draxxdk @SentaiBrad is right your default cache in LaunchBox is set to probably 300mb it must be set to at least 512mb in order to stop the flickering

I don't recall that being the case, but that could be true. The MB selector in the options is for what LaunchBox uses for RAM though, not it's cache size. It can effect not needing to call from the hard drive as often, but it doesn't increase the cache size it's self.

[Maddoc1007]

@SentaiBrad That was a question that was asked by @cammelspit on mondays twitch that i watched yesterday about the flickering and @Jason Carr said it should be set at 512 and cammel tested it and said it stopped the flickering and it worked for me as well.

Edited December 1, 2016 by Maddoc1007

[SentaiBrad]

Ah, sweet. I was on the right track, but I missed that specific bit (I don't watch the live streams X_X). That does make sense though, but it is upping the amount of RAM LaunchBox uses, so if a system has low RAM then make sure to keep it in check. 512 is rather low, but if you are on a 4GB system, that eats up a lot of valuable ram.

[draxxdk]

Thanks both of you. 512 MB cache fixed the problem. 

[FUBAR]

I had the same problem just now and can also confirm upping the cache memory limit has fixed the issue.  

I have 16gb of ram, am I alright with upping from the default to 1gb? 

 

Edit:  oh and this is my first post of many I'm sure!

Edited December 1, 2016 by FUBAR

[cammelspit]

@FUBAR I ended up actually maxing it out at the 4GB but anything over 800MB, the lowest I tested, worked fine. I do have over 51K roms imported and it seems that it only ends up being a problem if you have more than a few roms in total. @Jason Carr if I recall, made the default much more than the 300 it was before so it shouldn't be a problem for new users going forward. I too have 16GB of ram but on a machine with 16GB or more, I wouldn't worry at all, I mean, almost nothing uses more than a few GB at a time other than major productivity apps.

[SentaiBrad]

Yea, I have mine set to 4GB as well, I have 32GB. If you have at least 12GB+ you should be fine setting it to 2-4GB. You may not see a big increase from 2 to 4, but I want to double back to something: this isn't changing the cache size at all. The cache size is what ever the cache size it, which is very large. This doesn't effect anything with the Cache directly, only that more is loaded in to RAM first before requiring the cache. It's just simply a ram usage increase. I just want to repeat that point.

[cammelspit]

No need, I am sure everyone understands this. The issue here is the extreme performance hit one would take when LB has to hit disk to get it's cached data. My theory is that this will cause the whole HDD read time to take place while slowly enough that the redraw won't happen till this data is fetched. The fix for the moment is to just allow more of the cache to be held in the ram, which is orders of magnitude faster. I didn't start noticing any issues till I got over the 20K mark or so with the imported roms so it stands to reason 300MB would be enough for any light user, less than 20k roms. 800 Worked fine, even for my 51,294 roms, I just increased it to 4Gb seeing as that would give me a very wide margin for future expansion of my collection, somewhere around the quarter million roms or more at the very least. Either way, Jason solved it so there shouldn't be too many problems going forward, for which I am grateful.