MAME 0.188 help

[spectral]

I've ran into a problem with the .188 version of mame. For some reason it wont remember any video settings at all. I turn vsync on and once I close and reopen mame they are back off again. I've tried it with a no nag exe I compiled myself aswell as both 32 and 64 bit versions direct from the site. I have have checked that no files in the folder are set to read only. I also downloaded .187 and that saves the settings fine, however I only have the .188 roms and cant find .187 roms now.

[SeaJayWild]

I have also seen this issue in 188 and 189. When I copied over the wait vsync entry from an older ini file, mame really stuttered along.

I only checked briefly how to submit an issue to the mame devs, and didn't quickly find anything.  I will do more searching over the weekend.

[spectral]

I ended up resorting to 0.185. It was the newest version that saved the settings that I could find the romset for. I'm just going to stick with it until there is a compelling reason to change. Staying current with MAME seems more trouble than it is worth.

[Lordmonkus]

Yeah updating Mame just for the sake of it is not worth it. I only update when there is a compelling reason to do so like improved shaders or audio.

[SeaJayWild]

My previous working version was 0.161 which was before all the devices split out.  I will keep trying other versions  to find one that has supports vsync and not be so laggy.  I'll try 0.185 next.

[spectral]

I've had no problems with 0.185 so far. 0.186 also remembered the settings but I couldn't find the romset so settled for 0.185.

[SeaJayWild]

Saving of the options has worked for me up to 0.187.   I was having an issue with tearing on mslug, but turning on vsync killed the performance (but no more lines!)  I thought I had it working on 0.161, but turns out I wan't using vsync on that version. So I was trying to recreate a state that never existed (but should!)

Thanks all.

[spectral]

I've never noticed a performance difference between Vsync on or Vsync off(never tried Mslug though) but I do have a PC that is overkill for MAME (6700k/GTX 1070/16GB RAM). Try also enabling triple buffering, that can help reduce the impact Vsync has.

Edited August 31, 2017 by spectral

[Lordmonkus]

Vsync should not cause performance issues unless you have a low refresh rate display and it's syncing to it.

Triple buffering will cause input lag since it is holding 3 frames of the game info in the buffer. I think that is how it works anyways.

[spectral]

Technically it does but I guess it depends on how sensitive you are too it and the type of games you play. Personally I can't feel a difference with it on or off. Another option to try if you have a iirc 9xx or 10xx series  Nvidia card you could disable vsync in mame and enable fast vsync in nvidia drivers. It improves latency over normal vsync because instead of only rendering the frames to match your refresh it renders as if vsync was off and drops the frames it doesn't need to avoid tearing.

AMD may have some similar setting, I have no experience with their cards in recent years.

[SeaJayWild]

turns out, 2 years ago when I set up .161 I was running this monitor at 1920x1080.  I have since then switched up to 4k, which runs at 30hz on hdmi.  SO nothing wrong with mame, just the user running it. 

If I drop back down to a rez that runs at 60hz, then vsync works just fine.  Thanks all for steering me in the right direction.

(now i need to look for my DP cable)

[Lordmonkus]

This is one of the reasons I love my G-Sync display, all the benefits of V-Sync with none of the drawbacks. Expensive but worth it, even more benefit in Mame since the vast majority of games do not run at 60Hz. If you use V-Sync all the games will actually run faster than they should but if you turn it off on a non G-Sync / Freesync display you get tearing.

[spectral]

Do you have an Nvidia card? If so go into the driver control panel and for mame enable the vsync option adaptive(half). It limits the game fps to half the max of the monitor. Now I'm not 100% sure it'll help or if it reads max as what your running at normally or what it supports at max. Its possible it will think 30 is max and cap at Vsync to 15, however if it see's 60 as its max it will vsync to 30 which should help.

Edited September 1, 2017 by spectral