emulator runs like slo-mo

[x_orange90_x]

hi i have the latest DeSmuME v0.9.1 and i am not having any luck with it as of yet. every game i try to play is very slow, on avg less than 10fps, sometimes 10-20. Mario Kart DS and Super Mario 64 DS are two that run the worst. it takes nearly 5 minutes to even complete one race in MK, and SM64DS is nearly unplayable. i have tried all the frameskip options and no sound aswell, nothing seems to help. i dont think its my computer as it seems it should be powerful enough to play some of these. these are my specs:

Windows XP Professional SP3
Intel Pentium 4 HT 3EGHz 800FSB 1MB
3GB DDR PC3200 Crucial + Corsair XMS Double-Dual Channel
XFX Geforce 8600GT 512mb PCI-e x16
SoundMax Digital Audio
80GB 7200RPM HDD

thanks!

[Dax]

Mario Kart USA runs full speed for me. Your system's somewhat weak, so that's probably why you're getting terrible slowdown. Did you try the SSE2 executable?

I'll put up a video on youtube showing how it runs for me in a few minutes.

0UDBUQIBmrw

[Butz_san]

For me It's damn fast!! I usually put my frame skip at 0, but now I have to leave it in Auto in order to get 60fps and no more than that xDD. Probably your CPU is too weak...

[Dax]

I just left it on auto as well.

[x_orange90_x]

yea i tried the SSE2 exe, it does run better. and thnx for uppin the video! seems full speed and fully playable for u. what is the % in the title bar? is that the resourses that are being used? because urs was around 65% while mine are around 71-76%. i put it on frameskip 0 and it ran better, but its still not 100%, id say about 70% at best. ive tried turning the sound off aswell and it makes no difference with it on or off. plus, my music in MK plays very slow, it sounds almost depressing :(

thnx for the help.

[Dax]

I'm not sure what the percentage means, but I watched CPU usage in Task manager, and it's not related, nor to the FPS, so I think it's either the DS CPU's usage, or something else entirely.

[Squall-Leonhart]

Mario Kart USA runs full speed for me. Your system's somewhat weak, so that's probably why you're getting terrible slowdown. Did you try the SSE2 executable?

I'll put up a video on youtube showing how it runs for me in a few minutes.

0UDBUQIBmrw


Its his cpu, but its not the speed. my athlon 3000 runs these games easily.

Hyperthreading is epic fail on P4 space heaters.

[Dax]

This is probably stating the obvious, but..

If he disables Failthreading it should work better, yes?

[Squall-Leonhart]

more then likely, he can try setting the affinity before hand though.

[x_orange90_x]

its not HT causing it, i tried running the emu and set affinity to one thread, played exactly the same. i tried getting help from the maker of the emu but he accused me of using illegal backups and banned me from his forum. it seems that i wont be able to play NDS anytime soon as i dont have a dual core, just like PS2, GC, and Wii. i also tried iDeaS and it still perorms the same. o well, either im not configuring/tweaking something right or a P4 just isnt as powerful as a NDS..

[Dax]

You could try No$GBA perhaps. It may run those two games better.

[x_orange90_x]

what is that? i ran the SSE2 exe and put it on frameskip 0, audio buffer 2500, and set affinity to one thread and New Super Mario Bros. runs better, but i still need to tweak it.

does anyone have xfire that wants to add me? faster i get replies the faster i get this down! if any of u can add me to xfire let me kno.

[Dax]

No$GBA is a GBA/DS emulator.

[x_orange90_x]

i will try it now... brb

[ccl0]

i can never manage to pull off those power slides

[x_orange90_x]

thanks for the suggestion Dax! it plays Mario 64 DS 100% for me, just a few questions tho. my sound is all crackly, is there a way to fix that? and also, is there a way to enlarge the screen or make it go fullscreen?

[Dax]

Sound: Try the different options like mono, etc.
Enlarging: see the No$GBA forum. There's various 3rd party tools for zooming, etc.

[x_orange90_x]

ok, do u have an Xfire so i can add u? or do u have msn or yahoo? if u dont want to add me thats fine, just u seem to kno what to do and i could use ur help! thnx for the help so far! i really appreciate it

[Dax]

I have MSN, yes.

[Squall-Leonhart]

dunno what to say here. that P4 is more powerful then my 3000+ and has SSE2, yet can't play these games.... hmmmm

[Dax]

Could it be his OS?

[x_orange90_x]

both iDeaS and DeSmuME run slow, unplayable. but this No$GBA runs perfect. the only problem is i cant figure out how to work any of the tools for it (Nds2x, NL4). and also my audio is crackly even when i change to mono.

u dont think the reason iDeaS and DeSmuME runs slow is my XP SP3 do u? i also have Windows 7 on here, but i havnt tried either of them on it yet. and Dax, check ur inbox!

[Squall-Leonhart]

both iDeaS and DeSmuME run slow, unplayable. but this No$GBA runs perfect. the only problem is i cant figure out how to work any of the tools for it (Nds2x, NL4). and also my audio is crackly even when i change to mono.

u dont think the reason iDeaS and DeSmuME runs slow is my XP SP3 do u? i also have Windows 7 on here, but i havnt tried either of them on it yet. and Dax, check ur inbox!


Desmume runs my games at 30-40FPS, only needs a frame skip of 1 to achieve smoothness (cuts fps to 30fps)

[x_orange90_x]

well i got some more info here. i loaded up MKDS in No$GBA and it acts really odd. at random points in the race it is perfect and smooth, but then right away it goes back to laggy. and in New Super Mario Bros, the menus are slow and so is the map, but when im playing it seems fine. i still have very crackly sound tho, cant seem to fix it :(

is there a way that anyone knows of to tweak No$GBA to stop lagging in MK? i downloaded myZoom and it has options to change the filters and speed, but nothing helps or hurts the framerate.

[nosound.97]

no$gba has crackly sound there's nothing you can do (only if you use some external software for it). no$gba is emulator with less requirements than DeSmuME or iDeaS. Maybe it is due to your CPU. Try to set high performance of your CPU. If it doesn't help so there's nothing you can do - maybe your CPU is not fast enough. It's my opinion :)

PS: I got DeSmuME working like real DS with frame skip set to "0" :)

[shashClp]

If you're discussing no$gba, go create a new topic on the right section. It's fun that the thread opener went from the official desmume forums to here went I caught him/her using warez :P

[SCHUMI_4EVER]

Emulation mainly relies on CPU power. If you lack CPU power then there's not much that can be done.
Also DS emulators are not very tweakable. They pretty much run no better than they run when you first start them. So I am afraid any problems you have are pretty much problems you are stuck with.

[x_orange90_x]

its funny that u say that shash, u didnt catch me doing sh!t. i wasnt using warez, but i couldnt explain that to u cuz u IP banned me before i could explain myself. i own those games, i just dont have the means to dump them, i dont have the flashcard or a mac. and btw, its not warez, idk where u live, but in the US it is legal to own a backup of any media if you own it, and even if you dont own it its legal to keep it on your computer for 24hrs before you have to delete it. you couldve been the bigger person by NOT banning me, especially when you dont have proof. i only downloaded those roms because i couldnt dump my own. but i still own them. its ok tho, i switched to a better emulator anyway. :)

schumi, yea ive figured that one out so far. i will be coming into some cash soon, so if i get enough i will be upgrading to a dual core, or possible a Phenom x3. thanks for the help. its nice to see people actually trying to help rather than ban you on your first post.

[imlost]

its funny that u say that shash, u didnt catch me doing sh!t. i wasnt using warez, but i couldnt explain that to u cuz u IP banned me before i could explain myself. i own those games, i just dont have the means to dump them, i dont have the flashcard or a mac. and btw, its not warez, idk where u live, but in the US it is legal to own a backup of any media if you own it, and even if you dont own it its legal to keep it on your computer for 24hrs before you have to delete it. you couldve been the bigger person by NOT banning me, especially when you dont have proof. i only downloaded those roms because i couldnt dump my own. but i still own them. its ok tho, i switched to a better emulator anyway. :)

That means you pirated the games off the internet, in which case we don't support piracy. It is still consider piracy even if you own the game(s). As for the 24 hrs crap, that's just bs. I suggest you check out this webpage (http://www.gamefaqs.com/features/help/entry.html?cat=24).

[x_orange90_x]

look, i am not on here to discuss ROMS and legalities of ROMS. please people, stop bashing me for this. you would be surprised how many people on this forum and many others actually are pirating these games. i came here to ask for help and discuss an emulator/s, not discuss a ROM/s. it is shash who started this, he couldve stayed out of this thread and the topic never wouldve even hinted at ROMS.

can we drop this? and actually discuss what i came here for? or shall i be banned for being pointed out, but any members here who actually pirated the roms and WERENT pointed out just get to discuss whatever they want freely?

[Butz_san]

i switched to a better emulator anyway. :)


You switched to a different emu, not a better one. :p

[Lasnap]

for him chaning to a different emulator fixed a few problems and hence it is better for him for those games

[x_orange90_x]

exactly.

dont get me wrong, i dont have anything against DeSmuME or its author, it just dont work for me.

[shashClp]

I didn't ban you, akismet did: it's quite usual that it bans people putting lots of links on their posts (or sometimes, randomly, I got banned once, and I'm one of the admins!). I can show you proof, if you don't believe me :)

About the legality issues, I won't discuss it, but do a few searches and you'll see why downloading isn't within the legal copy law. So basically, you're wrong on your assumption that downloading is right, but you're right about the private copy: you must obtain this copy from your owned game, not by other means :P

[x_orange90_x]

im beginning to believe the reason i cant emulate DS very well through any emulator has something to do with the architecture of the Pentium 4. i believe this because i tried the same emulators on my other computer (Intel Celeron 2.20GHz 128kb L2, 640mb DDR PC3200, and a Geforce 6200 256mb) and it performed nearly the same as on my main computer (Intel Pentium 4 3.00GHz 1MB L2, 3GB DDR PC3200 Double Dual Channel, Geforce 8600GT 512mb). it seems odd dont it?

and shash, is there any way of removing that ban? i would like to be part of the forum again. and i dont think it was random, i think it happened because akismet thought i was trying to hack or something. you see, my ISP (HughesNet) forces EVERYTHING through a transparent proxy and that messes many things up, like i cant even download from FileFront at all.

edit: just for my privacy, could you blurr out my email address in that photo?

[shashClp]

Ouch, removed, sorry about that, didn't thought of the email address, removed the image. I'll remove the ban now that you saw that I didn't do it, just don't talk about downloaded games and everything will be fine.

[x_orange90_x]

no problem, thanks man :)

[PsyMan]

It could be the hyper-threading feature itself messing with the speed. Tried disabling hyper-threading altogether from the motherboard BIOS?

Another reason for the slowness could be CPU overheating, especially if the slowdown occurs some time after you run the emulator and not immediatly.

[x_orange90_x]

i could try that.. i dont know if it will work tho.

i thought about it overheating, but i doubt thats it. i play games that run my temp up to 80C and no throttle at all, no performance drop. i may just try disabling HT, but if it does help i likely wont keep it like that just for DS emulation. i play more PC games than i do emulated games. but i guess its worth a try just to see if thats what causes the slow downs.

[Squall-Leonhart]

Well all i can say is that Pentium4 is on par with my 3000+, and most games are at playable speeds.

[x_orange90_x]

i disabled HT throu the BIOS and il be damned if it aint fully playable. and this time i mean DeSmuME. only problem is my audio, its VERY slow now. i set it to frameskip 0 and the audio is on a buffer of 2500, but the game seems to play at normal speed, but the audio plays really slow.

shash, if u have msn or xfire and can add me let me kno, i think now that i have the emu running at speed we can figure this out.

p.s. thanks to you all for the help and ideas. :)

[kuro]

My specs are:

- MOBO: Intel DG965RY
- CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 (2.13ghz 2mb l2)
- RAM: 6GB DDR2-800
- GPU: 256mb Nvidia 8600 GTS.
- OS: Windows 7 / Windows XP Home (Dual Boot)

Desmume 0.9.0 runs New Super Mario Bros. EXTREMELY slow for me sometimes. On some map screens, it drops to about 30% speed, and during play, it bounces around anyhwere from 50% to 100%, which makes the game hard to play due to the inconsistent speeds. This is just New Super Mario Bros. I can't even get Mario Kart DS to even run (it just sits there at a white screen, the game works fine in no$gba tho).

I'm on a DUAL CORE cpu and even I can't run DS games on Desmume at reasonable speeds. I use frameskip 1 setting, but other settings don't really make a difference, anyways.

[x_orange90_x]

most likely this is wrong, but its a shot in the dark.. maybe it has something to do with 8600s? we both have them and we both have poor performance.

and btw, i was a bit too over excited on my previous post, after running other games in the same emus, i got the same performance as i did with HT on. so it wasnt a HT problem.

and to the guy who has the 3000+, its no surprise that it runs these NDS emus! my gf has one and that thing is fast for an old cpu. its just odd that my P4 can wipe the floor with the 3000+ in some ares and yet epic fail at emulating NDS. one thing i noticed about all of the NDS emus is there are no CPU options, like Interpreter and Recompiler.. is that because of the ARM?

[SCHUMI_4EVER]

No it's not related to your graphics card. All you need there is something which is OpenGL compliant which pretty much anything aside from onboard has been for the past few years. Almost everything is CPU emulated thus if you don't have enough brunt there the emu runs slow. But yes you're right the P4 archtecture was slow and nothing compared to what system with the same Ghz runs like these days.

[kuro]

is the E6400 -that- weak that even as a dual core it can't run NDS emulation worth squat?

[SCHUMI_4EVER]

It's not running as a dual-core. It's running as a single core. No DS emu has dual-core/multi-core optimisations.

[shashClp]

x_orange90_x: If you've something to tell me, use the forums. If it's REALLY, REALLY, REALLY important, use Private Messages over here.
kuro: Desmume only uses one core, so you don't get much benefit from having a dual core.

[kuro]

Ok, this is even weirder.

In windows XP: Desmume runs New Super Mario Bros at FULL SPEED, but it's forcing a blurry filter whenever I use 2x window size. :(

In windows 7: the blurry filter is gone, so i see sharp pixels instead :D, however i get massive slowness in the same game. What gives here?

[shashClp]

kuro: Somewhere you should be able to configure you graphic card to avoid doing bilinear filtering when using magnification.

[SCHUMI_4EVER]

Not within DeSmuME, unless I missed it. The only graphic setting it allows for at this stage is the setting of the renderer either to none or to OpenGL.

[shashClp]

That why I said his graphic card, not desmume :P

[ccl0]

x_orange90_x when using the emulator open up the task manager and take a look at which programs are using most of your cpu resources

[SCHUMI_4EVER]

Yes shash, but you did not specify where that configuration should be checked. Configuring the graphics card is done it 2 places when it comes to emulation, there's it's own global firmware/control center/control panel or there's a graphic plugin within an emu (like N64 uses, like PCSX2 uses, like ePSXe uses etc).
In fact I am not even aware of any global setting to force bilinear filtering, so the only way to control that usually is from within the emu or the emu's graphic plugin...as to why in this case one OS applies it and the other does not I have no clue.

[shashClp]

I recall NVidia having some sort of hidden option to enable that kind of filtering, checking the kind of apps that are able to change those values might get some conclusions.

[SCHUMI_4EVER]

I just had a look with nHancer (which contains more options than the regular nVidia Control panel) and I can't see anything aside from AA forcing (which is not the same as bilnear filtering) or Anisotropic filtering being forced that might affect emu image quality, but I highly doubt either applies and there certainly is nothing named bilinear filtering.

[kuro]

Any reason why Windows 7 would run the emulator way slower than XP? I'm assuming Vista would also suffer from the same problem, which may be what the other person with my issue might be running?

[Lasnap]

vista is more of a resource hog then xp is and sence 7 uses vistas base then it would use the same amount of resources thats why vista runs like crap on older hardware

[SCHUMI_4EVER]

7 is far optimised than Vista but I assume it's still a little more resource gungry than XP so that would explain the slower speed.

[kuro]

Nothing else is slower under 7 for me, though, in fact, many things are faster (my 7 is 64-bit). I can run games like Mirror's Edge and Quake Wars on maximum settings just fine, but an NDS emulator has problems keeping up.

My CPU usage in windows 7 is no different idle than it is in XP.

EDIT: Solved it. I set compatibility mode to XP for desmume_sse2 and it runs XP speed now. Must be a problem with the instructions under 7 then.

[ccl0]

i'd guess that DeSmuME is coded for 32bit os and 64 bit os would have to emulate the 32bit code

[SCHUMI_4EVER]

That could be it. I don't notice any significant slow-down on my Vista 64bit system though (which remember is just a 2.83Ghz single core as far as DeSmuME cares so it's barely faster than the other systems listed here).

[Dax]

Barely faster in terms of the clock speed, yes. :p

In terms of instruction efficiency, it's quite high. :p

[SCHUMI_4EVER]

Not much faster in terms of instructional efficiency than the other C2D user in this thread who is also experiencing slow-down.

[Butz_san]

I don't have any slow motion in the emu, it runs fast!. I'm using Vista 32bits, but like everyone say, P4 and C2DUO are not the same. C2DUO is faster and it doesn't matter if It only use 1 core.