fast games on MMX-less machines

leilei · Post by **leilei** » Fri Feb 22, 2008 9:33 pm

So far i've found the following games running full speed at high quality sound settings on a 100MHz Pentium (ZSNESD 1.51 and 1.42, though 1.51 is slower):

Battletoads and Double Dragon
Last Action Hero

Anyone else find any full speed games running on such machine? You could at least try DOSBox 0.72 with zsnesd to find 'em down.

The SPC playback code is to blame for the slowness, but that's odd because Last Action Hero has lots and lots of echo and it's still fast.

Windows version is unusable without a video card having overlays.

byuu · Post by **byuu** » Fri Feb 22, 2008 10:11 pm

I hear bsnes works really, really well on older PCs such as a 100MHz Pentium.

...

Yeah, just kidding :)
You might try some NES-quality games like Tekkaman Blade or Gradius IV. They would most likely run quite well. You might also want to go back to ZSNES v0.xxx pure assembler versions. I believe Tsukuyomi's page has quite a few of these older versions. Back then, I was able to get 100% speed in everything on a 133MHz Pentium. Even ran Tales on that.

neo_bahamut1985 · Post by **neo_bahamut1985** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 2:38 am

Woah. I didn't think that older versions than that well on that kind of CPU! Well, it was written mostly, if not all, in Assembly...

sweener2001 · Post by **sweener2001** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 3:01 am

AND that's how fast computers were when those versions came out. for some quirky reason, that makes sense.

leilei · Post by **leilei** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 7:13 am

Actually when ZSNES first came out, Pentium 233s were pretty common

byuu wrote:NES-quality games like Gradius IV

NES quality are you certain?

Also to note, with sound disabled, about everything (That doesn't use any additional chips) run full speed. It's the sound. I don't think having "NES Quality" graphics or not really matters for this

(Though Kirby Super Star bogs at 1fps either way)

franpa · Post by **franpa** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 7:51 am

kirby super star uses a special chip which would probably double the load the emulator puts on the CPU.

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 8:07 am

leilei wrote:Actually when ZSNES first came out, Pentium 233s were pretty common

byuu wrote:NES-quality games like Gradius IV
NES quality are you certain?

Gradius III is also notorious for massive slowdown on an actual SNES. So... how can you TELL if it's running right or not?

Gradius IV does what Nintendon't. As far as I know, the only home port of it was the PS2 "Gradius III & IV" disk. It's also on the PSP's Gradius Collection.

...

Why does Gradius get so much attention while Salamander is completely ignored? WHY?

byuu · Post by **byuu** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 3:41 pm

NES quality are you certain?

There are some impressive effects, but 90% of that game is just so bland. I'd take Abadox any day of the week over Gradius IV.

Anyway, I'm surprised to hear that sound is the bottleneck. Myself and some other colleagues have observed that video rendering consumed over 40% of emulation time. Whereas the sound CPU only runs at 1MHz, and the DSP at 32khz.

I seem to recall always having sound on, too. The thing that always killed my lowly Pentium was having interpolation turned on.

leilei · Post by **leilei** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 8:05 pm

interpolation off also kills too

neo_bahamut1985 · Post by **neo_bahamut1985** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 8:49 pm

Games sounded really horrible without interpolation; I remember that when I first used Zsnes back in 1998. Heck, it didn't even emulate transparencies. Chrono Trigger was hard to play...

Kajuru · Post by **Kajuru** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 2:33 am

Romancing Saga 3 runs fast even in my 486/66.

DK 1/2/3, SMW, SM All Stars, SF2 Turbo, BoF 1/2

neo_bahamut1985 · Post by **neo_bahamut1985** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 2:49 am

Holy crap! I used to have a Pentium I 233MHz CPU and...wait....that had MMX...d'oh!

leilei · Post by **leilei** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 6:49 am

Kajuru wrote:Romancing Saga 3 runs fast even in my 486/66.

DK 1/2/3, SMW, SM All Stars, SF2 Turbo, BoF 1/2

say that after you enable sound, k

Post by **Nach** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 9:41 am

If you drop down to say v1.1, or v0.991, you should be able to play just about everything except SA-1 games at full speed.

Post by **odditude** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 5:30 pm

I remember being all excited when I went from a P133 to a 166 MMX because I could finally turn on the MMX features in NESticle and Genecyst... w00t!</OT nostalgia>

Still needed teh hax0red sdd reg codes though

Kajuru · Post by **Kajuru** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 6:16 pm

leilei wrote:
Kajuru wrote:Romancing Saga 3 runs fast even in my 486/66.

DK 1/2/3, SMW, SM All Stars, SF2 Turbo, BoF 1/2
say that after you enable sound, k

Next you'll ask for HQ4X as well. Yeah...

In such a machine you want NO DSP/SPC, 8BIT COLOR, LOW FRAME SKIP, AND PLAIN DOS! Preferably compiled by Zget using every possible optimization.

whicker · Post by **whicker** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 10:16 pm

odditude wrote:I remember being all excited when I went from a P133 to a 166 MMX because I could finally turn on the MMX features in NESticle and Genecyst... w00t!</OT nostalgia>

Still needed teh hax0red sdd reg codes though

Somebody actually wrote an awesome VESA2 tsr for the S3 ViRGE series chips, so I never really had to dick with Scitech Display Doctor.

No MMX though, but hell, I had a P200 with a 66! MHz FSB instead of the slower 60 MHz

Kajuru · Post by **Kajuru** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 11:23 pm

83mhz fsb ruled.

Pentium 200 MMX running at a rock solid 250mhz(and undervolted from 2.8v to 2.5v), faster than 3.5x 75=266. 291mhz only if overvolting.

</random old nerd rambling>

leilei · Post by **leilei** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 5:02 am

Nach wrote:If you drop down to say v1.1, or v0.991, you should be able to play just about everything except SA-1 games at full speed.

those versions still run EVO slow

haven't tested much else yet though

Kajuru wrote:
leilei wrote: say that after you enable sound, k
Next you'll ask for HQ4X as well. Yeah...

last time I checked HQ4X isn't an important gameplay element as much as sound is. This thread's about games that play at maximum performance WITH high quality sound on MMX-less machines. You could probably put 90% of SNES games on the list if it were to be about with sound disabled.

Kajuru · Post by **Kajuru** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 6:07 am

You could try lowering the sampling rate at least. As long as Gaussian is enabled, 16khz sound good(IMHO) in most games, and it makes a helluva difference FPS wise.

Think about a small overclock. 133 is easy, 166 is possible.

funkyass · Post by **funkyass** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 11:22 pm

whats the frameskip set to?

Post by **Nach** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 11:30 pm

leilei wrote:
Nach wrote:If you drop down to say v1.1, or v0.991, you should be able to play just about everything except SA-1 games at full speed.
those versions still run EVO slow haven't tested much else yet though

Can't be, I played EVO under v0.991 on a comparible machine at full speed.

Silver Fox 9mm · Post by **Silver Fox 9mm** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 2:55 am

im not trying to mean but if you don't have MMX you need to upgrade and trust me you could get A 1ghz computer for under 50$ on ebay

leilei · Post by **leilei** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 6:03 am

Silver Fox 9mm wrote:im not trying to mean but if you don't have MMX you need to upgrade and trust me you could get A 1ghz computer for under 50$ on ebay

..........

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 6:11 am

Suggesting that you upgrade isn't actually the point of this discussion.