fast games on MMX-less machines

phantom · Post by **phantom** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 5:27 am

I find this topic very interesting, because my previous machine, a 2.6 GHz P4 could not run many SNES games at full speed. Only on my new Core 2 Duo E6550 (2.33 GHz) can I get the SNES games to run at full speed.

This is all with Windows 2000 and ZSNES 1.51..

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 5:30 am

A P4 is more than enough, unless you're pairing with with some integrated video card and/or using the filters, such as HQ4x.

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 5:35 am

Deathlike2 wrote:A P4 is more than enough, unless you're pairing with with some integrated video card and/or using the filters, such as HQ4x.

Or have a metric butt-load of malware infesting your machine and sucking clock cycles away from REAL work.

phantom · Post by **phantom** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 5:35 am

Deathlike2 wrote:A P4 is more than enough, unless you're pairing with with some integrated video card and/or using the filters, such as HQ4x.

Nope, wasn't, the video card was an ATI Radeon 9550.. And I'm not sure what HQ4x is. Only things I see on the filters tab are "GRAYSCALE MODE" and "VSYNC". I wasn't even aware there were filters before recently.

EDIT:

Gil_Hamilton wrote:Or have a metric butt-load of malware infesting your machine and sucking clock cycles away from REAL work.

I practice safe hex, and could run games ranging from Warcraft III to Breed on there (although Breed went somewhat slow).

Kajuru · Post by **Kajuru** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 6:03 am

Gil_Hamilton wrote:
Deathlike2 wrote:A P4 is more than enough, unless you're pairing with with some integrated video card and/or using the filters, such as HQ4x.
Or have a metric butt-load of malware infesting your machine and sucking clock cycles away from REAL work.

Don't forget badly designed or superflous apps running as background processes. My personal policy is "If it ain't used, kick it from the tray".

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 2:02 pm

phantom wrote:
Deathlike2 wrote:A P4 is more than enough, unless you're pairing with with some integrated video card and/or using the filters, such as HQ4x.
Nope, wasn't, the video card was an ATI Radeon 9550.. And I'm not sure what HQ4x is. Only things I see on the filters tab are "GRAYSCALE MODE" and "VSYNC". I wasn't even aware there were filters before recently.

If you use a different video mode, you will find more options than what you just said.

Post by **odditude** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 3:12 pm

Deathlike2 wrote:A P4 is more than enough, unless you're pairing with with some integrated video card and/or using the filters, such as HQ4x.

My 850MHz Duron was enough, two systems ago.

byuu · Post by **byuu** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 4:14 pm

leilei wrote:
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
..........

Perhaps he lives in Cuba or something, where $50 is 3 months of income.

I often wonder if anyone who clings to antique hardware to save money ends up paying more in the end via electricity bills than they would by upgrading to one of those ultra-low power VIA systems. That would be pleasantly ironic.

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 9:54 pm

byuu wrote:
leilei wrote:
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
..........
Perhaps he lives in Cuba or something, where $50 is 3 months of income.

I often wonder if anyone who clings to antique hardware to save money ends up paying more in the end via electricity bills than they would by upgrading to one of those ultra-low power VIA systems. That would be pleasantly ironic.

Or even a Core, depending on when they won't upgrade from.

adventure_of_link · Post by **adventure_of_link** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 10:58 pm

Kajuru wrote:My personal policy is "If it ain't used, kick it from the tray".

Not just from the tray, but kick from the startup option as well.

hell usually I just let all programs related to my computer's OEM, anti-virus, and firewalls run on startup.

leilei · Post by **leilei** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 7:07 pm

After playing ZSNES 0.991 for a while on a 486 (YEP 486) I think i've noticed why there's massive slowdown in some games and my theory is this

Games that use extremely high frequency instruments (i.e. c-5 base at 70khz) tend to cause the most massive slowdown. Low output rate doesn't matter for these. It might explain why Last Action Hero and BTDD is so damn smooth because the samples are at of a low frequency.

if ZSNES had a feature to resample these down half or quarter their original frequency then adjust the pitch accordingly automatically it'd probably speed it up alot, but such feature would not be developed in the current state of zsnes though as the latest is a bit too slow.