nVidia Share/"Shadowplay" causes zsnes to stutter/freeze

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thefowles1
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nVidia Share/"Shadowplay" causes zsnes to stutter/freeze

Post by thefowles1 »

If this is not an appropriate topic for this forum, please let me know. I registered so that I may share what I discovered, and I figured the bug report forum might be where this gets the most attention, though the issue/bug I'm reporting doesn't necessarily come from zsnes itself.

I have an nVidia GTX 1070 GPU, and I keep the Share function (formerly called Shadowplay) in-game overlay enabled so that I can use the "instant replay" feature, which allows me to instantly save a video of my gameplay from a previous frame of time up to when I have pressed the button. I believe this feature is enabled by default in the GPU's control panel (GeForce Experience), and it only activates the in-game overlay during a program that utilizes the GPU. A GTX 1070 runs zsnes without any difficulty whatsoever, lol. However, I have noticed 9/10 times when I start zsnes, it will begin stuttering and freezing the moment it's open, and more often than not, my screen will go black and I will get a notification bubble in my system tray stating the display driver has crashed.

I tried searching for what could be causing this, as this computer is built to be a 2K gaming machine and should have no difficulty playing SNES games in any fashion. After fiddling around with zsnes and re-downloading the latest stable version (1.51) to no avail, I had a thought to disable the nVidia Share's in-game overlay, as every time I open zsnes, I get the in-game overlay toast telling me it's running. After disabling the overlay, zsnes no longer stutters or freezes, and everything is as it should be, smooth as silk.

It appears the in-game overlay does not cooperate nicely with zsnes, even when the emulator is in windowed mode, and the only remedy is to disable the in-game overlay while running zsnes. I found no results anywhere, either on Google or this board, describing this issue. I wanted to share this in the event that someone else who has the same problem may find what I discovered useful.

Thanks for reading.
nintendo_nerd
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Re: nVidia Share/"Shadowplay" causes zsnes to stutter/freeze

Post by nintendo_nerd »

Have you considered trying Snes9x 1.55 now that it's out? I don't see Zsnes ever getting updated, I mean, the only one working on it has gone silent.
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thefowles1
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Joined: Sun Nov 12, 2017 10:42 pm

Re: nVidia Share/"Shadowplay" causes zsnes to stutter/freeze

Post by thefowles1 »

nintendo_nerd wrote:Have you considered trying Snes9x 1.55 now that it's out? I don't see Zsnes ever getting updated, I mean, the only one working on it has gone silent.
I have. I've been meaning to try it out, but have been lazy since zsnes is what I've been using forever. :p
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