sdlmame cpu usage problems, very strange

[mocha]

I'm having a lot of problems with sdlmame from the Jaunty repo. It always uses 100% to 200% CPU on my dual core. The usage fluctuates as a game is in progress. This leads to jitters and sound stuttering. I'm using an nvidia card and opengl rendering with vsync enabled. I don't understand why so much CPU is being consumed for games that I used to play just fine on a 233 MHz AMD box 10 years ago. If anyone out there is not having this problem would you mind posting your mame.ini as well as a brief description of your video card and and special xorg.conf setting such as "useevents" or "triplebuffer". Thanks.

[BoyOfDestiny]

In your mame.ini, make sure video is set to opengl
#
# VIDEO OPTIONS
#
video opengl
Scroll down to opengl settings, set filter to 0
#
# OpenGL-SPECIFIC OPTIONS
#
filter 0

[mocha]

Thanks, but that doesn't help, it also makes the video look ugly.

[BoyOfDestiny]

Odd that is makes it look ugly, perhaps its the uneven stretch setting, unless being pixely is ugly...

Anyway, I don't have an nvidia card, are you using proprietary drivers for yours? Does toggling vsync make any difference? If the drivers are the culprit, you could try software rendering.

Set video to soft
or try setting scalemode to yuy2 to use xv for scaling...

These are all in the Video options of the ini...

Sorry I can't really troubleshoot this, I was hoping what worked for my bog standard onboard intel would help you.

[Melcar]

SDLMame always uses 100% of one of my cores and at times sound skips (usually when I have other things running in the background).

[mocha]

I've been playing with various settings and I think I may have found the problem. I believe the extreme CPU usage and bizarre cycling up and down of the CPU (like starting at 50%, then 100%, then 200%, then back to 100%, and so on) has something to do with Pulseaudio.

I've been running sdlmame tonight exclusively with SDL_AUDIODRIVER="esd" instead of the Jaunty default SDL_AUDIODRIVER="alsa". If someone else would like to test this, add the following to the end of your ~/.bashrc and logout/login.

export SDL_AUDIODRIVER="esd"

Or if you are using an sdlmame frontend and run it from your menu, change the launcher to the following:

env SDL_AUDIODRIVER="esd" frontend_binary

If you run sdlmame from the command line, when you run it with the -verbose switch, you should see in the terminal a line which indicates esd being used as the sdl audio driver.

I haven't done enough tests with enough games to satisfy myself that this is the fix, however, I can say that after this change I have not yet seen the CPU consumption issues anymore. Quite the contrary, simpler/older games are only consuming around 30% steady, and only the higher emulation intensive games are consuming 100% (one core) and it stays steady. There is no more video jitters or sound stuttering either.

I'd appreciate others feedback. For reference here is my mame.ini, minus my machine specific file locations:

#
# CORE STATE/PLAYBACK OPTIONS
#
state
autosave 1
playback
record
mngwrite
aviwrite
wavwrite
snapname %g/%i
snapsize auto
snapview internal

#
# CORE PERFORMANCE OPTIONS
#
autoframeskip 1
frameskip 0
seconds_to_run 0
throttle 1
sleep 0
speed 1.0
refreshspeed 0

#
# CORE ROTATION OPTIONS
#
rotate 1
ror 0
rol 0
autoror 0
autorol 0
flipx 0
flipy 0

#
# CORE ARTWORK OPTIONS
#
artwork_crop 0
use_backdrops 1
use_overlays 1
use_bezels 1

#
# CORE SCREEN OPTIONS
#
brightness 1.0
contrast 1.0
gamma 1.0
pause_brightness 0.65

#
# CORE VECTOR OPTIONS
#
antialias 1
beam 1.0
flicker 0.26

#
# CORE SOUND OPTIONS
#
sound 1
samplerate 48000
samples 1
volume -12

#
# CORE INPUT OPTIONS
#
coin_lockout 1
ctrlr
mouse 1
joystick 1
lightgun 1
multikeyboard 0
multimouse 0
steadykey 1
offscreen_reload 0
joystick_map auto
joystick_deadzone 0.3
joystick_saturation 0.85

#
# CORE INPUT AUTOMATIC ENABLE OPTIONS
#
paddle_device mouse
adstick_device keyboard
pedal_device keyboard
dial_device mouse
trackball_device mouse
lightgun_device mouse
positional_device keyboard
mouse_device mouse

#
# CORE DEBUGGING OPTIONS
#
log 0
verbose 0
update_in_pause 1
debug 0
debugscript

#
# CORE MISC OPTIONS
#
bios
cheat 0
skip_gameinfo 0

#
# DEBUGGING OPTIONS
#
oslog 0

#
# PERFORMANCE OPTIONS
#
multithreading 1
sdlvideofps 0

#
# VIDEO OPTIONS
#
video opengl
numscreens 1
window 1
maximize 1
keepaspect 1
unevenstretch 1
effect aperturescan1024
centerh 1
centerv 1
waitvsync 1
scalemode none

#
# OpenGL-SPECIFIC OPTIONS
#
filter 1
prescale 1
gl_forcepow2texture 0
gl_notexturerect 1
gl_vbo 1
gl_pbo 1
gl_glsl 0
gl_glsl_filter 1
glsl_shader_mame0 none
glsl_shader_mame1 none
glsl_shader_mame2 none
glsl_shader_mame3 none
glsl_shader_mame4 none
glsl_shader_mame5 none
glsl_shader_mame6 none
glsl_shader_mame7 none
glsl_shader_mame8 none
glsl_shader_mame9 none
glsl_shader_screen0 none
glsl_shader_screen1 none
glsl_shader_screen2 none
glsl_shader_screen3 none
glsl_shader_screen4 none
glsl_shader_screen5 none
glsl_shader_screen6 none
glsl_shader_screen7 none
glsl_shader_screen8 none
glsl_shader_screen9 none
gl_glsl_vid_attr 1

#
# PER-WINDOW VIDEO OPTIONS
#
screen auto
aspect auto
resolution auto
view auto
screen0 auto
aspect0 auto
resolution0 auto
view0 auto
screen1 auto
aspect1 auto
resolution1 auto
view1 auto
screen2 auto
aspect2 auto
resolution2 auto
view2 auto
screen3 auto
aspect3 auto
resolution3 auto
view3 auto

#
# FULL SCREEN OPTIONS
#
switchres 0
useallheads 0

#
# SOUND OPTIONS
#
audio_latency 3

#
# SDL KEYBOARD MAPPING
#
keymap 0
keymap_file keymap.dat

#
# SDL JOYSTICK MAPPING
#
joy_idx1 auto
joy_idx2 auto
joy_idx3 auto
joy_idx4 auto
joy_idx5 auto
joy_idx6 auto
joy_idx7 auto
joy_idx8 auto
sixaxis 0

#
# SDL LOWLEVEL DRIVER OPTIONS
#
videodriver auto
audiodriver auto
gl_lib auto

As you can see, I have audiodriver set to auto since I set the environment variable instead to control it. I did this becuase the frontend gmameui doesn't parse the mame.ini file.

Also for reference, I'm using an nvidia 9500GT card with the 180.53 binary driver, opengl vsync and flipping enabled. In case anyone is wondering, setting SDL_AUDIODRIVER="esd" doesn't seem to have any negative effects, applications like sdlmame still show up under the pulseaudio volume manager and can be individually controlled.

Finally, I'm not sure if this has any effect, but in my xorg.conf, I have the following nvidia specific options set:

Option "UseEvents" "True"
Option "TripleBuffer" "True"

I also have the Composite extension set to disabled, but that's because I'm using VDPAU video rendering with mplayer and MythTV. I'm using the Gnome/Metacity desktop environment.

[alex34567]

Thank you. Ever since I installed Jaunty, I've been fiddling with options, trying to get CPU usage down to a reasonable level. I replaced libsdl1.2debian-alsa with libsdl1.2debian-all and ran from the command line: env SDL_AUDIODRIVER="esd" sdlmame [options] and things are now just as they should be. Cheers.

[mocha]

alex,

Good to see I'm not the only one on earth that had this problem, now there are 2 of us! Seriously, setting the driver to esd has worked great for me since making my post about it. I think probably everyone is affected by this but there aren't many sdlmame users or they are "casual" and simply don't notice the problem.

[apienk01]

Thanks, you helped me as well. So there are 3 of us :)

Strangely enough, as far as I know, native esd is not used anymore in Jaunty, and is just emulated by pulseaudio. So theoretically it shouldn't be much different from pulse or alsa. But actually it is, quite dramatically. Thanks! :KS

Now I can go back to Darkstalkers...

[manysounds]

Hello, I have this issue (I think) on my EEEpc900 with 9.1Karmic.
How do you implement this workaround?
Sorry I'm not n00b but this really isn't my field at all.

[williamts99]

Same problem here but now running 9.10

Solution is to install libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio

sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio

From the following thread:
http://www.bannister.org/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=54940

Best Regards,
Williamts99

[kimme]

Thanks for this tip on using mame on Ubuntu.