Best plugins/settings for max speed on a minimal system?

[Reaper666]

Ok so I have this laptop that's pretty much useless to me since a lot of the keys don't work on it, and what I've decided to do with it is to hook it up to my TV via s-video and:

1. Be able to stream music/video to it and play through my home theater
2. Use it's hard drive space as a network partition
3. Use it as an emulation machine to be able to play multiple systems on my TV with a USB gamepad

Now the first 2 I had no problem with, and I have gotten several "lesser" systems than N64 working just fine, but I really wanna push this thing and see if I can get N64 running acceptably. Currently, using a default 1964 setup with gln64 and azimers audio, it can play Mario 64 but it doesn't stay at a good speed. For example it will run at a decent framerate inside the castle, but there is some slowdown, but if I go to one of the worlds it becomes unplayably slow, which I'm sure would happen with many other games I'd like to play on it. The system specs for this thing are:

2.4ghz P4-generation celeron CPU
256mb ram
intel i845 graphics (8 mb shared memory :S)

I have a special windows setup that uses only 40mb of the system memory so most of the resources are available for the emulator. Is there any hope for this?


On a related matter, I'm using the program Xpadder to emulate mouse/keystrokes through my USB gamepad and it's the only thing that runs in the background. Does anybody know if there is a more lightweight program to accomplish this, or one that can switch key profiles when different apps are in focus?

 

[Lizard Blade]

You're pretty well set. All you need is a new video plugin. Get Glide64 + a wrapper, this'll offload most of your graphics work to your CPU (which you can tell is a stronger asset than your video card).

 

[spartan]

your CPU is fine but if your graphics card is only 8mb's then that might a problem.

 

[Reaper666]

Not sure if I set it up right, but Glide64 seems to be MUCH worse than gln64...

The gltest program that comes with it reports that the laptop doesn't support pixel and vertex shaders or framebuffer objects. When I try to run the emulator it reports that the card doesn't support GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat as well

When I tried Mario64 the logo ran at 30 fps but it dropped to ONE fps when mario's head shows up...

I've never dealt with Glide api before so I'm not really sure how to properly configure this, I just got what appeared to be the latest version of the plugin (Glide64 "Wonder++" ?), put it all in the proper directories and made sure to uncheck GLSL combiner support in the options page. Should I be using a different version of the plugin or a different glide wrapper?

 

[X-Fi6]

No Glide64 is in fact better than glN64 in terms of compatibility with games and more accurate emulation (such as the Peach-to-Bowser transition, Zelda start menu, etc), but it guzzles FPS very quickly.

 

[Reaper666]

Well, all I'm looking for here is a nice steady framerate on that limited machine. I've never had to deal with something like this as my main PC is fairly powerful and 1964 pretty much works out of the box, so I'm not sure which plugins to be using. Is there a difference between the different versions of Glide64 in terms of performance/resource requirements? and what about other glide wrappers?

 

[Clements]

Firstly, make sure your drivers for the Intel card are up-to-date. It is going to be the cause of almost all the issues you experience.

Use the eVoodoo or zeckensack glide wrappers, not the default Glitch64 wrapper. The Glitch64 wrapper requires quite a bit of OpenGL support, which Intel graphics likely do not have implemented in the drivers as well as NVIDIA or ATI cards.

Either this, or use Jabo's D3D6 1.5.2 plugin. You may get the old blending issue here and there.

 

[MasterPhW]

...not the default Glitch64 wrapper. The Glitch64 wrapper...

That made my day... was it your intention to write it in this style or was it just a failure you did twice?

The evoodo and zeckensacks wrapper are very out of date and I think say won't help that much, because they are missing a lot Glide specific features IIRC.

 

[Clements]

It's the new official name for the wrapper. Easier to say than Hacktarux/Ziggy/Mudlord wrapper.

 

[Reaper666]

WOW, Jabo's D3D6 gave a major improvement, thanks!! There's still some slowdown in some places, but it's bearable. I did however switch to PJ64 in order to use the latest version of this plugin, but everything seems to be working fine now :bouncy:


Now... should I even attempt to make PSX work?

 

[smcd]

Now... should I even attempt to make PSX work?

Playstation emulation is actually pretty smooth, you'd be surprised.

 

[Reaper666]

Hey guys, just wanna add that I switched the "Transfer Memory" option to "Triple Buffer V-Sync" and it's smooth as silk Thanks for the suggestions!