Jack Anton: the upshot is that you should change your .ini file to delete any line that says "bios default" and then it'll work just like u3.

Simple fix: open your mame.ini. Look for the 'bios' option and change the value 'default' to '0'.

nevermind, i'm still getting intermittent audio underflows. any ideas at all, because i don't see that big of a difference between u4 and u3 audio wise.

Press F11 while the game is running to check the performance - are you getting 100% speed?

i'm bouncing between 98% and 99% on mslug3, which is the same using u3 as well. it sounds like tearing and stuttering every few seconds and it lasts for a period of roughly 5s and then comes back again.

i put on "frameskip 5" and now the stuttering is gone and i run at 100%, but i still get "tearing" effects when i pick up multiple items, looks like i'll be reverting back to stable for now.

How the hell slow is your CPU? Even the PS3 can run NeoGeo stuff at 100%

athlon xp 2000+ (1660Mhz). i know it's kinda boarderline now a days, but it's never been a problem before.

well, i've got everything running at 100% now without using frameskip options i get no stuttering, but i get that "tearing" effect, it's prolly just a glitch in the game because it's not being reported as an overflow or an underflow with -verbose output. so i'm happy again :P