Home Page Forums MAME Non-Windows MAME Support SDL2 vs. SDL1 regressions

I'm using a SDL2 build I compiled about 10 days ago on a Windows 7 X64 system which has 2 screens connected.

When I try and repo this it seems to be running the way it should be ---> http://i.imgur.com/FBtiJOc.jpg

If I can be of any help running some tests I can do that plus compile a latest SDL2 build if needed.

I'm gonna have to ask Aaron sometime why this odd behavior is the default. Or maybe we'll just fix it in SDL and let Windows users suffer

I think that the "odd behavior" was intended to be a feature

http://aarongiles.com/?p=163

so to be able to control the windows independently

I see. You can have different views of the same game in the different windows. I kinda think that needs to be enabled some other way than simply having multiple monitors though, and the vsync problem makes it especially annoying on SDL2 builds.

Oh ! I've justed tested MAME 0.156 and 0.157 on a (Kubuntu) machine (old laptop) that used to cope perfectly well with it (version 0.155 if not mistaken) (with Lottes CRT shader and bloom disabled). Now it's extremely slow (even with no shader). I guess that's probably the SDL2 regression you're refering to ?

What can I do to work around this issue or help you fix it ?

Edit : hmm, after reading more carefully the thread, it seems unrelated actually. I use a pretty default single screen configuration with few configuration tweaks. I'll double check and recompile 0.155 to see if it's still slow.

Edit : oh man, same problem with 0.155 (compiled by myself). It must be something else... Really sorry for the false-positive !! What's the command to check what my binary was actually built against ? (as I have both sdl1 and sdl2 dev files)

Try "ldd" on the binary:


And/or run "mame -verbose" (SDL2 builds include the following output, SDL1 builds do not):

Hi ! Thanks for the reply ! Here's the ldd result (what a shame I forgot this command...) :



So it's not SDL2's fault Although the -verbose option does work but does indeed display something (Using SDL single-window OpenGL driver (SDL 1.2).

cheers !

For me, sharp performance drops usually mean the package manager updated my video driver but I haven't yet rebooted to the new kernel it wants. Dunno if that helps for you at all

Well, I didn't mean to pollute this SDL2-related thread I have no idea what's wrong, I made many tests and get no 100% perfectly satisfactory result, although it's not that bad...

I use the proprietary Nvidia drivers / Kubuntu LTS 64 bits / latest KDE / bad GT 320M GPU and bad Celeron CPU on a several years old low end ASUS laptop. I tried to downgrade drivers to the legacy version, no difference. I use triple buffering in xorg.conf for kwin : disabled, no difference. I disabled composition in kwin : no difference. I disabled Twinview to make sure the actual screen frequency is the one reported by xrandr : no difference. Actually, when using "waitvsync" and "syncrefresh" I get a 50% performance drop. When not using "syncrefresh" but using "waitvsync" and "refreshspeed" I get a supposedly 100% framerate but it doesn't feel 100% smooth and there's a huge input delay. The best result I can get is with no option enabled (no refreshspeed, no syncrefresh, no waitvsync, compositing enabled), which leads to some tearing but at least it's fast and smooth

Well, I don't really mind that much, it's not a machine I use that much for MAME anyway -- I get a perfect result on a NUC.

Thanks for listening and sorry again for annoying everyone