SNES9x FPS dropping/game lagging in certain locations.

[Punkjah007]

I am using Emustation as my dash and was playing a A Link to the Past which worked pretty well for the most part, until I got to the Skull Woods where there was an overlay of fog, then my FPS dropped from 50/50 to 35/50. I noticed it again when I was in Gargoyle Dungeon and the first area was a large area with several sprites running at once, again dropping to 35/50. The lag for me seems to coincide with higher demanding effects or more sprites running on a single screen. Does anyone have a suggestion to get better fps? I was running on the "fastest, okay sound" global setting in Snes9x.

As a test I played to the same locations on my PC and noticed my PC gets 60/60 fps, and did not drop fps at all on a complete playthrough. Why does snes9x only get 50/50 fps on the xbox, instead of 60?

I searched the forums for similar topics and I posted in an much older thread a week ago, but no one responded so I thought I would create a new thread.

[KaosEngineer]

8 hours ago, Punkjah007 said:

As a test I played to the same locations on my PC and noticed my PC gets 60/60 fps, and did not drop fps at all on a complete playthrough.

The processor of your PC is much more powerful than the 733MHz Celeron of the original Xbox running with only 64MBs of RAM.

Quote

Why does snes9x only get 50/50 fps on the xbox, instead of 60?

Is you console running in PAL mode?

[Punkjah007]

I have it set to:

Core Version: 1.43 (Fastest, good sound)

Region - Force NTSC

 

I realize that my Xbox can't do what my PC can do, but you would think if it can run Xbox games, it should be able to run the crap out of a SNES game.

[MadMartigan]

Any chance you are running PAL/EU Roms and not NTSC roms? 

[Punkjah007]

I had my own library, but then opted for resurrctions roms for the boxart/gameinfo that appears in Emustation. I will have to check. They were originally zipped, but ran terribly, so I unzipped them and grabbed which versions I wanted. Typically I would grab (U) or (W) versions depending on what was available. 

It sounds like you are suggesting that my issue may be that I am using an NTSC xbox and running PAL/EU Roms? I can experiment with that idea.

[MadMartigan]

Well I was more curious about the Roms being PAL Roms which notoriously run slower than ntsc versions. That’s why there was so much fuss about the NES CLASSIC when it released. For some reason Nintendo chose to use a lot of PAL Roms which ran worse than the North American market was used to.  
 

I strictly use the RessurectionExtras set and have zero issue with games or the media. 

Edited January 26, 2022 by MadMartigan

[Punkjah007]

Do you leave them zipped or unzip them? does your SNES9x run at 50fps?

[Punkjah007]

Zipped or Unzipped? 50fps?

[Bowlsnapper]

It shouldn't matter if they're zipped. The emulator takes the rom and loads it into memory. It runs from there.

PAL games run at 50hz (25fps) and NTSC at 60hz (30fps). I can't imagine why a region type would cause a performance hit relative to max framerate... The emulator should know what to do with a PAL rom on an NTSC machine.

Edited February 4, 2022 by Bowlsnapper

[coldasijs]

Does SNES really have separate for SNES and PAL? There is no setting in the emulator for PAL/NTSC?

Reason for asking is that I know that on SEGA most ROMs are multiregion. For example SONIC runs 20% faster on NTSC consoles when using the same cartridge on a genesis vs EU megadrive. There are only a handful region locked in SW, Streets of rage/bare knuckles is probably the most famous one. You can also make the console region free with a soldering iron and a Arduino nano. So I wouldn’t be surprised if nintendo applied the same tactic.

Edited February 4, 2022 by coldasijs

[Bowlsnapper]

5 hours ago, coldasijs said:

Does SNES really have separate for SNES and PAL? There is no setting in the emulator for PAL/NTSC?

Reason for asking is that I know that on SEGA most ROMs are multiregion. For example SONIC runs 20% faster on NTSC consoles when using the same cartridge on a genesis vs EU megadrive. There are only a handful region locked in SW, Streets of rage/bare knuckles is probably the most famous one. You can also make the console region free with a soldering iron and a Arduino nano. So I wouldn’t be surprised if nintendo applied the same tactic.

"Faster" meaning a higher framerate, or that the game runs faster than it's supposed to? Makes me think some roms are coded for timing around the framerate.

[coldasijs]

@Bowlsnapper faster as in speed not only framerate. So also the music is faster. Everything is linked to the clock speed video chip. So a lot of games run better on NTSC consoles

edit

here is a video with a comparison https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WzoyF70Jkho

Edited February 4, 2022 by coldasijs

[MadMartigan]

10 hours ago, coldasijs said:

Does SNES really have separate for SNES and PAL? There is no setting in the emulator for PAL/NTSC?

yes there different Roms for each region with a lot of games. This is indicated by (U), (E), and (J) in the title of the Roms in question 

10 hours ago, coldasijs said:

Reason for asking is that I know that on SEGA most ROMs are multiregion. For example SONIC runs 20% faster on NTSC consoles when using the same cartridge on a genesis vs EU megadrive. There are only a handful region locked in SW, Streets of rage/bare knuckles is probably the most famous one. You can also make the console region free with a soldering iron and a Arduino nano. So I wouldn’t be surprised if nintendo applied the same tactic.

After a certain point in time, some manufacturers stopped spending money on region locking and just embraced the region free concept. 
 

Edit: If you’re speaking of a lockout chip, then yes the original NES has one that can easily be disabled be removing one leg of the chip. 

Edited February 4, 2022 by MadMartigan

[Bowlsnapper]

Wow. That's weird!

[MadMartigan]

Not really. Different parts of the word have different restrictions and use different video/audio tech. Another reason each region had to have different Roms was censorship and (I’m not joking here) intelligence. In the early days Japan didn’t think the western market was smart enough or to put it nicely, had less attention span and games were changed from tiny details due to censorship to even entirely new games with the same name. Best example I can think of is Super Mario Bros 2. Western market got a completely different game in Doki Doki Panic. Which we got many years later renamed The Lost Levels 

Edited February 5, 2022 by MadMartigan

[Bowlsnapper]

3 minutes ago, MadMartigan said:

Not really. Different parts of the word have different restrictions and use different video/audio tech. Another reason each region had to have different Roms was censorship and (I’m not joking here) intelligence. In the early days Japan didn’t think the western market was smart enough or to put it nicely, had less attention span and games were changed from tiny details due to censorship to even entirely new games with the same name. Best example I can think of is Super Mario Bros 2. Western market got a completely different game in Doki Doki Panic. Which we got many years later renamed The Lost Levels 

Sorry. I was referring to the clocking/speed differences between PAL and NTSC.

Although that is interesting info that you just mentioned!

[coldasijs]

9 hours ago, MadMartigan said:

yes there different Roms for each region with a lot of games. This is indicated by (U), (E), and (J) in the title of the Roms in question 

After a certain point in time, some manufacturers stopped spending money on region locking and just embraced the region free concept. 
 

Edit: If you’re speaking of a lockout chip, then yes the original NES has one that can easily be disabled be removing one leg of the chip. 

Sega does not have a region lock chip.   It uses different shapes for the cardridge slot. You need to file away some plastic pieces to make it region free. 2nd thing is that they have hardwired jumpers on the pcb to control language and region. Technically you should also replace a clock so it runs at the correct frequency of 59.94. I don’t the exact number but it was something like 59.8 hz when you switch your PAL console to NTSC without replacing the clock.

Making it region free is really easy, just requires you to cut some traces and to solder a couple of wires. Some people use switches to toggle between the options. I use an arduino and switch region/language with the reset button 

[MadMartigan]

I don’t think I was suggesting Sega did. Even still, there would indeed be different Roms for each region. Those Roms would be labeled with the letters as I was saying above. We are still talking about the Xbox though and not ways of modding other retro consoles. 

Edited February 6, 2022 by MadMartigan

[Punkjah007]

On 2/4/2022 at 5:32 AM, coldasijs said:

Does SNES really have separate for SNES and PAL? There is no setting in the emulator for PAL/NTSC?

Reason for asking is that I know that on SEGA most ROMs are multiregion. For example SONIC runs 20% faster on NTSC consoles when using the same cartridge on a genesis vs EU megadrive. There are only a handful region locked in SW, Streets of rage/bare knuckles is probably the most famous one. You can also make the console region free with a soldering iron and a Arduino nano. So I wouldn’t be surprised if nintendo applied the same tactic.

There is an option to "Force NTSC". I had this setting turned on (even though my ROMS were NTSC, I figured it couldn't hurt to have it on). Are there any other settings I can change that will help with the lag? I am used to the SNES9x UI, its just a little different through Emustation.

I suppose what would be really helpful would be for someone, if they had the time, to turn on their FPS display option and play though Link to the Past quick (or if they had a endgame save they could use) and verify that they do not have frame dropping at the locations I listed above. If they did not have frame dropping then I would know that its possible to get better performance, if they do then it may just be a hardware/performance issue that is unchangeable.