Optimised MAME cores for the Pi 4?

matchaman

I've been experimenting with MAME cores and their romsets (2010 onwards) in 4.6 for the Pi 4 model B with mixed results. Some some titles are running fine while many 3D games are still slow with minimum benefits from the much faster hardware. Could it be that MAME was build with x86 in mind and ARM cores need more optimisation?

Is seems that MAME 2003 Plus (and standalone AdvanceMAME) still remains the best choice. However, I don't expect/hope this to be permanent. Generally, what should be considered an optimal choice for MAME cores on the Pi 4 and what should be expected in the future?

barbudreadmon

@matchaman said in Optimised MAME cores for the Pi 4?:

minimum benefits from the much faster hardware. Could it be that MAME was build with x86 in mind

From MAME's point of view, the hardware isn't "much faster", because MAME is an emulator using single thread and not using hardware (meaning gpu) acceleration.
MAME is around 22 years old, so for obvious reasons it was mainly written with x86 in mind (arm has been popular for less than 10 years now)
Performance is not really a matter of concern for MAME, only accuracy. Also, over the years, they introduced a lot of abstraction layers in their code to make programming easier, those abstraction layers tends to make the emulation slower.

George Spiggott

@barbudreadmon said in Optimised MAME cores for the Pi 4?:

From MAME's point of view, the hardware isn't "much faster", because MAME is an emulator using single thread and not using hardware (meaning gpu) acceleration.

Interesting. How does that compare to FBNeo in terms of how the Pi's CPU/hardware is utilised?

barbudreadmon

@George-Spiggott 1 and 2 are basically the same for MAME and FBNeo, the only difference would be the 3 :

we are more lenient about accuracy and don't mind speedhacks at all, if a fix will lower framerate dramatically, it has to be something that will fix some major issue, a good example is the cps3 driver : in late 2018 a fix that caused a major framerate drop had to be implemented to fix a major gameplay issue in jojoba (p2 combo bar wasn't showing), on the other side 2 months ago we noticed a minor issue appearing for a few frames on loading screen in sfiii, the fix involved another major framerate drop so we discarded it.
we use very few abstraction stuff

sirhenrythe5th

@barbudreadmon said

MAME is around 22 years old

24 years 😊 In 1996 Nicola Salmoria introduced MAME. After that Aaron Giles and some other Masterminds boosted it to mainstream.

I also remember the first days of Final Burn, it was a single game emulator for "Afterburner" from SEGA and i loved it!!! Performance was much better than with MAME back in these days - but the most impressive difference was the sound 😮 WOW, way better than any other emulator.

matchaman

Thank you, that's some very interesting information. So as I see it now, FBNeo is the best choice for ARM devices, with its ever-expanding title support and HLE approach.

Darksavior

Mame builds are single threaded? Can they be compiled for multi? (I want to play cave games at full speed-_-;)