Tutorial: How To Improve The Emulation Speed in DreamSNES

Anything DreamSNES-related can be asked in this forum, such as general questions about the emulator, how to burn it, etc.
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Tutorial: How To Improve The Emulation Speed in DreamSNES

Post by Christuserloeser »

Note that you will notice at least 20% less frameskip if you obey the info below, but you won't get completly rid of it.

Also the results vary depending on the games you're trying to emulate, e.g. Yoshi's Island will still be unplayable, while Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country will run pretty much perfectly.

At first some general things to improve the emulation speed which should be widely known by now:


A Small Checklist To Improve The Emulation Speed With DreamSNES

In the options menu you change the following settings:
  • Turn on CPU optimizations
  • Turn off the Sound or set it to MONO
  • Turn off Mode7 Interpolation
  • Turn off Transparencies if not needed for the game
This will definitly improve the emulation speed noticable and will help to make most games playable.


Now on to the 20% boost mentioned in my introduction:


European 50Hz PAL vs. US/JP 60Hz NTSC

If you use European PAL games instead of their American or Japanese versions you definitly will expierence a major speed boost of about 20% - thanks to the 50/60Hz difference between PAL & NTSC and just because emulating games that run at 50Hz is much easier for DreamSNES than emulating games that run at 60Hz.

That means all American or Japanese games that previously ran at 80% speed will run at 100% if you use their EU PAL version in DreamSNES.


If you are not sure what region your games come from, try using GoodSNES, a tool which renames and classifies your games.

GoodSNES is available here: http://www.allgoodthings.us/



Some more details about the reason why EU PAL emulation is so much more efficient with DreamSNES:

PAL games by Nintendo, Rare, Infrogrames, and other good European distributors and developers are 20% faster because their speed has been modified/optimized to match 50Hz. On DreamSNES these actually would ran smoother yet also faster than the US/JP versions of the same games.

Playing these games will offer 100% full speed emulation with very little frameskipping.


European PAL releases by smaller Japanese or American companies with small or bad European distributors miss the speed modification for the 60Hz -> 50Hz difference, thus they will run smoother with DreamSNES, but actually are slower than their US/JP original on a real machine.

Playing these games on DreamSNES will offer 100% speed with very little frameskipping but they'll be still be slower than on a real American or Japanese SNES.



I also posted the info at Dreamcast-Scene.com's Wiki along with some more general info about DreamSNES:

http://www.dreamcast-scene.com/index.php/Main/DreamSNES
Last edited by Christuserloeser on Thu Aug 03, 2006 9:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Cid Highwind »

Great info, someone should make it sticky :D
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Post by Hawq »

Someone just has
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Post by Christuserloeser »

Thx Hawq :)
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Post by mikozero »

great topic to sticky

can i add a little thing . . .

if your after 'perfect rom images' (excluding the hacks and translations etc)

NSRT beats GoodSNES hands down.
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Post by Juan »

mikozero wrote:if your after 'perfect rom images' (excluding the hacks and translations etc)

NSRT beats GoodSNES hands down.
Agreed.
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Post by Spiritual_Chaos »

But will DreamSNES ever be so "good" that all games will run at 100%? Can the programming improve or can't it be done with the DC?
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Post by Sir Savant »

Spiritual_Chaos wrote:But will DreamSNES ever be so "good" that all games will run at 100%? Can the programming improve or can't it be done with the DC?
Yes. But at the moment, development on DreamSNES is not active, and may never be after such a long hiatus, so no.
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Post by Spiritual_Chaos »

But maybe some other emulator is/or will be able to emulate the games "perfectly"?
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Post by Juan »

/me puts his money on SNES4ALL (could take years if it happens)
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Post by Christuserloeser »

Yeah, SNES4All is the #1 candidate for true full speed SNES emulation, but right now Chui is working on a promising looking PlayStation emulator afaik.
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Post by The Hitman »

How do you use NSRT?
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Post by Juan »

I think it has a graphical interface now.
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Re: Tutorial: How To Improve The Emulation Speed in DreamSNES

Post by integrity »

Ok I am not trying to be controversial here but I tried DReamsnes 1st is a very good attempt but to be honest since it does not play at normal speed. Why bother the lag and jitter is enough to give someone seizures. I mean seriously I played half an hour and was so frustrated I shredded the cd that I had made.

I tried the methods mentioned here using PAL rom turning off some features like sound etc.. slight improvement this takes away from the fun. It is almost like selling you a used car as a new car but suffering in performance slow acceleration etc.

More programming is needed to get this to work correctly.
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Re: Tutorial: How To Improve The Emulation Speed in DreamSNES

Post by Christuserloeser »

While I tend to agree with you as DreamSNES definitely is not perfect, it really depends on the games you want to play: Some games are not playable at all, but many are.
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Re: Tutorial: How To Improve The Emulation Speed in DreamSNES

Post by Dream Project »

And does this method works perfectly on games like.........

Ranma ½: Super Battle (Ranma ½: Chougi Rambuhen)
Ranma ½: Hidden Treasure of the Crimson Cats (Ranma ½: Akaneko-dan teki Hihou)
Ranma ½: Ougi Jaanken
Sailor Moon S
Sailor Moon RPG - Another Story
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Tournament Fighters
Final Fight 2 & 3
Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts
Super Street Fighter 2
Super Metroid - Justin Bailey Hack
Super Mario RPG
Super Mario Kart
Mario Paint
F-Zero
Secret of Mana
Radical Dreamers
Final Fantasy IV-VI
Actraiser
Alcahest
Bahamut Lagoon
Terranigma
Treasure of the Rudras
Tales of Phantasia
Treasure Hunter G
Front Mission
Front Mission - Gun Hazard
Tenchi Muyo! Game Hen
Monstania
Legend of Zelda - Link to the Past
Contra 3
Jurassic Park Part 2 - The Chaos Continues
HyperZone
Megaman VII
Megaman X 1-3
Super Bomberman 1-5
Super Bomberman - Panic Bomber W
Super Castlevania IV
Clock Tower
Donkey Kong Country 1-3
Do-Re-Mi Fantasy - Milon no Dokidoki Daibouken
Tetris Attack
Tetris Battle Gaiden
Super Adventure Island

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
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Re: Tutorial: How To Improve The Emulation Speed in DreamSNES

Post by Juan »

PAL Final Fight 3 is pretty "playable" without sound.
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Re: Tutorial: How To Improve The Emulation Speed in DreamSNES

Post by Christuserloeser »

Dream Project wrote:And does this method works perfectly on games like.........
Many games listed never were released in PAL regions but if you set DreamSNES to PAL-50 in options and do own a PAL TV and PAL Dreamcast, it would still make a huge difference.

Other settings (CPU optimizations, Sound set to MONO/off, Transparencies deactivated): Yes, they would certainly help.


- except for F-Zero and Mario Kart which definitely will run at 60% at best (due to the DSP-1 chip).
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Re: Tutorial: How To Improve The Emulation Speed in DreamSNES

Post by OldSchoolIsCOOL »

I have found that games run faster if you only hold a small number of roms on each bootdisk. I played Mega Man X3 with 100 roms on dreamsnes, and it was terrible. I then tried it again on a bootdisk with only 19 roms, and it runs smoother. I'm not sure if I'm crazy, but it's worth a try. Even Mario RPG seemed to run a little faster... as long as you remove the save box (whatever it is called that goes into the controller to save memory) while you are playing the game, so it quits beeping every 5 seconds.
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