What is the Reason for Slow DreamSNES?

cagmere · Post by **cagmere** » Wed Jul 30, 2003 10:29 pm

Hey how come this thread hasn't been closed yet? It clearly violates the rules in bold that deter people from posting about the slow speed of the DreamSNES.

cagmere · Post by **cagmere** » Wed Jul 30, 2003 10:34 pm

impact135 wrote:no you guys are wrong none of those games are full speed becuase they have frameskipping.. a game isnt full speed untill its the same speed as it would be on a real snes WITH SOUND.

I have tried over 100 snes games on the dreamcast and NONE of them run as good as they do on my real snes.

It has been over a YEAR since we have even heard from the dreamsnes team, i dont think they are working on it (i wish they were but lets be realistic here )

yes they did a great job so far, but theres a lot of work that still needs to be done and i really wish they would share their research with someone who will work on it because it doesnt look like they care about the project anymore, i think that instead of letting the project go to waste they should make it public domain or whatever its called and let the dreamcast emulation community take over the project. (only if the dreamsnes team isnt workin on it of course)

It just baffles my mind how a 200mhz machine has trouble emuating a machine thats 50x slower. The genesis emulator (i cant mention the name here) is FULL SPEED with sound (the sound is crap though).. and the genesis is faster then the snes.

I dont mean to be pessimistic (i think thats how its spelled) but we havent seen an update in over a year or even one word from the dreamsnes team that they are in fact working on the project. I think that snes is one of the greatest if not the greatest console ever created and i really wish i could play snes games on the dreamcast and it would be like on a real snes but thats not looking too likely.. im glad i have over 43 carts of snes games but being able to play all those games on the dreamcast (perfect speed , and sound) would be a dream come true. Theres lots of games that i have to use the pc to play becuase i cant find the carts or they are too expensive for me.

All in all, i HOPE that the dreamsnes team is still working on the emulator but i doubt it. Yes the dreamsnes is slow right now, (i dont accept framskippin and having to turn off sound as full speed). for now i will have to play snes games on my real snes and on my pc.. but i dream of a day i can play them full speed full sound on my dreamcast..

THIs is not to KNOCK the dreamsnes developers at all!! i am very pleased and im sure there are a lot of people here that are very pleased that there is even a working snes emulator on dreamcast. Its not near completion though and i wish it was .

I don't believe the Genesis is faster than the SuperNES. The emulator that you speak of for the Genesis, Seg?GEN...does run pretty fast. However, the compatibility sucks and the sound is less than stellar. To be able to incorporate full or near full compatibility and/or sound also takes its toll on getting the speed up there. I do know for a fact that the Dreamcast is more than capable of emulating a Genesis and SuperNES emulator with full speed and sound, there seemingly is just no team out there dedicated enough to complete such a project.

Revelation · Post by **Revelation** » Thu Jul 31, 2003 7:58 am

I assume you have programming experience? Ever try assembly? It's real hard. I can understand why the emulators might not run at full speed.

Oh, and I think the Genesis is actually faster than the SNES. Faster processor clock, I think (don't hold me to it, though). That was the idea for the whole "blast processing" thing with Sonic's fast horizontal scrolling, and something about Sega comparing Sonic's speed to Mario Kart's speed back in the day and telling everyone Sega was better.

karsten · Post by **karsten** » Thu Jul 31, 2003 8:18 am

Revelation wrote:I assume you have programming experience? Ever try assembly? It's real hard. I can understand why the emulators might not run at full speed.

Oh, and I think the Genesis is actually faster than the SNES. Faster processor clock, I think (don't hold me to it, though). That was the idea for the whole "blast processing" thing with Sonic's fast horizontal scrolling, and something about Sega comparing Sonic's speed to Mario Kart's speed back in the day and telling everyone Sega was better.

THIS is so ridicoluos. Clock isn't anything, snes ruled over genesis because of all the other chips. audio, grafic aren't related to cpu, and this explains why snes is so messy to emulate

karsten · Post by **karsten** » Thu Jul 31, 2003 8:21 am

impact135 wrote:no you guys are wrong none of those games are full speed becuase they have frameskipping.. a game isnt full speed untill its the same speed as it would be on a real snes WITH SOUND.

I have tried over 100 snes games on the dreamcast and NONE of them run as good as they do on my real snes.

It has been over a YEAR since we have even heard from the dreamsnes team, i dont think they are working on it (i wish they were but lets be realistic here )

yes they did a great job so far, but theres a lot of work that still needs to be done and i really wish they would share their research with someone who will work on it because it doesnt look like they care about the project anymore, i think that instead of letting the project go to waste they should make it public domain or whatever its called and let the dreamcast emulation community take over the project. (only if the dreamsnes team isnt workin on it of course)

It just baffles my mind how a 200mhz machine has trouble emuating a machine thats 50x slower. The genesis emulator (i cant mention the name here) is FULL SPEED with sound (the sound is crap though).. and the genesis is faster then the snes.

I dont mean to be pessimistic (i think thats how its spelled) but we havent seen an update in over a year or even one word from the dreamsnes team that they are in fact working on the project. I think that snes is one of the greatest if not the greatest console ever created and i really wish i could play snes games on the dreamcast and it would be like on a real snes but thats not looking too likely.. im glad i have over 43 carts of snes games but being able to play all those games on the dreamcast (perfect speed , and sound) would be a dream come true. Theres lots of games that i have to use the pc to play becuase i cant find the carts or they are too expensive for me.

All in all, i HOPE that the dreamsnes team is still working on the emulator but i doubt it. Yes the dreamsnes is slow right now, (i dont accept framskippin and having to turn off sound as full speed). for now i will have to play snes games on my real snes and on my pc.. but i dream of a day i can play them full speed full sound on my dreamcast..

THIs is not to KNOCK the dreamsnes developers at all!! i am very pleased and im sure there are a lot of people here that are very pleased that there is even a working snes emulator on dreamcast. Its not near completion though and i wish it was .

the emu you named is Segagen, is illegal and doesn't emulate the genesis sound (it fakes it). And as already said a SNES is far more complex than a genesis

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Thu Jul 31, 2003 8:40 am

They've waited longer than a year between releases. No problems there.

Speeding up an emulator is a very difficult task - much more diffcult than writing it in the first place. So naturally it will take a very, very long time.

The Genesis emulator is only "full speed" because it cheats. And it isn't full speed. The CPUs are actually slower than they should be. And, of course, a Genesis is nowhere near as complex as a SNES. The Smash Pack rip is basically a CPU emulator tied to a hardware renderer (whereas DreamSNES uses real rendering) and a very poor sound system. The main reason it's faster than DreamSNES is because it does virtually zero sound emulation - it uses a technique that can't be used for a SNES, because the SNES's sound system is for too complex. And, since that's the single slowest part of the emulator, it's also the reason that DreamSNES is as slow as it is.

The Genesis, as a computer, is far more powerful. It's main CPU is a true 16-bit CPU, running at 8MHz. The SNES has a hybrid 8/16bit CPU (the same as the one in th Commodore 128) running at 1.5 to 3MHz, depending on the game. The SNES did have more flexible (and complex) graphics hardware, but the Genesis could replicate a lot of that by using it's extra CPU power and some of the same tricks that SNES games use - it just took more effort, which nobody seemed to put in. It could also do 3D games without extra chips.

cagmere · Post by **cagmere** » Thu Jul 31, 2003 12:12 pm

Wait, how can you FAKE sound? Also, would there be a way to have the sound be the same as it would on the console by faking it? If it uses up less CPU, then why not go that route for the Genesis emulator that you are producing?

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Thu Jul 31, 2003 7:21 pm

The fake sound is produced by not actually emulating most of the sound hardware. The Genesis has an FM synthesiser in it. The Smash Pack doesn't bother doing any FM synthesis - it basically converts the commands it's getting into MIDI (or something like that, but not quite), and just plays them as musical notes. That works for music, although it sounds quite bad, but it really doesn't work for sound effects.

If the FM synth in the Genesis was simpler, it might be doable. But it has all sorts of feedback modes, noise modes, and stuff like that. So I don't think that faking the sound will ever sound any good.

The alternative (which I want to try at some point) would be to get the ARM coprocessor to do the FM synthesis. That might work (if it's fast enough). I know that the Smash Pack doesn't do that, because it uses Sega's standard ARM sound driver.

SSJKarma · Post by **SSJKarma** » Thu Jul 31, 2003 9:34 pm

listen up dude !
have you had a computer with those in it...

CPU = 200mhz
RAM = 16 megabytes
VIDEO = 16 megabyte
SOUND = 16/bit

listen this ok, i tried SNES9X back then... it never had FULL SPEED, mainly on games that had any other CHIPS like the SDD1 and the C4 one. that doesn't even count on the special SOUNDS CHIPS that are made for the different games !

and don't talk about ZSNES, same thing as snes9x !
so basically...
200mhz for FULL SPEED EMULATION is an impossibility, unless they can make the VIDEO card in the DC be used to output the video and PROCESS it ! for now, the only thing it does is copying the CPU PROCESSING on the screen ! the GPU isn,t even used for rendering which would give a lot less things on the CPU !

so basically, full speed on lesser games is possible, but never will it be for SDD1 and DSP1 and 2 games !

as for the GENESIS emulator, it has a way faster processor then the SNES, but GRAPHICALLY speeking the genesis was way stupidier !

that's why the genesis was better for fast paced action games while RPGs were way better on the snes !

for the rest, true that the genesis never had anything except the rasterization which is so easy to emulate !
the SDD1 and 2 + the DSP1, 2 and 3 are way harder to emulate !

so i say, its never gonna be full speed...
well at least for the special games which are lot !

crt0 · Post by **crt0** » Thu Jul 31, 2003 10:40 pm

Also note, Pentium chips, even the slower models, had a lot more instruction cache than the SH4 does, meaning more code could fit, and would run faster. I don't know how integer operations per second compare between the two processors (x86 vs SH4), but integer is important for 16-bit emulation. The SH4 is tuned for excellent floating point performance, so it doesn't quite lend itself to being a strong performer for such applications.

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Thu Jul 31, 2003 10:46 pm

It's a very good chip for some applications, including 3D gaming (which is why it's in the Dreamcast) considering it's cost and clock speed, but I don't think it's integer performance is that hot. It's probably about the same as an older Pentium at 200MHz, unless we start getting cache misses.

impact135 · Post by **impact135** » Sat Aug 09, 2003 1:25 am

for some reason every time i posted it gave me an error but it posted anyways without my knowledge.. so sorry for all the posts.

impact135 · Post by **impact135** » Sat Aug 09, 2003 1:26 am

again sorry about the 3 posts i didnt realize i was posting becuase it was giving me an error message so i didnt think it was posting at the time.. again i apoligize.

impact135 · Post by **impact135** » Sat Aug 09, 2003 1:27 am

i see.. so snes is a more complex machine and the illegal genesis emulator fakes the sound and that is why it can do full speed

The illegal genesis emulator has good compatability though.. mostly racing games give me trouble and a lot of games dont work..and most games have no sound or horrible sound.. sonic 2 works good but the roller coaster levels look like crap.

i have over 800 genesis games on a cd that work good (no not the sound but its mostly 100% speed). so yes less games will run on the illegal emulator then on dreamsnes, but right now the playability of snes games compared to genesis is about the same i guess. I dont consider any game that works playable.. for example star fox works but is soo slow its not playable.

I guess i was being too critical of the dreamsnes team.. they worked hard .. but it would be cool if they are still working on the emu.. i fear they have finished the emu

Ian Micheal · Post by **Ian Micheal** » Sat Aug 09, 2003 1:36 am

Hmm i have the tests and docs showing a p200 beats a sh4 on every test but for 3d gaming. its a offical doc so i cant post it but the sh4 does not beatt a p200 on any test on the chart but for 3d apps and then only if there using the pvr chip. so why is dreamsnes slow the dreamcast lacks about 100mhz. and trying to make up for the lack of cpu power is going to be a hard task running into years and years.

damnshow · Post by **damnshow** » Sun Aug 10, 2003 12:13 am

Which genesis emulator has FULL SPEED with sound?? if you cant mention the name, give us a hint.

SchmuckofNI · Post by **SchmuckofNI** » Sun Aug 10, 2003 5:49 pm

Smash pack, go buy it at ebay or a pawn shop. As for running snes9x on a p2 200 mhz I have had zero problems playing snes roms on that kind of machine. I mean snes9x even runs on a pentium 1 133 mhz with 16 megs of ram without too much problems... But then again I only tested a few rpgs nothing spectucular.

Celauve · Post by **Celauve** » Sun Aug 10, 2003 10:40 pm

I played SNES9X on a 200 MHZ machine with framskip on playing Mega Man X 2, it played horribly. With the sound off, and framskip on, it ALMOST played at full speed. Super Mario RPG froze the same machine, it's a miracle that game runs at all on the DreamSNES, lol.

Tr? · Post by **Tr?** » Mon Aug 11, 2003 12:42 am

why not just go by the old saying:

"No news, is good news"

It is better to have not heard from them, than to go to their site to see a page that says:
"Stop bothering us, we have heard enough criticism about our work, so we have stopped work on our emulator."

So just sit back and hope for the best...

Tr?

Celauve · Post by **Celauve** » Mon Aug 11, 2003 1:35 am

It's not going to happen you know. I can guess pretty well that the last version of the DreamSNES to come out was the final most likely. Seeing how it is indeed impossible to make it run full speed, they've done everything they can do at this point. All that they could work on now is compatibilty, and graphical issues. Speed would only get better if somebody found a way to upgrade the DreamCast itself, or if they sacrificed sound, or something else I'm sure, lol. All in all though, for what the Dreamcast can do with it, it's a great Emu, still play a lot of games on it, love it and all, but you get what I mean. The arguement that other games run fast made for the DC, well, that's because they don't run an emu ontop of it to eat up ram, plus the games for the DC use the seperate processors for graphics and whatnot. DreamSNES can't do that, so we're not gonna be able to ever hope for full speed. Good compatibility someday, but never good speed. Even the greatest programmers in the world could never get an Emu for SNES to run perfectly on the DC. I STILL LOVE MY DC THOUGH, AND GO DC EMUS!!!!!!