Please test nemulator's audio resampling

[koitsu]

I'm stretching it here, but if by missing a vblank you're referring to an actual hardware vblank (that is, on the host system, not a vblank in the emulated system), there may be an explanation. Possibly. At least on nVidia cards -- no idea about ATI, Intel, or on-die GPUs on present-day Core iX CPUs.

nVidia's semi-recent drivers have enabled a crapload of vblank adjustments on a per-application setting. The one that weirds me out the most is "adaptive", because I have not the slightest idea what that does/how that functions. I took a screenshot of the 3D settings profile page on my XP box, with the pulldown expanded, so you can see what I'm referring to. You can also set this on a per-application (per-exe-file or per-process-name) basis.

Aside from strange emulator bugs or Windows doing really weird crap (my vote is always on the latter, haha), the above is the only thing I can think of that might explain loss of some intervals.

[James]

I think the problem is that I am using the motherboard's integrated graphics, and it is only compatible with up to DirectX 9.0c functionality.

Yes, that's the problem. I should probably have a more helpful error message.

do you REALLY need DirectX10 for a NES emulator?

No, of course not. However, when I was switching from DirectDraw to Direct3D, that was the API I chose to learn.

You're really limiting the number of possible users by doing that. It won't be useable on almost any laptop ever made, on any netbook, and there are still a HUGE number of desktop systems out there without a decent video card like mine here. That's something to think about.

Yeah, I know. And, not to sound complacent, but I'm ok with the decision. FWIW, I've primarily developed nemulator on 2 laptops since ~2009 (Fujitsu Lifebook and MacBook Air).

Anyway, I hope you get a chance to try it out on your desktop and let me know what you think.

[James]

but if by missing a vblank you're referring to an actual hardware vblank

Yes, sort of. I only had a few minutes to look into this over the weekend, but I think what's happening is that, on occasion, the scheduling of the process (thread) is delayed/preempted and is unable to complete a frame within a vblank interval. I have a couple of ideas for confirming this and potentially improving, but with a non-realtime OS, there's only so much that can be done...

[tepples]

I think the problem is that I am using the motherboard's integrated graphics, and it is only compatible with up to DirectX 9.0c functionality.

Yes, that's the problem. I should probably have a more helpful error message.

Might 10level9 help in any way?

[James]

I think the problem is that I am using the motherboard's integrated graphics, and it is only compatible with up to DirectX 9.0c functionality.

Yes, that's the problem. I should probably have a more helpful error message.

Might 10level9 help in any way?

Interesting. Yes, I suppose it would help; I'll take a look sometime.

[miker00lz]

Yeah, I know. And, not to sound complacent, but I'm ok with the decision. FWIW, I've primarily developed nemulator on 2 laptops since ~2009 (Fujitsu Lifebook and MacBook Air).

Anyway, I hope you get a chance to try it out on your desktop and let me know what you think.

I just tried it. It sounds great! Can't notice any frequency changes at all. Good stuff.

[James]

Well, I traced down the occasional stutter to GPU memory paging as a result of a memory leak. Along with some additional tweaks to thread priorities, everything seems to be working well without adjusting processor throttling settings or even thread affinity.

BTW, I used GPUView to help track this down. Very cool stuff; check it out if you're developing on Windows.

[James]

Studdering. However, when checking that, I came across another problem: timer_sync doesn't seem to be working correctly.

I released a new version of nemulator that should resolve this issue.