Double Buffering \ VOGONS

Double Buffering

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First post, by manic232

Posted on 2012-07-25, 09:05

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I recently discovered the wonders (and pain) of Double Buffering in DOSBox

I am a bit of a stickler for smooth scrolling in my games, so i always run DOSBox on my CRT monitor at 60hz, as this is smoother that the 85hz of it's native rate. If i turn on Double Buffering, the games run silky smooth on my setup, but as it states in the conf, it does slow things down. I have a 2.1 MHz core due CPU with 4GB ram and am running Windows XP.

Does anyone know of a conf setting, trick, hack, black magic/voodoo spell or any way to have Double Buffering on but retain the speed? I'm happy to sell my soul if necessary 😀

I have tried turning off all scalers etc, but it still is slow, do i just need a faster CPU?

Reply 1 of 9, by bloodbat

Posted on 2012-07-25, 09:20

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As much as I'd like your soul, double buffering (and vsync for other programs) always slow things down as more CPU is consumed...so...no...
Get a new CPU...maybe lowering the cycles will help...but it depends on what you're playing.

Reply 2 of 9, by Mau1wurf1977

Posted on 2012-07-25, 10:03

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Be aware that DOS games (320 x 200) run at a non-60Hz refresh rate. I believe it's 70Hz.

My website with reviews, demos, drivers, tutorials and more...
My YouTube channel

Reply 3 of 9, by manic232

Posted on 2012-07-25, 10:25

manic232 Offline

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After posting this I went and tried DOSBox with the same settings on my other modern gaming PC (i7 2600k 3.4MHz) and the same thing happens, slow down with Double Buffering on. So I don't think it is a CPU speed issue, I think it is just the way DOSBox works.

I note that if the music is turned off in game (Lemmings 2) then it is not so noticeable, but is still there.

Reply 4 of 9, by robertmo

Posted on 2012-07-25, 10:37

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tried different outputs? what's your gfx card?

Reply 5 of 9, by manic232

Posted on 2012-07-25, 10:49

manic232 Offline

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robertmo wrote:
tried different outputs? what's your gfx card?

Yes I have tried all the output settings, ddraw usually works best for me for all my games, I have an AMD 4050 on my emulation PC and an AMD 9800 series on the gaming PC

Reply 6 of 9, by Gamecollector

Posted on 2012-07-25, 12:31

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Vanilla dosbox 0.74 - overlay + double buffering is working perfectly, but ddraw + doublebuffering - very slow transition effects. Tested with Supaplex and One Must Fall 2097.
Opengl and openglnb are totally slow on my videocard. With and without doublebuffering.

Ykhwong's build - openglhq and direct3d are working perfectly with doublebuffering.

So, it looks like only the output=ddraw is affected.

Asus P4P800 SE/Pentium4 3.2E/2 Gb DDR400B,
Radeon HD3850 Agp (Sapphire), Catalyst 14.4 (XpProSp3).
Voodoo2 12 MB SLI, Win2k drivers 1.02.00 (XpProSp3).

Reply 7 of 9, by manic232

Posted on 2012-07-25, 12:44

manic232 Offline

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Gamecollector wrote:
Vanilla dosbox 0.74 - overlay + double buffering is working perfectly, but ddraw + doublebuffering - very slow transition effect […]
Show full quote
Vanilla dosbox 0.74 - overlay + double buffering is working perfectly, but ddraw + doublebuffering - very slow transition effects. Tested with Supaplex and One Must Fall 2097.
Opengl and openglnb are totally slow on my videocard. With and without doublebuffering.

Ykhwong's build - openglhq and direct3d are working perfectly with doublebuffering.

So, it looks like only the output=ddraw is affected.

Thanks for that, for some odd reason Overlay always results in official DOSBox 0.74 crashing on my system, no idea why, it does not crash on the SVN builds though, but double buffering does not result in smooth scrolling for me with the Ykhwong build

Reply 8 of 9, by wd

Posted on 2012-07-25, 18:24

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Update your graphics card drivers and directx. overlay crashing is unlikely a dosbox problem.

Reply 9 of 9, by manic232

Posted on 2012-07-25, 19:54

manic232 Offline

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wd wrote:
Update your graphics card drivers and directx. overlay crashing is unlikely a dosbox problem.

Yep, already done that, I always have the latest drivers and DX installed

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