I'm not at home right now, so I unfortunately can't do that comparison... Please post your dosbox.conf though - maybe that'll help.

Look if other processes are drawing CPU time, I've had a riot virus scanner. After updating it (4 months old 😉 its CPU usage went back to 0-1% and the stuttering was gone.

as I said my system is pretty tuned. Few services are running at all.

Here's a list of processes and as you can see CPU is 99-100% idle.

generally dosbox.conf is the default one and I use D_Fend to get to my games. I've tested with many different configuration with no sound and scalling and such.

This slowness exists even on my old 0.61 dosbox in text mode.

No antivirus software/firewall is constantly running on my PC as I'm behind a firewall.

What output= setting are you using, and are you using the SDL.DLL from 0.63 or one from somewhere else?

it's the SDL.dll shipping with 0.63

I generally use overlay/normal2x scale. have tried scale=none and other methods too.

These same settings and dosbox installation did work pretty well on this same system a few months ago.

I don't think it's wrong configuration at all.

how about a reboot.

Well, it's not 2003 since I use 2003 often and have never had this problem with DosBox. (At least not the default install of 2003 with no extra components installed).

Just saying that in case someone asks why your running DosBox on 2003......

Qbix wrote:

how about a reboot.

Very funny 😀

As I said:
- I've tried about 20 configurations of dosbox with version 0.61 and 0.63.
- I've disabled all windows services that could be disabled without killing the system.
- I've rebooted tens of times including after I disabled services.
- It did run very well on this very same machine/os several months ago

My only feasible though is that some other software is interfering.
Another possiblity is that USB devices might be interfering(hid.dll).

All other programs run pretty well.

Analog joystick?

YES THAT WAS IT 😊

Uninstalled the joystick driver and DOSBox works like charm now.
I don't use the joystick usually but installed it in the summer to check a game.

So analog joystick can make SDL mad.

I think that's something that should be mentioned somewhere as many people might have analog joysticks to play their old games.

I was also going to ask that you check your DX acceleration and make sure it's at FULL. If not then that also can cause DosBox to use more processor.

You could also try if this helps:
An attempt to fix the analog gameport issue

nikoladd wrote:

No antivirus software/firewall is constantly running on my PC as I'm behind a firewall.

This may be off-topic, but you should be running antivirus software at all times. A firewall doesn't address the same security problems as an antivirus program, they have different (although sometimes overlapping) goals and enemies.

nikoladd wrote:

YES THAT WAS IT :blush: […]
Show full quote

YES THAT WAS IT 😊

Uninstalled the joystick driver and DOSBox works like charm now.
I don't use the joystick usually but installed it in the summer to check a game.

So analog joystick can make SDL mad.

I think that's something that should be mentioned somewhere as many people might have analog joysticks to play their old games.

Doh! I've got to remember this one.

I saw somebody talking about an SDL patch recently that lowers the joystick polling rate... Maybe Qbix would be interested in using such a patch when he builds his SDL.dll for the next release version.

I was going nuts about this, with 0.65. Same problem, CPU utilization was very close to 100% at the DOSBox command prompt, even with 'cycles' as low as 1000 (on my 3.0GHz Prescott P4). The message about the analog stick gave me insight: Everything was fine until I unplugged my Dual Shock (which was connected to a Parallel Port adaptor). Plugged it back on and everything went back to normal.
Maybe this topic should have something like "100% CPU" on its title, it'd help future reference.

Here is the fix it you'd like to try your gaming device with Dosbox.
An attempt to fix the analog gameport issue