nonfinite
Offline
Madison, WI

Hi there. I've been messing around with BGB and Fceux on my Macbook using either Wine or Paralells running Win XP. In both cases the emulator will experience considerable temporary slowdown (2-4 seconds) when the processor moves on to other applications. I've been watching in activity monitor, and it appears small jumps in processor requirements from other apps is causing the issue. I'm not maxing out the CPU either.

Has anyone found a fix for this kind of slowdown? I'm looking to give win xp in parallels or wine processor priority. I couldn't possibly perform with this lag, and don't find writing as enjoyable with it either.

garvalf
Offline
France

It seems it's possible to compile fceux on Mac https://emulationonmac.wordpress.com/20 … ite-10-10/

nonfinite
Offline
Madison, WI

Cool, that's a start. Regarding BGB, I'm seeing it can run in a variety of graphic modes. I may try running in something other than directx options as I'm hearing that can cause slowdown when emulating a windows platform in Wine.

fallenmatrix
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somewhere out there

I just tried running BGB on my Mac using Wine and it seems to run fine, even with DirectX. Maybe try closing any memory-intensive apps running in the background.

nonfinite
Offline
Madison, WI

I'd love to, but it seems my primary memory hog aside from BGB is the Dock. I'm running far below max capacity... argh.

I took a screenshot during a lag spike, posting.

Last edited by nonfinite (Mar 11, 2016 3:57 am)

nanode
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(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ el ass dee j

I've noticed that macbooks themselves aren't very good when it comes to any form of emulation (from personal experience). I have a feeling it has to do with RAM usage and management, but I always get this effect, even when using trackers like KiGB.

I'd love to hear if this gets fixed!

catskull
Offline
NUMBSKULL

Good grief! maybe try closing all of your crap? I mean illustrator, is that really essential to your live set? I'm running BGB and don't see any of the lag you're talking about. I'm on El Capitan, Late 2013 MBPr, 2.4 GHz Core i5 (dual core), 8 GB ram. Nothing special at all.

EDIT: I can get a split second hiccup if I cold start intensive programs. I recommend you CMD+Q all the extra crap you're running and only have the few emulators you actually need running. Clicking the red X in the top left of a program doesn't actually close it, not sure if you were aware of that.

Last edited by catskull (Mar 11, 2016 4:35 am)

nonfinite
Offline
Madison, WI

I tried running it again this evening without all the extraneous processes and am still experiencing the same issue. I'm considering dual-booting as a fix.

fallenmatrix
Offline
somewhere out there

Hm, have you tried a different emulator, maybe? OpenEmu is native to Mac and it's very good, you should check it out: http://openemu.org/

But other than that, wow. Maybe check how much memory is used during a lag spike, check which unnecessary processes are being used, and use Terminal to stop them. 

EDIT: I suggest you can try running BGB/Wine as a secondary user. I fixed the problem (i think) using this method



The first one is BGB running under Wine in the main user account. The process "wineloader" s CPU usage is unreasonably high.
The second one is BGB running under Wine in a secondary user account. Wineloader's CPU usage is pretty low (although it does fluctuate up and down but it never goes past 8%)
Third one is OpenEmu, running under the main user. It runs considerably faster, probably because it uses Gambatte (which also runs surprisingly well as a standalone)

I don't know if this will work for you the same way it worked for me, since my Mac is slightly older and probably different (Macbook Air 2014, 2.2GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7, 8GB RAM, 256GB Storage) but it's worth giving it a try big_smile

Last edited by fallenmatrix (Mar 12, 2016 6:05 pm)