Dual channel could speed up WinUAE?

[Leandro Jardim]

Dual channel is disabled on my computer, does this can hurt WinUAE performance greatly? How much, an estimative? To help you, its a Intel Dual Core E5200 2.60 GHz with 3 GB RAM DDR2.

[Toni Wilen]

Answer is 100% yes, emulators need to move lots of data around, all the time, memory bandwidth is very important.

No idea how big or small is real world speed difference.

[Dr.Venom]

Hi Toni,

In case we would want to benchmark WinUAE performance, is there maybe some sort of benchmark option? I thought I read somewhere about "warp" mode, but I've no idea if that is meant as a benchmark option or how to activate it.

Would be very nice to have a proper benchmark, gives us something more to play with when trying out different / new hardware

[Toni Wilen]

I am very anti-benchmark program. They can very easily show crazy results compared to real-world programs.

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Answer is 100% yes, emulators need to move lots of data around, all the time, memory bandwidth is very important.

No idea how big or small is real world speed difference.

What about ganged and unganged.
Im guessing unganged would have a performance hit.

[Dr.Venom]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

I am very anti-benchmark program. They can very easily show crazy results compared to real-world programs.

Is there a way to run WinUAE fully "unthrottled" (i.e. no video or audio sync)?

For example my benchmark could be to run Hybris and Mental Hangover for a minute -unthrottled- in A500 quickstart most accurate. The result would be a % speed value, which tells you how many times faster the emulation is than a a real world machine running the same game or demo.

The advantage being that it really tells something about the power of your hardware, and makes it comparable between different hardware setups. It would then for example also be easy to see (if someone would go through the effort) what the difference would be for single/dual/triple/quadruple, etc. memory bandwidths, or different cpu speeds, etc. I guess it could be a simple measure without the drawbacks of traditional benchmarking programs?

You got my vote for a "-nothrottle" command line option at least

[amilo3438]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

I am very anti-benchmark program. They can very easily show crazy results compared to real-world programs.

Theoretically in WinUAE cycle-exact mode any benchmark program should show the same values as on a real Amiga, right?

[Toni Wilen]

It was about benchmark of your PC, how fast it can run emulation.

Just enable "warp" mode.

[amilo3438]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

It was about benchmark of your PC, how fast it can run emulation.

Well then, if would be possible that WinUAE, when it starts first time, do some kind of internal benchmark and propose the optimal settings for that PC with showing some message f.e.: "Your PC is not capable of running the WinUAE in CE mode!".

EDIT: Or maybe to adjust the settings internally by itself with also showing some properly message.

Such benchmark could test is a PC capable of running WinUAE at max load without dropping any frame of sound buffer or something else?!

And continue to decrease some of option values, testing whole again until found the optimal value.

EDIT1: And then generate "default" configuration file inside the same configuration folder. It would make life easier for beginners.

EDIT2: Other possibility would be to run such benchmark after manually changing some option values to see if the PC is capable of running it at max load.

p.s. If that all looks too much complicated, then the possible massage maybe would be f.e: "Buy the fastest = latest PC ... I am not going to support old PCs."

[Dr.Venom]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

It was about benchmark of your PC, how fast it can run emulation.

Just enable "warp" mode.

With the risk of sounding really stupid now (I'm ready to hide quickly), what is "warp" mode and how do I enable it?

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by amilo3438

Well then, if would be possible that WinUAE...

You missed my previous answer (and I think you still misunderstood the point of this test, it is not about capability to run emulation, it is about testing how much faster hardware X can run it compared to hardware Y or setting X vs Y)

Synthetic benchmarks are bad choice for this kind of testing. Users would attempt to optimize for case that never happens in real world and may actually slow down real world performance!

Originally Posted by Dr.Venom

With the risk of sounding really stupid now (I'm ready to hide quickly), what is "warp" mode and how do I enable it?

end+pause or warp=true in config file. Frame limiter and sound gets disabled, emulation runs as fast as possible.

[amilo3438]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

You missed my previous answer (and I think you still misunderstood the point of this test, it is not about capability to run emulation, it is about testing how much faster hardware X can run it compared to hardware Y or setting X vs Y)

It was just moment of inspiration, an idea triggered by your answer.

(p.s. I know, it was always the question of which is better ... mean the PC. )

[mc6809e]

Originally Posted by Leandro Jardim

Dual channel is disabled on my computer, does this can hurt WinUAE performance greatly? How much, an estimative? To help you, its a Intel Dual Core E5200 2.60 MHz with 3 GB RAM DDR2.

I use a slower Core 2 Duo at 2.13GHz.

The biggest improvement in speed with WinUAE came after I installed a cheap PCI-e graphics card and turned off integrated graphics.

I rarely see stuttering now.