Emulator Speed with Netbooks?

[+Larry]

I'm considering getting a new netbook, and it must be able to run one of our emulators well on vacation/trips (Atari never rests!). It looks like they all have the Intel Atom processor -- latest and most energy efficient is N450? I've seen these mentioned in some other threads here, but do the emulators run well with the Atom? How fast will Atari800Win+ (for example) run on a netbook?

-Larry

[Rybags]

Should be fine. The stable versions are only single-threaded, so under-utilise our modern multi-core CPUs anyway.

 

27-40 times Atari speed on turbo on my Core2Quad @ 2.4 GHz, so I imagine something modern @ sub 1 GHz should manage a third of that speed at the least.

[EightBitWitch]

I have a Samsung N140 NetBook with 2GB-RAM and WindowsXP - Intel Atom N270 @1.66 GHz. I use mostly Atari800win Plus 4.0 and it works fine. Also i have run APE (with SIO2PC USB-Edition) and i have no Problems.

But i can not run Altira in good conditions, by big Display-Window it is going extremly slow, and the Sound are very bad.

Edited July 11, 2010 by EightBitWitch

[Rybags]

How good the graphics hardware would have bearing on many emulators too.

 

Atari800Win+ probably little difference, but ones like Mame, Altirra and anything that does DirectX stretching or other effects might suffer bad slowdown.

[EightBitWitch]

My Samsung N140 have only a "Mobile Intel 945 Express"-Graphic and have only simple 3D-Capabilities and all DirectX-Use (and also most SDL-Applications under Windows use DirectX) are slow.

 

When i have connect a second Display (via VGA-Connector) and try to run Altirra's Display-Window (the Directx-Part of this Programm) on it, then i cant work with the Emulator.

Most other DirectX-Applications have not this Problem, so i think it is a Problem in Altirra at the moment.

 

I hope that the Atari800-Emulator-Team (Atari800winPlus-Line are no longer under development) will implement the VBXE (and a Debugger?!) in their Emulator, then i have a very good tool.

Altirra have a lot of good ideas, but it based on the Code-Base from VirtualDub (the great Video-Editing Tool), and is not optimized for the A8-Work.

Edited July 11, 2010 by EightBitWitch

[Heaven/TQA]

most of the emulators are running fine on my samsung nc10... even Altirra.

[EightBitWitch]

I have tested the max. Speed with Atari800WinPlus 4.0-DE, running on Basic READY-Prompt (GDI on - No Strech/Artefacts):

- 672*480 (Windowed): 218%

- 336*240 (Windowed): 290%

- 320*200/400*300/512*384/800*600 (Fullscreen): ~320%

 

Non GDI-Modes (DirectDraw) are a little bit slower.

 

 

The Speed of Altirra is very depending by the Size of the Display-Window. I don't know witch max. Display-Resolution the NC10 have.

Edited July 11, 2010 by EightBitWitch

[phaeron]

There is a known issue with Altirra and some display driver combinations when displaying on a second monitor (Direct3D issue). If you're on the primary display, it will run on full speed even on an Atom; I once wrote some 6502 code up in an airplane this way. You will definitely have no problems running Atari800 or Atari++ since they are faster.

[+Larry]

Thanks to all, and especially "EightBitWitch" for taking the time to check the speeds. That should be fine for the few weeks I'm away from my real hardware.

-Larry

 

I have tested the max. Speed with Atari800WinPlus 4.0-DE, running on Basic READY-Prompt (GDI on - No Strech/Artefacts):

- 672*480 (Windowed): 218%

- 336*240 (Windowed): 290%

- 320*200/400*300/512*384/800*600 (Fullscreen): ~320%

 

Non GDI-Modes (DirectDraw) are a little bit slower.

 

The Speed of Altirra is very depending by the Size of the Display-Window. I don't know witch max. Display-Resolution the NC10 have.

[dwhyte]

On my 900MHz EeePC 900HD, Atari800MacX runs fine at 60fps...

[+Philsan]

No problem with HP Pavillion dm1-1015ez netbook with Altirra and other emulators.

But it has a Celeron Dualcore SU2300.

[EightBitWitch]

No problem with HP Pavillion dm1-1015ez netbook with Altirra and other emulators.

But it has a Celeron Dualcore SU2300.

 

Thats a Notebook, not a NetBook! The Questions going around NetBooks ....

[MEtalGuy66]

I have a dell mini 9 with 2gigs of ram and a 64gig solid state drive.

 

It's main OS is MAc OS X, but I run Windows XP in a virtual machine using Fusion.. Atari800win runs well over 100% atari speed with no "hickups"..

 

the ATom processor is pretty damn good for a 1.6ghz clocked single core chip..

[+remowilliams]

I was quite surprised at what the Acer Aspire One I have could pull off for emulators. Even stuff like WinUAE and a good amount of MAME ran quite well.

[+Philsan]

No problem with HP Pavillion dm1-1015ez netbook with Altirra and other emulators.

But it has a Celeron Dualcore SU2300.

 

Thats a Notebook, not a NetBook! The Questions going around NetBooks ....

 

Price, weight and size are the same of a netbook so it is a netbook...

 

If you're not convinced, take a look at Wikipedia's definition of netbook.

In "processors architectures" you'll find SU2300 too.

I know that the most common architecture is Atom and for this reason, to warn topic's starter, I have written "But it has a Celeron Dualcore SU2300".

[Heaven/TQA]

btw... is there a decent and actual amiga1200 emulator for mac?

[+remowilliams]

btw... is there a decent and actual amiga1200 emulator for mac?

I've found Amiga emulators to be a horribly frustrating, outdated and sad experience on new Macs.

[+Larry]

I got the (ASUS) netbook and set up Atari800Win Plus. With the 672x480 window, it jumped right up to 350% (run as fast as possible). Going to the Performance Options to set the video refresh rate to 10, I get 1250% of regular Atari speed. Way too fast, actually.

 

Anyway, 200% looks pretty good. It also looks like the emulator is a little flakey under Win 7. Has anyone else run into this? This is my first experience with Win 7.

 

-Larry

[+remowilliams]

It also looks like the emulator is a little flakey under Win 7. Has anyone else run into this? This is my first experience with Win 7.

 

I had to essentially abandon A8WP when moving to Win 7 x64, it had horrible display issues.

[EightBitWitch]

As i look for a Nettop, i look for one only with WinXP, Win7 was no option for me. All my Computers - all from 2005 or older, except the Nettop - run with WinXP. I will upgrade to the successor of Win7 or got to Linux (i use Ubuntu under vmware), when i must buy new Computers in 4-5 Years.

And i look instandly for an Memory-Upgrade for my Nettop and have installed 2GB, i dont know is Win7-Starter acceppting more then 1GB RAM.

 

 

I got the (ASUS) netbook and set up Atari800Win Plus. With the 672x480 window, it jumped right up to 350% (run as fast as possible). Going to the Performance Options to set the video refresh rate to 10, I get 1250% of regular Atari speed. Way too fast, actually.

 

Anyway, 200% looks pretty good. It also looks like the emulator is a little flakey under Win 7. Has anyone else run into this? This is my first experience with Win 7.

 

-Larry

[+Philsan]

After my Celeron Dualcore SU2300 2GB W7 Home Premium "powerful" netbook, today I have done some tests with an old Asus EeeBox B202 (ATOM N270 1.60GHz, 1GB and W7 Home Premium) nettop.

When nettop is doing other things (for example searching and updating OS or antivirus), Altirra sometimes lags.

Otherwise Altirra works well (I have reached Yoomp! level 4 without any lag).

[EightBitWitch]

You can minimize lagging by increase the Run-Priority (Task-Manager)of the Emulator

to High or Highest - Realtime is not the best idea -, that eleminates the most of the lags.

 

After my Celeron Dualcore SU2300 2GB W7 Home Premium "powerful" netbook, today I have done some tests with an old Asus EeeBox B202 (ATOM N270 1.60GHz, 1GB and W7 Home Premium) nettop.

When nettop is doing other things (for example searching and updating OS or antivirus), Altirra sometimes lags.

Otherwise Altirra works well (I have reached Yoomp! level 4 without any lag).

[HiassofT]

FYI: There's some interesting development going on with atari800 that might also be interesting to you:

 

Recently Tomasz Krasuski added support for OpenGL based hardware video acceleration to the SDL version of atari800.

 

Here is a link to the thread in the atari800-users mailing list, the source code and binaries for Ubuntu Lucid and Windows can be downloaded from here.

 

On my desktop PC the speed improvement was quite significant: it increased from ~1300% to ~3900% (double-sized window mode). Switching to 16 bits per pixel (instead of the default 32) resulted in ~4400%.

 

I can't tell how well this will work with Intel GMA chipset graphics, but it might be worth giving it a try.

 

Here's a small crash-course:

 

By default OpenGL hardware acceleration is disabled, you have to enable it first in the configuration menu:

 

Press F1, select "Display Settings", then "Video mode settings" and set "Hardware acceleration" to "yes". In this config screen you can also switch between full-screen/windowed mode and set a "stretch" factor (I'm using 2x stretch in windowed mode).

 

Then go back to the "Display Settings" (by pressing escape) and enable "Show percents of Atari speed" - this'll display the speed in the lower left corner.

 

Now leave the config screen (press escape twice) and toggle the Turbo Mode by pressing F12.

 

so long,

 

Hias

[atarixle]

I kicked off the trashy Windows XP Home installation from my NetBook .. this was the very very first thing I did.

 

I installed Linux and atari800 (and other Linux and PC specific stuff ofc) ...

 

The Emulator is running very well, as long as old Computers (Pentium-166 class) executed it in around 100% speed.

Edited July 23, 2010 by atarixle

[oky2000]

To be honest Intel Atom == Intel Pentium III Mobile plus.

 

If it ran OK on a 1.2Ghz Pentium III laptop it will certainly run said emulators fine on something like an Intel Atom

 

ACER AspireONE was playing GENS (Sega Genesis emulator) a bit choppy at full size window but was fine in full screen mode, and I'm sure even WinUAE emulating an Amiga A1200 would be fine on such a machine in full screen mode.

 

Playing a decent 3D game from 2005 like Battlefield 2 is another issue.............