try these -video <gdi|ddraw|d3d|none> -video ddraw (we already tried d3d) -video <gdi|ddraw|d3d|none> Specifies which video subsystem to use for drawing. By specifying 'gdi' here, you tell MAME to render video using standard Windows graphics drawing calls. This is the slowest but most compatible option. Specifying 'ddraw' instructs MAME to use DirectDraw for rendering. This causes MAME to render everything at a lower resolution and then upscale the results at the end. This produces high performance, especially on older or low-power video cards, but has a noticeably lower output quality. Specifying 'd3d' tells MAME to use Direct3D for rendering. This produces the highest quality output and enables all rendering options. It is recommended if you have a recent (2002+) video card. The final option 'none' displays no windows and does no drawing. This is primarily present for doing CPU benchmarks without the overhead of the video system. The default is d3d also -[no]multithreading / -[no]mt Enables multithreading within MAME. At the moment, this causes the window and all DirectDraw/Direct3D code to execute on a second thread, which can improve performance on hyperthreaded and multicore systems. Consider this switch experimental for the moment. The default is OFF (-nomultithreading).