Snap loading speeds very slow?

[Chong Li]

Hi,

I have what you might call an unusual GameEx setup. I have all of my ROMs, snap files etc stored on a server. The computer running GameEx is connected to this server with gigabit ethernet. The directory containing all of this stuff is mapped as a network drive letter and always available.

When I browse the game list, GameEx takes 1-3 seconds to load the snap for each game. The size of one of my snap folders (for NES) is 17MB. It is literally possible to copy this entire folder across the network in less than 1 second.

Howcome GameEx has such a considerable delay for displaying these? Couldn't GameEx simply load all of the snaps into memory and display instantly? I have plenty of RAM to do so.

Thanks,

Chong Li

P.S. I've sent Tom a donation for my copy of GameEx. I do love the program a lot since it is so flexible and powerful.

[AngelicPenguin]

Hi,

I have what you might call an unusual GameEx setup. I have all of my ROMs, snap files etc stored on a server. The computer running GameEx is connected to this server with gigabit ethernet. The directory containing all of this stuff is mapped as a network drive letter and always available.

When I browse the game list, GameEx takes 1-3 seconds to load the snap for each game. The size of one of my snap folders (for NES) is 17MB. It is literally possible to copy this entire folder across the network in less than 1 second.

Howcome GameEx has such a considerable delay for displaying these? Couldn't GameEx simply load all of the snaps into memory and display instantly? I have plenty of RAM to do so.

Thanks,

Chong Li

P.S. I've sent Tom a donation for my copy of GameEx. I do love the program a lot since it is so flexible and powerful.

These snaps are videos or pics? If videos, do you get the delay on both AVIs and MNGs? I'm asking b/c before the newer updates I had delays on my AVIs (Divx), but not on the MAME MNG movies (I'm not networked for these files, it just paused when displaying AVIs.)

-Matthew

[bkenobi]

Just a thought, but is it possible that there is a latency problem when you request the file over the network? What I mean is that although the files may transfer at ~1gb/s there may be a latency for the initial request. I know this is a problem with satellite internet (very high throughput speeds but nearly impossible to play FPS due to large latency).

[Chong Li]

The entire directory containing all snaps for NES (for example) is 17MB. They are single PNG images. No movies.

Latency on my network is around 0.2ms. In other words, totally negligible.

[Chong Li]

Another follow-up:

If I use the MAME front-end "AdvanceMENU" it is able to display all of the images instantly and scroll through them at high speed with no noticeable delay.

I think it preloads all images into memory to accomplish this. I'd use AdvanceMENU but it is nowhere near as feature-rich as GameEx.

[Tom Speirs]

Hi,

I have what you might call an unusual GameEx setup. I have all of my ROMs, snap files etc stored on a server. The computer running GameEx is connected to this server with gigabit ethernet. The directory containing all of this stuff is mapped as a network drive letter and always available.

When I browse the game list, GameEx takes 1-3 seconds to load the snap for each game. The size of one of my snap folders (for NES) is 17MB. It is literally possible to copy this entire folder across the network in less than 1 second.

Howcome GameEx has such a considerable delay for displaying these? Couldn't GameEx simply load all of the snaps into memory and display instantly? I have plenty of RAM to do so.

Thanks,

Chong Li

P.S. I've sent Tom a donation for my copy of GameEx. I do love the program a lot since it is so flexible and powerful.

Hi Chong,

it may be the feature that finds snaps on a best match basis, this searches folders. You can turn that off, and also make sure you dont have the create snaps on thread option enabled (or use the latest version which no longer has this feature).

Thanks.

Tom

[Chong Li]

The "Snap Best Match" feature under "Tweaks/Performance" is set to "No I'm using slow Drives".

I have the latest version of the software as well, so I don't have that other feature.

[Tom Speirs]

The "Snap Best Match" feature under "Tweaks/Performance" is set to "No I'm using slow Drives".

I have the latest version of the software as well, so I don't have that other feature.

I assume you also tried adjusting the setting there for load speed?

[Chong Li]

I assume you also tried adjusting the setting there for load speed?

Yeah. That changes the responsiveness but does not make the images load any faster.