Hey guys, I'm working on setting up a SM5 build for the DDR Storm competition in May and I'm trying to get a SM5 build with a custom Theme on it to run as fast as possible (hopefully with bga's). In the past I've had issues with lag on my stock MK6 (upgraded to 2 gigs of ram) and was wondering what would be the best way to push out some more frames out of the thing. I'm planning to set it up as a kiosk (I think that's the term) and will be starting from a stock debian desktop image.
Thanks
Last edited: 19 March 2015 6:10am
roothorick Retired Developer Posts: 31 Joined: Oct 2013
The videocard is ironically the primary bottleneck. The NetBurst Celeron CPU is beefier than you'd think. And while SM is usually CPU-bound, the FX5200 was so weak it actually flips the tables here.
You've got the RAM covered. That's usually the big problem -- 256MB just isn't enough for SM5. Even 1GB causes problems with crossfading videos.
Cab in your sig? Looks like an LCD in there. Stick to 640x480. Set the appropriate aspect ratio in the video settings, then set the monitor to stretch; this gets you "anamorphic widescreen" which is how the Wii and PS2 do widescreen. It looks better than you'd think.
Careful with custom themes. Every image needs to go somewhere in VRAM, and the MK6's card doesn't have much to go around. Reducing the "Texture Resolution" under Graphics/Sound Settings will improve performance if the theme is using too many/big images, but the result tends to be... ugly. Still, a good quick test to see if your theme is a problem.
Goes without saying, but make sure nothing else is running, especially within the X server. For best results, launch StepMania directly from xinit. No window manager.
-E- Oh yeah. V-sync off. Normally I'd recommend adaptive v-sync but you need an 8xxx minimum for that.
Any suggestions on replacements for the 5200Fx? I've managed to make it playable but just barely. I would like to try to at least get roughly 60 fps during gameplay with two players so it feels somewhat smooth.
