Up until a month ago I was using my ps3 to get my retro fix on my tv. Now that sony has removed the otheros feature I have been trying to recreate a similar set up on my laptop using ubuntu 10.04 and wahcade. The problem however is that performance is terrible in SDLMAME and XMAME. mupen64plus runs fine as do a number of other emulators that employ graphic acceleration, so I am curious as to what the issue is. I am using an acer travelmate 3200 with an Intel Pentium M 745 (1.8Ghz) CPU and a ATI Radeon Mobility 9700 (64MB) videocard.

lspci output:
http://pastebin.com/FGTVxVLT

I first installed xmame from the lucid repos I then uninstalled xmame and tried a pre-compiled sldmame from here;
http://sdlmame.wallyweek.org/download/

yet performance is even worse with sdlmame. On the windows side mame32 works great with my current hardware. I am pulling my hair out trying to get similar performance in ubuntu. Any thoughts? thanks in advance

try to add the " -video opengl" option at launch and see if it improves the result

I already have opengl activated in the mame.ini. When I start sdlmame with -video opengl I get the same effect. Even navigating the menu is slow and not very responsive. The menu is much more responsive with sdlmame "-video soft" however games still run quite poorly. When I exit out of sldmame I get the following text "OpenGL: PBO not supported". May that have anything to do with my issue.

Sounds like you don't have hardware OpenGL. Could someone ATI-oriented pitch in on how to get acceleration on a Mobile 9700?

Thanks for the reply R.Belmont. I am using open xorg radeon drivers and I believe I have opengl functioning in other emulators (zsnes, mednafen, mupen64plus) it just seems that various mame versions cant see opengl. zsnes was preforming in a similar manner as mame until I fixed the radeon driver. When using xmame with wahcade, xmame would not run. Checking the emulator log I would get the following;

http://pastebin.com/N0pGn1i5

Is are there different implementations of opengl in linux, what is libgl?

libGL.so is the main OpenGL library (usually it's in /usr/lib/). If you don't have it, you probably don't have acceleration.

You might try running SDLMAME -video soft -window -nomaximize so the window's the actual size of the game. That should get you 100% speed and then hopefully someone will know how to properly enable GL on your ATI chip.

It's strange that you're apparently getting OpenGL in other emulators but not MAME. What exactly did you have to do to "fix the radeon driver" for ZSNES?

When I initially installed ubuntu 10.04 it keep freezing. I had to boot into restore mode and use low graphic settings to have a functional experience. In this mode all emulators preformed like mame does currently. After much searching I discovered the solution to the video problem which I discuss here,

http://phoronix.com/forums/showpost.php?p=128687&postcount=12

After implantation I am able to use compiz and a number of emulators are now functional. MAME however continues to frustrate.

You may need to disable compiz for MAME to be able to use OpenGL depending on how sturdy the drivers for that chipset are.

I'll give it a try thanks again.