Forums

Sega Master System / Mark III / Game Gear
SG-1000 / SC-3000 / SF-7000 / OMV
Home - Forums - Games - Scans - Maps - Cheats - Credits
Music - Videos - Development - Hacks - Translations - Homebrew

View topic - IBMWave & Sound Blaster 16

Reply to topic
Author Message
Chris
  • Guest
Reply with quote
IBMWave & Sound Blaster 16
Post Posted: Wed Jul 28, 1999 9:13 pm
This is making me throughly pissed. I was just in a happy mood until I went to my bro's house and I was
using his girlfriends' PC. She uses a Pack Bell and her sound card is a genuine Sound Blaster 16
with manufactured for Pack Bell PC with colored labeling (for idiots who can't plug a pc together). Also,
that sound card model still is a Sound Blaster 16 except it uses a cheaper midi sound table. It plays
the midi music through the adlib. I installed Kgen, Genecyst, and Zsnes. Before I continue our PCs are
identical, except for the sound cards. We both have the same VGA hardware type (VESA 1.2) and
the same Pentium 133 chip. All of the games below have been tested with the sound on.

I installed the game Sonic the Hedgehog. Through Genecyst, Sonic ran at an average of 45 fps on my
PC. On hers, it ran at a suprisingly 56 fps! It almost looked completely smooth! I was shoked out
my mind! Then I ran Tazmania and that ran at 51 fps and I ran Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
Hyperstone Heist and that ran at full speed!!! No clipping, no jumping, no frame skipping!!!
Full speed!!! Now on my PC Tazmania runs at 42 fps and TMNT Hyperstone Heist runs at 54 fps.

Now here's the biggest shocker of all. On Zsnes, Contra runs at 25 fps on my machine. On hers...
It was able to push 47 fps, which shows a big improvement in animation. The only time the game
slowed down was on really huge graphics like the turtle mutant at the end of area 1, all
of area 2, and when ever there were big screen pallete flashes like when you press the super
grenade. But, even that only made it drop to about 27 fps. The only way I can get Contra to
run like that on my PC is to turn the sound off.

The Sound Blaster 16 plays it sound directly from it's sound source, which it the program itself or
the game. My sound card, the IBMWave (Sound Blaster 8/16/Comp.), uses a program that floats
around in memory and interprets sound writes to the sound blaster port converts them to the
IBMWave sound card and then plays them. Basically it's an emulator to not only the
Sound Blaster 16 but to the original Sound Blaster and certain sound writes to the Sound
Blaster Comp.

Now after all this, I'm seriously blaming my sound card because why else would my PC be slower
than my bros' girlfriend's PC? Do any of you all have suggestions as to what I should do?

Chris :o)
 
Lin Ke-Fong
  • Guest
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Thu Jul 29, 1999 12:52 am
[ibmwave vs. sb16]
Quote
> Now after all this, I'm seriously blaming my sound card because why else would my PC be slower
> than my bros' girlfriend's PC? Do any of you all have suggestions as to what I should do?

Perhaps it's because your ibmwave card is PCI?

If so, PCI and ISA cards (e.g. sb16) are different, the dma is done differently, and the PCI card is indeed emulating the
ISA card and that's why it is slow. PCI can be busmaster, so they can make the transfer themselves, I am not sure that
ISA cards cannot be busmaster, but I've never seen one doing so, and also "old style" dma cannot be done with PCI card,
except by special means, I don't really understand how but information are on Intel's website.

But that's strange that there's such a big big difference of speed.
 
  • Joined: 12 Jul 1999
  • Posts: 891
Reply with quote
HAHAHA!!! Buy a SB16 *nt*
Post Posted: Thu Jul 29, 1999 4:43 am
NO FUCKING TEXT, GODDAMN IT!!!
  View user's profile Send private message
Frost
  • Guest
Reply with quote
throw ur pack bell out!!!!! very high prices, terribly low quality, build ur pc urself!!!! -nt-
Post Posted: Thu Jul 29, 1999 1:15 pm

 
Reply to topic



Back to the top of this page

Back to SMS Power!