WHDLoad vs Floppy game speed

[blakespot]

I launched Zeewolf 2 on my A2000 '020 w/ 2MB 32-bit FAST RAM and 4MB 16-bit FAST RAM. It is FAR faster using an ADF than the WHDLoad image. Is part of the point of WHDLoad to eliminate any accelerator advantage? Why would that be?


bp

[blakespot]

I checked that right off - not the case. And the notes talk about cache optimizations, etc. Cache not turned off.

And as for preload - why would that matter for frame rate?

[blakespot]

Check this out. I took a video of the game running in 3 different states:

Floppy - 68000 w/ 1MB CHIP, 4MB FAST
Floppy - 14.3MHz 68020 w/ 1MB CHIP, 2MB 32-bit FAST RAM, 4MB 16-bit FAST RAM
WHDLoad - 14.3MHz 68020 w/ 1MB CHIP, 2MB 32-bit FAST RAM, 4MB 16-bit FAST RAM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXs0AX9LlEI

Note the WHDLoad notes shown on video before the WHDLoad example plays. How is it as slow (slower?) than the 68000-only floppy run? Makes me question the whole WHDLoad situation. My "floppy" is a HxC2001.

Thanks for having a look.



bp

[blakespot]

You haven 't got preload enabled.

From the manual

Preload/S
If this option is enabled, WHDLoad will load as many files and disk images as possible into memory at startup. If during preload the free memory is not sufficient for a file preloading will stop. Then only a part of the files are preloaded. This increases performance when the installed program is running, because it avoids switching to the OS to load data directly from the harddisk. This option should be enabled always.

It was on. User x303, up in the thread, said "maybe preload is on." I have no idea why preload would cause it to be slower, so I turned it off. It was on. Preload makes no difference -- same speed during gameplay either way. Preload is not the issue.


bp

[blakespot]

It's unfortunate this seems to happen with some titles. Now I am compelled to check every WHDLoad game against a floppy image of same on my A2000 '020. Yea, it's only a 14.3MHz '020 -- but it has some 32-bit FAST RAM, the MMU, and the '881 FPU -- the only advantage a '030 would have over it is a 256 byte data cache (the '020 has only a 256-byte instruction cache). So the difference in performance is worth thinking about.

bp