whdload vs. WinUAE for classic Amiga Games

[Legerdemain]

To me the choice is rather simple: the original hardware.

WinUAE is way too buggy, and emulation isn't synchronized in such a way that it really feels like running a real Amiga (especially not when running Workbench). Some things emulates way too fast and some things go way too slow which makes Workbench feel rather... 'surreal'. On some systems WinUAE seems to behave, on others it simply refuses to do pretty much anything the way it was meant to be done. Annyoing, to say the least.

However, I have been nothing but impressed with the performance of WinUAE, speedwise. On my old Compaq Presario 350MHz, 192MB RAM, running Windows XP... every single game I tried to run, OCS/ECS aswell as AGA, ran in perfect 50Hz/60Hz with no frameskip whatsoever (perfect only when having turned on VSync, of course). The only thing that disturbed me back then, game-emulation-wise, was Windows inability to show PAL-screenmodes on a CRT monitor, because using the 'filter' option, streching out the screen on a higher resolution, let's say 1280*1024, isn't really the same thing as the real thing.

Besides, when using the 'filter' option while running WB in native screenmodes, it sometimes feels like the JIT-emaultion is turned off. The system slows down to a crawl, and this have been true for all of the different systems I've tried running WinUAE on.

[Legerdemain]

Somehow I always get very picky when I emulate something I have in my own home 'for real'. One of the reasons I disliked the Playstation emulators for instance was that the sound was always 'off' a tad. In the end I just used my PS2 to play PS1 games, even though the emulator gave me higher res and faster loading.

I don't know what emulators you've used, but ePSXe must be one of the worst emulators in the world simply because it is beyond 'not user-friendly'. I don't know how many hours I spent on configurating the emulator to properly run FFIX, but then I released that... oh, well... now some other games doesn't run all that well. There are a ZILLION different plugins, which works best with Game A, Game B, Game C and so on and it is nothing but a nightmare to configure most of the gfx-plugins...

I really HATE ePSXe. Not for being a bad emulator, because it isn't, but for being one of the most not-user-friendly emulators I have ever used.

I thought I was about to cry when I downloaded pSX 1.5, started the emulator, started a game, and had to do practically had to do NIL configuration... put the bios in the correct directory, define my controller, select NTSC or PAL and turn on the V-Sync option. And then start the emulation. Although not making the 3D high-res, it must be the most user-friendly PS emulator I have ever ran. I don't know about compitability, though, but so far only Tekken 3 have managed to crash on me.

[Legerdemain]

Btw, I tried both SOTB and Turrican today on the HTPC, with maxed sound settings 100%, 48kHz ect. Maxed compatability, Display; Vsync on, 16bit(ofcourse), 720x576 fullscreen ect ect...

Oh, so you ran 720x576 without any filtering turned on, using H&V centering to achieve the most 'real' experience on your TV-set?

I just have to ask you, how do you do to define a 720x576 screenmode (and what gfx-card do you have) because I've been wanting to define my own resolution for a long time on my ATI Radeon 9800 Pro & Radeon 9600... but I haven't figured out a way to do so.

[Legerdemain]

@keropi

MHO: real A1200 + 030 + fastram + scandoubler + HD... nothing beats it...

It really disturbing, though, that there's no scandoubler for the A1200 that handles AGA properly. I sold my interal ScanMagic/FlickerMagic solely for this reason (the AGA games looked like {bleep}, and every application using AGA such as DeluxePaintV and Brilliance were because of this rendered useless in AGA modes). I will never touch a scandoubler for the A1200 again unless it is true 24-bit.

 :evil: