NES Emulator FPS Drops

[Yasashii-kun]

I use FCEUX for NES emulation and I've encountered a problem. It seems that in certain games, when there's a lot of stuff on the screen, the fps count drops noticeably for a second.

Now, I know that emulation of anything requires a certain amount of processing power and although my PC is not exactly a beast by today's standards, it should, in my opinion have enough juice to handle emulation of a gaming system from the 80s.

Here are the specs:

CPU: AMD Athlon 7850 Black Edition (2x2.8 GHz)
GPU: Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT (1GB DDR3)
RAM: 4GB DDR2
OS: Windows 7 x64

On this rig, emulation of the SNES or the PSX or the N64 or DOS via Dosbox is perfectly smooth but I can't get NES emulators to work just as nicely.

I've tried FCEUX, Jnes, Nestopia and Virtuanes. The problem occurs on every one of those emulators. It should be noted, that when the "allow more than 8 sprites per scanline" is off in the Emulators that support it, the lag is somewhat smaller.


Anyway, what I'm trying to find out is whether this is because my PC is too weak, the emulators are poorly written or... if it's a naturally occurring thing. I'm aware that some games simply go beyond their platform's capabilities sometimes resulting in laggy spots. I'm just not sure if that's also the case for NES games since I thought that they were physically limited by the console. I thought that if a game is too demanding for the humble power of the NES, stuff would just flicker but would not lag. I did own an NES back when I was a kid (well... a cheaper ripoff, but still) but I honestly can't remember if I ever saw a game lag.

So here's a little request: I've noticed that the lag pretty much always in the second stage of Silk Worm. If you're willing to help me find out if the lag is normal and is a result of accurate emulation of NES's processing power, please get through at least the first two stages of the game (most importantly, the second one) and report if you've experienced any lag when there's a lot of stuff on the screen.

Here's the ROM: here

Replaced you offsite link with an onsite link, we have the rom anyway

[Zorlon]

I would hazard a guess at it being something that would happen on real hardware in this case

As I don't have that exact game or the real hardware to play it on I can't be 100% sure

NES emulators are designed to simulate the real thing though, so slow down with an emulated game is more than like going to be the same on real hardware

Lots of NES ports are rather badly done and did have lag, this is something I do remember myself, generally though games Made specifically for NES ran ok though, it was more of an issue with ported games, but back then this happened on most platforms when a game was ported.

[Yasashii-kun]

Thanks for the info. It actually calmed me down. I was just about to give up on NES games altogether because I thought that I can't get them to run just as they would on the real hardware.

Also, I just re-watched AVGN's Silver Surfer review and noticed that that game lags quite often. And he always plays his games on the real hardware.