How much overhead does the ms wavetable synth have in zdoom, on older systems?

Every pci sound card I try on xp doesn't have a hardware synth, and the isa sound card I have with one has a crazy amount of background noise/interference. This is on a p3-700, I remember being told not to use a software synth on a 486 or pentium, but is the overhead on my p3 negligible?

Do a benchmark with the timedemo command and tell us the results.

EDIT: No, wait, is music disabled in timedemo? Maybe you can find a specific map point where you are at less than 35fps and save the game. Then run the game with -nosound and check the fps

VGA said:

Do a benchmark with the timedemo command and tell us the results.

EDIT: No, wait, is music disabled in timedemo? Maybe you can find a specific map point where you are at less than 35fps and save the game. Then run the game with -nosound and check the fps

Where can I get/how can I generate a lmp demo file that's compatible with my specific zdoom version?

Go to MAP29 and record a demo blowing shit up. With -record

https://zdoom.org/wiki/Command_line_parameters


Then you can do a:

-timedemo demofile[.lmp]
Plays back a demo faster than -playdemo and displays a framerate when the demo is over. If the .lmp extension is omitted, it will automatically be added.

changing options in ZDoom or your PC. Save the results in a text file.

All I can recommend is testing, testing, testing.
And do not just only test the MS wavetable synth, also test the other ones on offer, like FMod's internal one, or Timidity++, WildMidi, GUS or FluidSynth, if you want to spend time setting them up. They will all handle differently. My personal guess is that you'll most likely fare best with either FMod (professional implementation) or WildMidi (very small and compact code) MS Wavetable will have to go through some inefficient system layers that may slow it down.

Normally, sound processing is not a big issue, unless you run some badly written code. The overhead for music processing should even be significantly less than for sound mixing.