[shazza]

Is there any way to fasten Pokemon Emerald up on VisualBoy Advance? I read the FAQ on the VBA site, but disabling the sound and other suggestions were little to no help.

My computer is currently, quite frankly crap. 300MHz and 128MB RAM isn't very fun. However, I am going to purchase a new computer in a few months. But in the mean time, I would like to play Emerald.

Is there any other ways? Or another GBA emulator that would work better on my computer?

Cheers.

 

[Foxfyre]

I think it's just your computer, to be honest. But in all fairness, mine runs at a consistent 99%, which is kinda odd, because I can get most games a full 100% without a problem

 

[shazza]

Yep, I am assuming it is my computer. I am getting 20%-40%. So really, all other GBA emulators will be as slow, and it's just my computer?

 

[Foxfyre]

yeah, 300mhz is barely enough to run snes emu's, let alone a gba emu....

 

[WindHydra]

300mhz is not just barely for snes... my 233mhz PII ran it perfectly
But GBA emulation needs more power.

 

[Kirby]

Yep, I am assuming it is my computer. I am getting 20%-40%. So really, all other GBA emulators will be as slow, and it's just my computer?

definitely your PC

well for the meantime, set the fameskip higher until the percentage reaches 99-100%. Disabling sound might help also. It won't be pretty, but pokemon games don't require much real-time input, so some dropped frames are OK

 

[SSJBatMAN5000]

Playstation emulators ran faster on my old pentium 2 then GBA. and that's even with software rendering.

 

[Cypherswipe]

Set the frameskip as high as it'll go, turning off sound might help but probably not, go options->emulator->speedup toggle (Note: You'll have to turn this back on every time you open the emulator, since VBA doesn't remember this setting).
Boycott advance is usually faster than VBA, but it seems to have trouble running pokemon emerald (it doesn't have any save settings that can be adjusted). Also, it's no longer being worked on, so if you have a problem with it, you're screwed.
No$GBA is also faster (and has some settings to make it even faster), but again, it may have trouble running pokemon emerald.

Bottomline: You're always going to have trouble running GBA emus on such a slow computer (I've got 500Mhz, and many games only run at 80~90% speed), but using a different emu will speed things up. VBA is perhaps the slowest of the GBA emus. VBA's big advantage however, is features and abilities. If anything other than speed is your main concern, use VBA. If speed is more important, use some other emulator. (Especially avoid any of the unofficial builds of VBA, they add features, but slow the emu down even more.)

 

[LanceHeart]

Ooh, don't forget to reduce the Video size to 1X...

It helps a tiny bit on fast computers (of course, being in 800X600 also makes everything that much more visible)