SwitchRes not picking the right resolution?

[mah]

Hello everyone,
first post here and starting right in the noobness

I recently started my project (that I would love to share on another post)
which consist of converting an old tmnt cab into a mame cab.. nothing super original but I wanted to start with this and learn the basics of making a control panels, connecting an arcade crt onto a pc and restoring the aesthetic of the actual cab..

I managed to get my crt screen working (it's an hantarex polo 25)

the cab was coming with a j-pac and an old ATI card.

I plugged it quicky didnt installed any drivers .. I was too excited to try it
obviously, at first, the image was just awful..

before I bought the cab, I had already ordered an ArcadeVGA 5000 and since then, I replaced the old ati with this, installed the drivers and also groovyMAME 096 (I tried 205 but my neogeo lib isnt compatible with it.. I'll upgrade later)

so. now, it is MUCH better! like miles ahead from what I had but I still feel there are some pixel stretching and I was curious to know if it was because of Switchres not picking the same resolution of the game or if it was the closest you can get...

at the moment for example, I get these info when I run ghouls n ghosts..

video
384 x 224 (h) 59.637

SwitchRes
392 x 240p 59.637

It's close, but not the same... enough to generate unwanted pixels ?
is it normal?
is my ocd going too far?
or is it just me and everything is fine?
Could totally be it, Last time I saw ghouls'n Ghost on an arcade monitor, I was maybe 7 or 8 years old

Anyway, thanks a lot for your help, I'm super stoked to join this community and really looking forward to share my project with you guys

cheers,

Mah

[Calamity]

Hi Mah,

Switchres is picking what it believes is the closer match for the target resolution, from the limited list your card has. 384 vs 392 is only different by 8 pixels. GM should be smart enough to leave small black borders on each side without stretching the picture. With regards to 224p vs 240p, this is a classic question (you have an explanation for this on Ultimarc's site too). Basically GM will use 240p and leave the required borders, producing a picture that's 100% undistinguishable of what you'd get by using a "native" 224p mode. It's actually the same identical video signal from the monitor's side.

Anyway, as you'll learn when you get familiar with this forum, GM is mainly optimized to work with CRT Emudriver on regular ATI/AMD video cards. This means some stuff you'll read here does not directly apply to your ArcadeVGA, which uses its own drivers, and requires some specific options to be set in mame.ini for it to work right (search this forum for some information).

[mah]

Thanks @Calamity and sorry for this huge delay, I just got off a big crunch and couldnt really focus on the project lately.

from what I have found, arcade seems to do a good job but even then, it doesnt seems to be enough or the best option to get the most authentic image out there.
since the arcadevga is pretty much an ATI.. with a different bios and drivers, is it possible to get rid of that custom install and work with crt emudriver instead?

thanks, I'll keep looking and leet you guys know what I figured out along the way so I dont waste anybody's time replying stuff that probably got answered 100 times already