Best MAME performance if money wasn't an object ...

[retrometro]

I've been following various threads regarding mame performance and it seems that OC'ing a c2d cpu to 4ghz is still the most cost effective way to get the best perf out of the toughest games like gauntlet legends.

So what if money was no object?  What would be the best CPU you can get for running .120 or higher mame?

If only there was a place for people to properly post their hw/sw configurations...

[Ginsu Victim]

If money wasn't an issue, I'd have the real machines.

[DashRendar]

I would rather use a mid-level PC for MAME, and use something like ePSXe for Gauntlet Legends etc (which doesn't require a powerful PC to run).

[Thenasty]

this had gone down in price. It use to be $200 more

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0312975


When you get it, post us the benchmarks on this baby.

[Paul Olson]

I don't think you can really get better than that right now. Intel is not increasing clock speed much, if at all, and MAME doesn't benefit from more than 2 cores. I am sure it will be optimized for more cores at some point, but I don't think it has happened yet. I think 4.5GHz will be good for most currently playable games. 4.0 is close, but the frame rate drops once in a while. I know some people were getting 4.5, but 4.0 is really pushing it on my e8400 with the cooling I have.

[LegendaryGamer]

I was thinking about asking this same question myself. I would love for my PC to run MAME near arcade perfect. I have a 7550 Dual core 2.50 CPU with 3GB of DDR3,500GB HD space with more backup space since I have 4 external HD also. What I do need is another Video card as the one on this PC is on-board. I'm looking for a good ATI video card with a HDMI port. Looking at the Radeon HD 4870 or a Radeon hd 5670. Though I hear video memory is not really gonna help much. I thought it would if you at least had 1GB on the video card to free up the PC memory. What is an ideal video card really? Looking to bring out the games more.


LegendaryGamer

[200X]

I was thinking about asking this same question myself. I would love for my PC to run MAME near arcade perfect. I have a 7550 Dual core 2.50 CPU with 3GB of DDR3,500GB HD space with more backup space since I have 4 external HD also. What I do need is another Video card as the one on this PC is on-board. I'm looking for a good ATI video card with a HDMI port. Looking at the Radeon HD 4870 or a Radeon hd 5670. Though I hear video memory is not really gonna help much. I thought it would if you at least had 1GB on the video card to free up the PC memory. What is an ideal video card really? Looking to bring out the games more.


LegendaryGamer

You only really need a good Video card for a couple of emulators and stuff like Future Pinball. For MAME, it's not very important. MAME only uses it for stretching and some other things along that line.

[WhereEaglesDare]

yea but even then wont an old Geforce 2 MX work?  ($10 bucks at you computer store bargain bin)

[Howard_Casto]

I don't think you can really get better than that right now. Intel is not increasing clock speed much, if at all, and MAME doesn't benefit from more than 2 cores. I am sure it will be optimized for more cores at some point, but I don't think it has happened yet. I think 4.5GHz will be good for most currently playable games. 4.0 is close, but the frame rate drops once in a while. I know some people were getting 4.5, but 4.0 is really pushing it on my e8400 with the cooling I have.

Yeah it does, assuming you have a 64 bit os a 64 bit version of mame and actually have multi-threading turned on.  I've got a intel quad running at ~2.5 ghz.  Running gauntlet legends on mame or on mame64 with multi threading turned off gives me a 50-75% framerate.  Running mame64 with everything turned on properly gives me 95-100%.  A quad core means that the games main cpu runs on one thread, the sound on another and you still have two cores left over to prevent the video card and harddrive from bottle-necking the system.  I also need to point out that a similar specd dual core system I have did NOT yield the same results, it was noticably slower.

I can play pretty much everything that has a complete driver with my system, so I'm not sure why you'd want to waste your money on a faster processor.
It's not to say that a 4ghz processor is a waste of money, but rather they are so expensive right now and mame isn't really going to benefit from the extra juice. 

Also the video card is important as well, it didn't used to be, but now it is.  The artwork system is totally dependant upon it and also games with larger textures (which used to be non-existant in mame) benefit from it as well.  Also if you are running mame in directX mode, just forget about it unless your card has decent hardware acceleration.  Mind you very very old cards can handle mame's needs, BUT if you think mame doesn't hurt if you are running it on the shared memory card built into your motherboard then you are gravely mistaken.

[massive88]

Yeah it does, assuming you have a 64 bit os a 64 bit version of mame and actually have multi-threading turned on.  I've got a intel quad running at ~2.5 ghz.  Running gauntlet legends on mame or on mame64 with multi threading turned off gives me a 50-75% framerate.  Running mame64 with everything turned on properly gives me 95-100%.  A quad core means that the games main cpu runs on one thread, the sound on another and you still have two cores left over to prevent the video card and harddrive from bottle-necking the system.  I also need to point out that a similar specd dual core system I have did NOT yield the same results, it was noticably slower.

Id like to see your actual numbers if you are willing to rerun tests.  My experience has been a 5% increase in speed or so with multithreading turned on/off.  And I saw no noticeable difference between a triple core and a dual core in those tests.  I don't think a 4th core would impact those tests hardly at all, the system processes really don't affect a core's performance all that much, and having 2 free for those compared to one really shouldn't make much of difference.  All said and done in general turning on MT doesnt even affect game performance all that much, but if you have the numbers to prove me wrong Id like to see them.

My most recent tests can be seen here - http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=99114.msg1049697#msg1049697
Older tests here - http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=72776.msg826587#msg826587

[FrizzleFried]

Gauntlet Legends at 95%-100% at 2.5ghz...

...that is something I'd like to see.

I am running at 3.7ghz core2duo, 64bit,  and while Gauntlet Legends is PLAYABLE... the sound stutters, etc...

[massive88]

Gauntlet Legends at 95%-100% at 2.5ghz...

...that is something I'd like to see.

I am running at 3.7ghz core2duo, 64bit,  and while Gauntlet Legends is PLAYABLE... the sound stutters, etc...

What version of Mame are you running?

In my linked thread for instance, I got much better numbers for gauntleg out of 0.132 then I did 0.136, enough that it might kill sound stutters.

[Ginsu Victim]

Gauntlet Legends at 95%-100% at 2.5ghz...

...that is something I'd like to see.

I am running at 3.7ghz core2duo, 64bit,  and while Gauntlet Legends is PLAYABLE... the sound stutters, etc...

I just use a PSX emu for that stuff.

[mlalena]

I have a E8500 Core 2 Duo at 4.0GHz on Win7 64 bit running MAME 64. Video card is GT240 - if it matters. In attract mode I get the specs that people normally list for this game. If I actually play it, then the frame-rate drops well below 100%. If I put it into auto-skip mode I can play about 1 & 1/2 levels before I get to an area where the frame-rate hits near 50% and then the game locks up. I've asked around these forums and I can't get anyone to say that the game is actually playable on their system.

Running gauntlet legends on mame or on mame64 with multi threading turned off gives me a 50-75% framerate.  Running mame64 with everything turned on properly gives me 95-100%.

Howard_Casto: I don't know about setting up MAME for multi-threading. What setting controls this?

[retrometro]

I would rather use a mid-level PC for MAME, and use something like ePSXe for Gauntlet Legends etc (which doesn't require a powerful PC to run).

Well sure, but there are a select group of folks that would like to buy a new pc for the sole purpose of mame.  Playing ports isn't quite the same.  To me:

original > mame on arcade hardware and monitor > mame on any device >> ports

[Havok]

I don't know about setting up MAME for multi-threading. What setting controls this?

Edit your mame.ini file, and enter a 1 for multithreading. Here's the section:

# WINDOWS PERFORMANCE OPTIONS
#
multithreading         1

[mimic]

If money wasn't an issue, I'd have the real machines.

There is multimillionaire rich & then there is 150K/year rich.

[retrometro]

If money wasn't an issue, I'd have the real machines.

Not for me.  I'd certainly want quite a few of the real machines myself.  Perhaps about 50 of them.... especially the ones that mame doesn't do well in or the cabinet itself lends more to the game than just nostalgia (thinking star wars, tron, etc).

Besides, I'm not sure I want a complex for thousands of games.  You'll need a segway or golf cart just to get from one game to the next.

[Blanka]

How's an i7 doing with 2 cores disabled and the other 2 in Turbo-BOOST?