Mame Games Lagging

[hockeyfreak186]

Hi everyone!

Im new member to the forums, but I have been reading them for a while now.  Im planning to build a MAME cocktail cabinet with my old computer running MAMEUIFX32 0.132 with MALA front end. My old computer has:
AMD Athlon xp 1600+ 1.39 GHz
1.00 GB of Ram
I'm not sure what the video card is, its nothing special though and its not the on-board one.
Not sure about the Power supply either
New 300 GB HD

So Ive been setting up my front end and i was going through all my games and realized that a lot of them lag, both video and audio.  Games such as mortal kombat, primal rage, actually a lot of midway games, Gauntlet Legends, etc...  So here are my questions:

1) What is causing this?  Is it my version of MAME or Roms? My screen resolution?  Or do i simply not have enough horsepower under the hood?
2) Are there any ways to fix this?

Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated!  Thanks in advance!

[milkit]

your computer is too slow for those newer games

[DashRendar]

your computer is too slow for those newer games

+1

Instead of using your video card to handle rendering the graphics, MAME uses your processor.

Your computer is good enough to run about 85% of the games out there (mostly the 80s classics).  If you want to run the newer, more graphics heavy games, you'll need to upgrade your CPU.

[hockeyfreak186]

Yea i figured that was the problem, thanks! :-)

[DashRendar]

I should add, you *can* tweak MAME to get better performance, and can probably play more games than you can right now if you get the settings just right.

Look at things like the frame skipping setting.  There's dozens of other threads on BYOAC that talk about tweaking MAME.

Good luck! 

[urgeboy]

Out of curiosity, how much processing speed would you suggest to be able to run anything Mame has? I'm starting my project and have a couple of the games listed above.

Sorry if this isn't the correct place to post this...first time post.

[wweumina]

You need an overclocked core 2 duo (about 4ghz) to run anything that can be run at the moment.  To run 'everything MAME has' would require a processor that hasn't been invented yet.

[Sectorseven]

You could also try a different emulator that focuses on performance rather than perfect emulation.

[MikeyMerse]

You need an overclocked core 2 duo (about 4ghz) to run anything that can be run at the moment.  To run 'everything MAME has' would require a processor that hasn't been invented yet.

A 4 Ghz processor?  If you reply to a post in an effort to help, please at least know what you are talking about.

If you are using AMD chipsets, then I would recommend a 2.6 Ghz at least.  You will also be able to overclock it to atleast 2.8.  If your chipset is AM2, a cheap upgrade would be this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103219

[Malenko]

You need an overclocked core 2 duo (about 4ghz) to run anything that can be run at the moment.  To run 'everything MAME has' would require a processor that hasn't been invented yet.

Could you be more specific? you sure an i7 based system cant? The fastest CPU out I think is the server edition i7: Xeon X5680 clocked @ 3.33GHz w/ 12MB of cache,  6 cores and 12 threads support.

[ragnar]

I'm working on my rig still but i did get Mortal Komat 1 running on a P4 2.8 GHz (or was it 2.4 GHz?) processor with no problems.

Also, are you using direct draw or direct 3d?  If you are not using one of these (ie: none), you could be having performance issues.  Granted d3d is the default and I do not know why one would not use one of these settings.

[MikeyMerse]

There are a lot of MAME games out there that aren't really made to be played, but simply for archiving. I would recommend going to PSX for games that MAME won't be able to play.

[shan1784]

I tested Tekken Tag on my i7 930 that is oc'd to 4.2 Ghz and it played it so good that it actually felt to be running to fast.. I used the Mame.exe speed option to turn it down a little bit... It felt normal around the 95 - 97 range...

[smalltownguy]

Sorry to dredge up an old thread, but I've been meaning to ask this .... does anyone else notice that Mortal Kombat sounds (MK1) in MAME don't quite match the original PCB? MKII and MK3 seem to sound OK.

Maybe I just missed the nag screen that told me this ... my version of mame is custom compiled...

[BonzNumber1]

i'm having the same problem as the first post with gauntlet legends

i'm running

official Mame release 0.140 with GameEX fount end

amd dual core 4200+ (2.2ghz)

4 GB ram

gforce 9400 GT 512 MB ram

any recommendations bedsides new processor