Which emulated games are the most heavy on the cpu?

[XNIF]

I have searched and i can find little sippets of info on what games are very difficult to emulate.
I would like to compile a list with the games that are the hardest on your cpu.
If it's possible i want to include the minimal cpu power needed so when people want to buy their mame-pc they can see what games they are missing if they buy underpowered machines. I hope this makes sense, english is not my native language

When people post games and specs i just change this fist post and add the games in this list.   Just add it like this :

Name of game                        platform and emulator         minimal specs and tricks for faster performance for at least 98 %.

* Gauntlet Legends             - Arcade/mame                    - 5 ghz Core i5/i7 or up.
* Gran Turismo 4                - ps2/pcsx2                         - 4 ghz Core2Duo
* Starblade                       - Arcade/mame                    - 3.5ghz Core2Duo

[Dazz]

Most 3D games for MAME after 2001 require extremely heavy CPU power.  With a loaded 4ghz machine some are nearing the semi-playable state.

[XNIF]

Most 3D games for MAME after 2001 require extremely heavy CPU power.  With a loaded 4ghz machine some are nearing the semi-playable state.

Yes i know. But there are really big differences in CPU load in those games. Most will do fine with a 3ghz Core2duo. But some need much more. I want to compile a list with those games.

[jimmy2x2x]

A mame profiler would be excellent.

It would run through your gamelist, using playback files and return the min% max % and average% of emulated speed

It only exists inside my head unfortunately

[XNIF]

A mame profiler would be excellent.

It would run through your gamelist, using playback files and return the min% max % and average% of emulated speed

It only exists inside my head unfortunately

you mean that every game would be tested on your hardware and gives you an indication of the emulation speed?

[jimmy2x2x]

Yes, exactly that

I think almost everything already exists to do this, just needs putting together

[XNIF]

Yes, exactly that

I think almost everything already exists to do this, just needs putting together

true. But i do not think it would give you an excact calculation. Some parts of the game are more cpu hungy then others. You should run only those parts to give an good indication.

[EightBySix]

Doesn't MAME have the ability to record and playback games? Maybe a standard set of benchmark game play sessions could be built for use as a 'standard' to compare setups? Those sessions could include scenes that tax the machine...

lets call it MAMEMark^tm 

[jimmy2x2x]

Yes, giving results for min% max% and average% of performance

cant see why it cant be done

[Gatt]

Yes, giving results for min% max% and average% of performance

cant see why it cant be done

There's actually a few things preventing this...

1.  A decent number of games require initialization or they just hang,  so they'd each have to be initialized first before a benchmark could be done.  As some of these require control configuration,  it can't really be scripted.

2.  A large number of games attract mode isn't representative of gameplay,  such as Carnevil,  and would return horribly incorrect numbers.  Yes,  one could write code to bypass this,  but it wouldn't be a small amount of effort.

3.  Some games suffer only at certain points,  and if you don't get to those points,  it would report the game is good when it really isn't.

[jimmy2x2x]

How do mame replays work?

Could you have a replay for the most taxing areas of each game?

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

Don't save states work for most games now?

You could hand pick so many games that run the gamut of CPU usage, that support save state, to bypass any initializations, etc.

I imagine that someone with a better understanding of the various drivers could give some idea if there are certain systems whose emulation are more heavily dependent on various sets of instructions that varying levels of cache would be more greatly affect.

[Turnarcades]

With the progression pace of MAME, all the builds available, varied PC capabilities (even between same-clocked but different brands), this excercise is fruitless and never-ending. Go back 10 years on this scene and many were asking the same questions, which soon becomes irrelevant as you will find out - it's the playability factor rather than the clocked speed that makes the difference, which depends greatly on emulator maturity. Think back to when .chd's were first introduced around 0.7x and KI ran like ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- - even now running older builds on new hardware shows higher PC demands for that game, whilst a later MAME build on a lower-spec PC will produce equal results.

It's swings and roundabouts, so just enjoy what you can. There isn't much left needs properly emulating that anyone is really currently missing, and moving into 6th-generation console emulation the games aren't particularly suited to arcade controls or cabinets anyway.

[XNIF]

With the progression pace of MAME, all the builds available, varied PC capabilities (even between same-clocked but different brands), this excercise is fruitless and never-ending. Go back 10 years on this scene and many were asking the same questions, which soon becomes irrelevant as you will find out - it's the playability factor rather than the clocked speed that makes the difference, which depends greatly on emulator maturity. Think back to when .chd's were first introduced around 0.7x and KI ran like ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- - even now running older builds on new hardware shows higher PC demands for that game, whilst a later MAME build on a lower-spec PC will produce equal results.

It's swings and roundabouts, so just enjoy what you can. There isn't much left needs properly emulating that anyone is really currently missing, and moving into 6th-generation console emulation the games aren't particularly suited to arcade controls or cabinets anyway.

Well yes, but i'm not only talking about Mame. But i get your point. In the end it's always: get a pc as fast as possible. But some games are just being playable with the new hardware comming out.  But some games are more important to me then others.

[Rusty Shackelford]

Am I right in thinking the games we are talking about wont work because the Mame devs try and emulate the dedicated hardware in the cabs? So in theroy it is possible to make a 'lite' version of the rom?

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

Am I right in thinking the games we are talking about wont work because the Mame devs try and emulate the dedicated hardware in the cabs? So in theroy it is possible to make a 'lite' version of the rom?

Not quite. For one you really wouldn't want to attempt to decompile a rom and attempt to reimplement whatever devices are poorly emulated with something else that can be better emulated. That'd be going at it backwards.

For playability, which is not Mame's goal, you would be more interested in a dedicated emulator that parses complex to emulate hardware (EG: the 3DFx chips in Guantlet Legends, et al) into higher level system calls, like the OpenGL or Direct3D system native to the client. This is what Nintendo64 emulators did back when they were new. UltraHLE, if anyone remembers, came out of no where one day running N64 games at near full speed on moderate systems of the day (I recall around 300Mhz), passing all the actual 3D rendering to a (ironically enough) 3DFX card. Later people came out with modified 3DFX drivers that 'wrapped' 3DFX calls to OpenGL, so that non Voodoo2 owners could use UltraHLE.

Personally I always thought it would be novel to see an emulator, or mame fork that passed 3DFX powered games to an actual 3DFX card in the PC. Certainly the hardware wasn't so far off that it couldn't be done.

[XNIF]

You know that the 3dfx drivers you are talking about just use a Glide API that in reality is a stripped down version of OpenGL?

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

Yup, now that you mention that I recall that there were "MiniGL" drivers to accelerate certain OpenGL games. GLQuake comes to mind.

I also seem to recall that it couldn't do/didn't do everything in the OpenGL spec, which is why it wouldn't work for every OpenGL game.

It's been quite a while since I've touched any of that. I do recall there being something very pleasing about the way the 3DFX rendered things that later cards like the GeForce DDR didn't do.. Something I couldn't never quite put my finger on. Oh well.

[Smeghead]

Try RidgeRacer, that stinks on any pc

[bji]

I have benchmarked all MAME games on a fairly anemic processor (Intel Atom 330 system).  You can find the results, sorted in order of slowness, at:

http://www.ischo.com/mamebench/

Aside from the obvious collection of games that don't run well on anything, some games I actually care about don't work well on such a system, which is why I ditched it and intend to run a 45W Dual Core Athlon II when I actually pull the trigger on finalizing my cab components.  Here are some games which can't be run playably on an Intel Atom 330:

Out Run
S.T.U.N. Runner
Mortal Kombat 3
Puzzle Bobble 2
Virtua Racing   
Die Hard Arcade

These are games I actually care about that I found would be too slow with this processor.  I haven't even heard of 99% of the games on my list that are unplayable on the Atom.

[Goatz18]

I know it doesn't run on my weak set up and don't know what it takes to make it work, but I have heard it is no easy task to get any of the NFL Blitz's anywhere near playable.

[XNIF]

Yup, now that you mention that I recall that there were "MiniGL" drivers to accelerate certain OpenGL games. GLQuake comes to mind.

I also seem to recall that it couldn't do/didn't do everything in the OpenGL spec, which is why it wouldn't work for every OpenGL game.

It's been quite a while since I've touched any of that. I do recall there being something very pleasing about the way the 3DFX rendered things that later cards like the GeForce DDR didn't do.. Something I couldn't never quite put my finger on. Oh well.

Well.... 3DFX was 16 bit where the Geforce did his rendering on 32bit.

[Rusty Shackelford]

Am I right in thinking the games we are talking about wont work because the Mame devs try and emulate the dedicated hardware in the cabs? So in theroy it is possible to make a 'lite' version of the rom?

Not quite. For one you really wouldn't want to attempt to decompile a rom and attempt to reimplement whatever devices are poorly emulated with something else that can be better emulated. That'd be going at it backwards.

For playability, which is not Mame's goal, you would be more interested in a dedicated emulator that parses complex to emulate hardware (EG: the 3DFx chips in Guantlet Legends, et al) into higher level system calls, like the OpenGL or Direct3D system native to the client. This is what Nintendo64 emulators did back when they were new. UltraHLE, if anyone remembers, came out of no where one day running N64 games at near full speed on moderate systems of the day (I recall around 300Mhz), passing all the actual 3D rendering to a (ironically enough) 3DFX card. Later people came out with modified 3DFX drivers that 'wrapped' 3DFX calls to OpenGL, so that non Voodoo2 owners could use UltraHLE.

Personally I always thought it would be novel to see an emulator, or mame fork that passed 3DFX powered games to an actual 3DFX card in the PC. Certainly the hardware wasn't so far off that it couldn't be done.

Thanks for the answer. Yes I understand Mames goal isnt playability (unfortunatly!) its preserving arcade games. So I take from what you said Mame/roms dosent realy use your pc graphics ability just processing power hence why a game from 2001 cant be played on a 2010 spec pc because every bit of info/code is just being thrown at the processor?

[XNIF]

@Rusty Shackelford not to answer a question for someone else but it's not only the (almost) unused power of the graphicscard that is the problem. The mame developers try to emulate the games better every release of mame. This means looking more authentic, not necessary faster. So it's possible an old verion of mame will do an emulated game much faster on your hardware than the new version of mame.

[XNIF]

I have benchmarked all MAME games on a fairly anemic processor (Intel Atom 330 system).  You can find the results, sorted in order of slowness, at:

http://www.ischo.com/mamebench/

Aside from the obvious collection of games that don't run well on anything, some games I actually care about don't work well on such a system, which is why I ditched it and intend to run a 45W Dual Core Athlon II when I actually pull the trigger on finalizing my cab components.  Here are some games which can't be run playably on an Intel Atom 330:

Out Run
S.T.U.N. Runner
Mortal Kombat 3
Puzzle Bobble 2
Virtua Racing   
Die Hard Arcade

These are games I actually care about that I found would be too slow with this processor.  I haven't even heard of 99% of the games on my list that are unplayable on the Atom.

thanx i'll see if i can do something with this.  This is exactly why i want to compile a list, so people will know what games they can play when they buy lowspec/mid/highend pc's. I mean some people just don't care about the games that are more cpu hungry. I know the list will probably change every mame release however you have to start somewhere.

Maybe it's nice to also mention what can be played with an Atom330 in the list... 

[bji]

I have benchmarked all MAME games on a fairly anemic processor (Intel Atom 330 system).  You can find the results, sorted in order of slowness, at:

http://www.ischo.com/mamebench/

Aside from the obvious collection of games that don't run well on anything, some games I actually care about don't work well on such a system, which is why I ditched it and intend to run a 45W Dual Core Athlon II when I actually pull the trigger on finalizing my cab components.  Here are some games which can't be run playably on an Intel Atom 330:

Out Run
S.T.U.N. Runner
Mortal Kombat 3
Puzzle Bobble 2
Virtua Racing   
Die Hard Arcade

These are games I actually care about that I found would be too slow with this processor.  I haven't even heard of 99% of the games on my list that are unplayable on the Atom.

thanx i'll see if i can do something with this.  This is exactly why i want to compile a list, so people will know what games they can play when they buy lowspec/mid/highend pc's. I mean some people just don't care about the games that are more cpu hungry. I know the list will probably change every mame release however you have to start somewhere.

Maybe it's nice to also mention what can be played with an Atom330 in the list... 

If you look at the linked page, the games are all color coded (the color coded performance number is over on the far right of the table).  Green games run at at least 115% average speed on an Atom 330.  About 90% of games are green.  I could have done more analysis and taken minimum frame rates into account as well (the numbers are all there) but I didn't care about that level of detail, and also minimum frame rates are difficult as during start up I find that the frame rate often dips just as things are getting 'warmed up', which isn't representative of how the game will play over a longer session.

You may have noticed that I wrote my own benchmarking program that actually 'plays' the games - it tries to send reasonable input to the games so that there's real action going on, not just attract mode.  I hope that makes the benchmarking more realistic but as someone else astutely pointed out, there can be moments during a game that can require more work in the emulator and can cause a frame rate drop, and there is no way to find those except to play as a human and observe.  Obviously I could not do that for all 3,000 games benchmarked ...

[releasedtruth]

Wow, nice benchmarking program. Incredibly handy and would be interesting to see on other processors, but definitely clarifies the point that modern 3D insensive games are still a few years away from mainstream emulation. Most of us aren't using i5/i7 cpus in our arcades, sadly. An Atom 330 or P4 will cover the vast majority.