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What Mame games to you play to test a slow computer?
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Stobe:
I was wondering if anyone had a few games that they always try out on a computer to see if it will be fast enough for "mameing".  I'm not talking about testing out their super gaming rig with CHD games, or something like that.  I'm looking for the opposite.  If I pick up a cheap computer on craigslist to throw in a cab, what game should be a good test to see if it would play, lets say, "most" of the mame games.

Thanks for any input.

-Stobe
deweyhewson:
NBA Maximum Hangtime, in my opinion. That's the most taxing game on my cabinet, intended for classic gaming. A close second would be Rampage: World Tour. If your computer can run those at 100%, it should run most classic games you're wanting to play.

Asus A8V-X Motherboard
Athlon 64 3500+ (overclocked from 2.2ghz to 2.4ghz, won't run Hangtime at 100% at stock speed)
ArcadeVGA Second Edition, AGP
1gb DDR Memory
Turnarcades:
Save your head - any P4 at 2Ghz or above will cover most of your needs, as long as it has at least 256mb RAM and decent on-board graphics and sound. We've done extensive benchmarking and remarked on this a million times - see back through my posts to find several threads I've commented in about this with more detail. I used to squeeze max MAME performance from sub-1Ghz P3's as well as other platforms, so no reason why you can't do the same. If using older systems, be sure to use a pre-0.106 build of MAME (before the major graphics and sound core changes).
Marsupial:
should an athlon 1800+ be ran with pre-0.106 or the latest would be OK?

[that's the computer I will put in my WIP cab, and from experience most games run, but sometime there's hickups that I hope to tweak out...]

also, are there "correct settings" in mame to help slower machines run smoothly?
Turnarcades:

--- Quote from: Marsupial on July 26, 2010, 12:57:09 pm ---should an athlon 1800+ be ran with pre-0.106 or the latest would be OK?

[that's the computer I will put in my WIP cab, and from experience most games run, but sometime there's hickups that I hope to tweak out...]

also, are there "correct settings" in mame to help slower machines run smoothly?

--- End quote ---

I would definitely recommend an older MAME build in anything under 2Ghz without an additional graphics card - newer versions will run slower on old hardware as they have been optimised for progressing graphics and sound card technology.

I would advise 'keep aspect ratio', 'stretch to fit', 'switch resolution' and 'switch colour depth', and be sure your entire desktop/frontend/other emulator setups are set to run at no more than 800x600 resolution. If you use these settings you should not need any of the graphics filters that require a lot of processing power, as you will get some 'edge softening' caused by the stretching.
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