Enough power to run mame? Any suggestions?

[cyapps]

I was wondering if this atom based motherboard could run most if not all mame games. I seen it on a episode of Hak5 where he was building a boxee box. I was going to use my old 1.4ghz amd athlon but this is only $190 and all I need to add is power, memory and storage.
 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131635

Also is there an up to date build list for a mame pc on the cheap?

Thanks

[ragnar]

An atom is slightly slower than a P4 clock for clock.  So the 1.6 GHz atom you like is similar in performance to say, a 1.4 GHz P4.

That should be plenty of power for most games.  The thing is, the performance of hte atom will probably be on par with the AMD Athlon at 1.4 GHz.

It would be cheaper and resulting in better performance to just upgrade the Athlon processor that you already have.

[Digital Vandal]

I have a dell dimension 3000 with a celeron 2.4ghz, 512mb ram (DDR1) and built in graphics. Is this capable if I was to put a better graphics card in with SVHS? Or would I be better off with maybe a core2duo? I plan on running pretty much everything in time but the most important games are the street fighter series upto and including SF3 3rd strike. I have noticed with the pc as it is that the front ends struggle and the video plays extremely sluggishly and playing MK4 on it was funny in a car crash sorta way. Least I had plenty of time to plan my next move. 

[spauldingd]

The video card won't improve performance for MAME but the S-Video connection should be good for sending to a TV.  All that matters to MAME is raw CPU speed.  Multiple CPUs won't help too much either except that the other CPUs can take what little load there is for the other processes.  2.4 GHz should be fine for 95% of the MAME roms.

[Turnarcades]

This question is cropping up a LOT on the forums again recently; newbies you should do a search and you'll see it's been answered a lot too. For reference, I've worked extensively with borderline-spec PC's and these are some of my responses, which I've linked to many times:

You're going to get a huge range of opinions on this so let me just give you some benchmarks I'm happy with after much testing:

P3 1Ghz, 128/256mb RAM, on-board graphics and sound; More than good enough to cover most arcade games (even Neo-Geo) excluding most .chd games and more advanced polygonal (post-16-bit era) games like Tekken etc. Some Midway games will run ok with a small amount of frameskip but others will be far too choppy to play properly. Will be able to play pretty much all 16-bit era consoles and lower with no trouble. 32X+Mega CD emulation is near-perfect, and if you add a decent graphics card you should be able to squeeze N64 emulation out of it or similar.

P4 1.6Ghz+, 256/512mb RAM, on-board graphics+sound; As above but will play some .chd and Midway games better, plus you will see noticable improvements in 3D fighters etc. N64 emulation is great even without an extra graphics card, plus you can run PS1 and a few other consoles on the same level with little trouble. Noticable improvements in rom boot times and lag/frameskip across all platforms.

P4 2.4Ghz+, 1Gb RAM, decent graphics+sound cards; As previously but will be closer to achieving playable speed on the most demanding MAME games. More RAM should improve seamless launching between emulators/games/frontends and allow for more front-end frills and visual filter effects on games with little impact on performance.

This is just my opinion after much testing of various-grade platforms. I advise using XP (but be sure to remove/stop all unwanted services and memory-sapping background apps) and simpler front-ends that don't demand too many resources if you go further down the scale. I will also add that when using either of the first two specs You would be better off with a pre-0.106 build of MAME as newer versions have compatibility problems on older hardware (trust me on this one) and from 0.100 onwards don't really bring much worthwhile to the table anyway.

3.2Ghz modest?!

If you're talking about pre-3D/polygonal games then you barely need an old P3, as long as it is set up correctly, with maybe a low-end P4 to get those awkward Midway games running well, or around a 2Ghz model for chds and those few properly-emulated 3D games. Anything over 3Ghz is overkill, as trying to get those latest-supported, high demand games will show little improvement no matter how high you go. In which case, it's better to stay with older MAME versions anyway as I dont think the additions following the 0.106 rebuild will reach their full potential until the emulation is improved with further subsequent releases and optimisation with newer hardware is correctly done by the MAME devs.

I'm sticking with my trusty custom build of 0.105, you can keep your NFL pap.

Sorry peeps, gotta pipe in again and defend lower-spec systems. I have consistently had certain 3D fighters working fine as low as 2Ghz using older builds of MAME, when the emulation core was less mature. Using the correct display and frameskip settings, I had Tekken 1 running fine as well as SF EX. Also I've had N64 and even PS1 running sweet as low as 1.6Ghz, though found 1.8Ghz is better, so sod 3D fighters in MAME as the PS1 had many of them ported over, with more characters, versus modes and more features. Oh, and the systems I'm talking about don't have massive RAM or additional graphics/sound cards either, just average on-board NVIDIA graphics. My minimum spec to run what I've mentioned would be 1.6Ghz with 256mb RAM, but I'd say it all runs just great for what is worth playing at 2.4Ghz with 1GB RAM - just optimise Windows and use a pre-0.106 build of MAME.

[Digital Vandal]

Thank you for your reply. I had searched but not found, although my searching skills are not the highest.  I'm assuming with the 2.4ghz being a celeron that it wont compare to a pentium 4 or higher at the same clock speed? I was using hyperspin and that was running so slow it was ridiculous. I only have 512mb ram on it though.

[Dr Zero]

I have maybe 20 or so p4 machines that would be good for a mame machine if anyone is in FL or nearby shipping can get high.

I run mame on a lowly 1.6 up on up and for most of the games I play I havent ever noticed an issue some of the newer 3d started bogging down but most no issues. At the shop we have a dual head card and the 2nd output goes to a 46 lcd it always gets customers talking about the games they used to play.   

[Turnarcades]

In my first spec listing, the 'P3' and 'P4' references assume Pentium or other-brand equivalent with the clock speed mentioned. Particularly with older MAME versions, there are loads of modified builds/hacks available to enhance performance to take advantage of certain hardware so it's easy to get better performance just by switching to one of these builds (eg. there are pentium-optimised builds, celeron-optimised builds, Athlon-optimised builds, some with speed hacks etc.).

With regards to front-ends, Hyperspin does now tend to be the weapon of choice owing to it's very impressive visuals, features and relatively easy setup. The trade-off of course is that you need a lot of storage space and higher spec PC compared to other simpler front-ends. In my opinion, a front-end should not be more demanding than the emulators themselves and there are many 'lightweight' front-ends that can look very good and have many features, so why improve spec just for a menu system? Try switching to tried and tested favourites like AtomicFE, Mamewah or Mala. Even GameEx is far less demanding and that has very animated visuals too.

One last comment is that although it may sound obvious, many people fail to check that essential base software is installed correctly. Ensure your graphics and sound drivers are up-to-date, Windows updates are done and background services killed, and that DirectX is up-to-date. Many emulators will perform drastically different with any one of these factors not done, so be sure they are.

[Mikezilla]

I run mame on a lowly 1.6 up on up and for most of the games I play I havent ever noticed an issue some of the newer 3d started bogging down but most no issues.

Hey Dr. Zero, have you tried to run any of the Marvel vs or Street Fighter vs series on your 1.6? How do they run if you have? I have a friend that has an AGP card in his 1.8 ghz with some random number of ram, like 768 or something. Think that will run those games?

[smalltownguy]

No, a CPU in the 1.6-2.0 range will choke on fighters from that era. I had a P4 2.0 in my first MAME setup, and the frameskip was pretty noticeable on Street Fighter and Marvel vs Capcom.

I've since moved to a P4 3.0 HT and that runs most of what I would ever want to try. But 90% of my time is spent on Ms Pac Man. Cripes I could play that with damn near a hamster wheel and abacus.

[Mikezilla]

Ok Ill relay the message. Haha really? Pac man huh? Thats funny. Sweet. 3.0 pentium, with what, a gig of ram? What does the HT stand for? Am I a tard for not knowing?  Thanks for the info.

[smalltownguy]

The 'HT' stands for Hyper Threaded. Some applications/OS's make use of it for faster CPU bus speed throughput, processing a 'multi-threaded' codeset of instructions. Makes the CPU appear to act like a dual-core in some instances.

Means pretty much jack sh*t for MAME, though, since MAME operates as a 'single threaded' set of code.

It DID, however, give me a little boost for N64 and PSX emulators.

[Mikezilla]

Gotcha. He doesnt want to spend a whole lot of money on the comp portion of the cab, but he definitely wants to run the Marverl vs Capcom-esqe games. Those are his favorites. I couldnt really tell him cause I have a dual core with a couple gigs of ram so I dont really know where it would falter, or be unplayable. What would you recommend? System wise.

[smalltownguy]

Look for a Dell Optiplex GX270 or similar. They're slim form factor PC's fit nicely in tight spaces and usually work well for a typical MAME cab setup.

Here's one for $69 that ends in a few hours:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=390237806319

[Turnarcades]

Err, dunno what's wrong with your setup smalltownguy, but no 2d fighters struggle on the specs i've listed (even the p3's). There should be no issue with any of the 'vs' series fighters, unless you're running a later build of Mame and they were affected by the core change ( like even some classics were).

Here's a video I did of it running on a 2ghz with 256 ram, and it was the same down to 800mhz with 128 ram: