Upgrading CPU worth it?

[cmoses]

I have a MAME machine that is currently running a 2.8 Ghz Pentium 4 CPU on a socket 775 Asus motherboard.  I run mostly older "classic" games, Donkey Kong, Centipede, Galaga, etc.  I also do have a few more advanced games on there, Shuffle Shot, World Class Deluxe Bowling as well as a few CHD games, Killer Instinct, Killer Instinct 2, Simpson's Bowling.  I am running Windows XP 64 with 2 MB of RAM and a 1 GB Nvidia video card.  I am using HyperSpin as my front end and everything runs smoothly.  Simpson's Bowling doesn't run at 100% but is not to bad, with just a little bit of slow down/choppiness. 

I got a little extra money and have been considering upgrading my CPU to a Pentium Core 2 Duo, probably the E7500 at 2.93 GHz, 3MB L2 Cache, 1066 Front Side Bus.  Fry's has them for $120.00. 

I was hoping that some of you out there have done a similar upgrade and could share your experiences.  I know it won't suddenly make it possible to play Blitz on my cabinet, but it may allow me to play a few more games that I currently cannot.  I know it will also help with some of the non Mame emulators that I have been thinking about adding.  I also know it will help when compiling MAME which I also do on this machine.  Please let me know what you think, especially if you have done a similar upgrade, what you found out and what if any differences you noticed.

Thanks 

[Smeghead]

Doesnt seem worth it to me, you seem to already know nothing is going to be enough to play the Blitz type games so im not sure its worth it.
Your CPU is plenty for Mame. Which other ones are you hoping it will make a difference with?

[VanillaGorilla]

I got a little extra money and have been considering upgrading my CPU to a Pentium Core 2 Duo, probably the E7500 at 2.93 GHz, 3MB L2 Cache, 1066 Front Side Bus.  Fry's has them for $120.00. 

I upgraded from the same hardware you are currently running to an AMD phenom II and its over-clocked to 3.8Ghz, from a stock 3.5Ghz. When you get close to the 4Ghz mark, things that weren't possible become possible I also unlocked the additional cores on the chip, and now its a quad core. Im also running Windblows 7 Ultimate Failure Edition [64bit]. I got the mobo + processor from Frys for 85 bucks. I Had the extra money, so it was easy and inexpensive. I'm really glad I did this. For one, Many of the games that ran choppy previously (2K era fighters mostly) smoothed out dramatically and I now get 100% frame rate. Many classic atari games that used to have really bad clipped sound now sound great. Games like CarnEvil and Area 51, while I dont play them, appear to run smoothly now, where before they definitely did not. I can also now use triple buffering and effects filters (god I love 'effect: scanlines 75x4' !!) on classic games that need it in mame. Also, Dreamcast emulation and Playstation emulation run great...another big plus. Then theres the front end issue. I am running Hyperspin, and it uses Flash heavily and is a HUGE tax on any system, but it runs WAY better than it did on my old setup. I am running it all at 1600x1200 native on a 20.1 inch S-IPS LCD. Tempest or Space Duel at 1200x1600 with the flicker filter cranked up is a thing of beauty. This may be sacrilege, but I think they look BETTER than they did on vector monitors. Go for it, you wont regret it. CPU is the biggest way you can impact the quality of your emulation experience (until the mamedevs offload more processing onto the graphics cpu). And you can ALMOST run blitz!! Its nice just to see some of them run poorly, but dramatically better, than they did before. But I can play blitz on nullDC now if I want to..runs great!

[bkenobi]

(until the mamedevs offload more processing onto the graphics cpu)

You will be waiting quite some time for that to happen.  That's not the goal of the MAME project, so it will never happen officially.  Perhaps someone out there will write a new set of drivers that makes things run better, but the MAMEdevs have been pretty clear that they will not spend time focusing on that aspect.

[ragnar]

(until the mamedevs offload more processing onto the graphics cpu)

You will be waiting quite some time for that to happen.  That's not the goal of the MAME project, so it will never happen officially.  Perhaps someone out there will write a new set of drivers that makes things run better, but the MAMEdevs have been pretty clear that they will not spend time focusing on that aspect.

GPUs can only be used for parallel processing.  Games are mostly serial tasks.   You would get no benefit from GPU offloading.  What is needed in all honesty is dual cores and as many GHz as possible along with improved chipsets.  From talking on PC forums and asking, most agree that the i7 chipset with the fastest CPU for it will give you the best single threaded performance.  Actually, by most.  I should say that everyone thinks this.  While clock for clock, i7 CPUs are not the fastest, it is the chipset that makes the difference.

There are a few breakthroughs that should cause the MHz to start ramping up in the future.  In 5 years, I expect 5 GHz+ to be commonplace in PC hardare.  When that happens, all of our problems are resolved.

An i7 with its fastest CPU should outperform the AMD phenom II @ 3.8Ghz but not for $85.  You really need to be willing to toss money at such a project.  Hundreds if not thousands.

[Donkbaca]

Yup, toss hundreds if not thousands only for blitz and gauntlet legacy to be a little less choppy.

Before you upgrade, see how things run on your system, figure out what you want to play and then go to MAWS and check the state of the emulation.  Some games, like time crisis don't have the emulation done yet, so even on the best system in the world, they will not play great.

That being said, you can play MOST games on a midlevel system if you compromise and play blitz on a dreamcast emulator.  I would investigate that route first

[VanillaGorilla]

I am aware of the mame teams stance on GPU development. You would definitely see an improvement in rendering in many more modern games, where polygon generation and floating point tasks could be offloaded to the GPU. The only reason it doesn't exist YET is due to cross-platform compatibility, which is part of the mame charter if I remember correctly. But, I digress. My intention was not to open up the hardware acceleration can of worms. That can be read easily enough with a quick search on the forums. You're a nut (or have a lot of discretionary income) if you spend I7 dollars solely on a mame arcade setup (not that being a nut is a bad thing. Just, wow, what a nut!). Dollar for dollar, you get quite a PHENOMinal bargain out of the phenom II chipset. 

In 5 years, I expect 5 GHz+ to be commonplace in PC hardare.  When that happens, all of our problems are resolved.

I remember saying that about 12 years ago about mame, except the number being bandied about then was the 1Ghz mark! Many problems were resolved, but somehow we always manage to find/create new ones that outstrip available resourses! Something about the human condition, I think.

If you can get a power-up for low investment, I say DO IT. New hardware is always fun!

[Rusty Shackelford]

Ive seen vids on youtube of simpsons bowling playing great on MAME. It runs choppy with no sound on my 3Ghz pc.
I have a feeling it may be a MAME version/rom thing tho.

Any thoughts?

[Rusty Shackelford]

There are a few breakthroughs that should cause the MHz to start ramping up in the future.  In 5 years, I expect 5 GHz+ to be commonplace in PC hardare.  When that happens, all of our problems are resolved.


[/quote]

Isnt it cooling that holds this back?

[LeedsFan]

I'm in the process of building a new PC for a project. It needs to be on Mini-ITX board to fit and I've decided to go with the i3-540 processor. It's dual-core and very reasonably priced at around £80. (Well that's reasonable compared to the i5 650+ range). It's 3.0 GHz out of the box and can be easily oc'ed to 4.0 on the standard cooler. Plus being the i3 it's uses less wattage than the i5's, though oc'ing will use more ofc. Gonna go with the Radeon HD5570 (low profile card) so it can also play modern games reasonably well (medium settings).

I have no idea how other emulators perform outside of Mame. I just thought getting the fastest possible processor at a reasonable price would be the most sensible way to go to as it's a new build. Of course if I had other stuff lying around unused that would be a different matter.

For the OP if you can upgrade your processor cheaply without having to change the MB then I say give it a shot. But if you have to change the MB then ofc there's more to think about... and more expense.

[cmoses]

Thanks for all the info so far, please keep it coming if you have something to add.

LeedsFan - Yes the Core 2 Duo processor I am looking at will just replace my current P4 processor, no need for new MB or RAM or anything else so it would be just $125 or so for the new processor and pop it in.

VanillaGorilla - Did you get both a motherboard AND AMD Phenom II processor for $85 from Fry's?  I looked and each of those are more than $85 on there own. 

I do upgrade my MAME version pretty regularly, which means compiling so that is one of the reasons that I am looking to upgrade, I know that the compile time will be drastically reduced going to a Core 2 Duo.  It takes about an hour and twenty minuetes now. 

I also know that the Core 2 Duo will help in other emulators, which I don't currently have on there but want to add so that I can play a few games that MAME doesn't do well like Blitz.

[FrizzleFried]

Blitz runs fine on a Core2Duo running 2.8ghz+ on a 64 bit OS running a 64 bit compile of MAME...

FWIW...

[LeedsFan]

Blitz runs fine on a Core2Duo running 2.8ghz+ on a 64 bit OS running a 64 bit compile of MAME...

FWIW...

Yeah I've heard that using the 64 bit version of Mame (with a 64 bit OS ofc :p) gives a great boost to the performance of Mame. Not tried it yet myself but that's what I'm aiming for.

[cmoses]

Blitz runs fine on a Core2Duo running 2.8ghz+ on a 64 bit OS running a 64 bit compile of MAME...

FWIW...

Blitz can really run well on that system?  That would be what I would be running if I upgraded the CPU, Core 2 Duo, 2.93 Ghz, 2 GB RAM, 1 GB Nvidia card, Windows Tiny XP 64 and 64 bit compile of MAME.  Have you tried running Gauntlet Legends? Wayne Gretzky Hockey?

[danny_galaga]

I am aware of the mame teams stance on GPU development. You would definitely see an improvement in rendering in many more modern games, where polygon generation and floating point tasks could be offloaded to the GPU. The only reason it doesn't exist YET is due to cross-platform compatibility, which is part of the mame charter if I remember correctly. But, I digress. My intention was not to open up the hardware acceleration can of worms. That can be read easily enough with a quick search on the forums. You're a nut (or have a lot of discretionary income) if you spend I7 dollars solely on a mame arcade setup (not that being a nut is a bad thing. Just, wow, what a nut!). Dollar for dollar, you get quite a PHENOMinal bargain out of the phenom II chipset. 

In 5 years, I expect 5 GHz+ to be commonplace in PC hardare.  When that happens, all of our problems are resolved.

I remember saying that about 12 years ago about mame, except the number being bandied about then was the 1Ghz mark! Many problems were resolved, but somehow we always manage to find/create new ones that outstrip available resourses! Something about the human condition, I think.

If you can get a power-up for low investment, I say DO IT. New hardware is always fun!

Well, to be fair, MAME now emulates games that were't even around twelve years ago!

[danny_galaga]

There are a few breakthroughs that should cause the MHz to start ramping up in the future.  In 5 years, I expect 5 GHz+ to be commonplace in PC hardare.  When that happens, all of our problems are resolved.

Whatever happened to the idea of diamond based semi conductors? Computer tech seems to have run out of steam.

[JODY]

Blitz runs fine on a Core2Duo running 2.8ghz+ on a 64 bit OS running a 64 bit compile of MAME...

FWIW...

Yeah I've heard that using the 64 bit version of Mame (with a 64 bit OS ofc :p) gives a great boost to the performance of Mame. Not tried it yet myself but that's what I'm aiming for.

The 64 bit version does improve game performance.  I've found it varies between games.  E.g. one game may yield a 5 - 10% speed improvement while others may be significantly more.

[FrizzleFried]

Blitz runs fine on a Core2Duo running 2.8ghz+ on a 64 bit OS running a 64 bit compile of MAME...

FWIW...

Blitz can really run well on that system?  That would be what I would be running if I upgraded the CPU, Core 2 Duo, 2.93 Ghz, 2 GB RAM, 1 GB Nvidia card, Windows Tiny XP 64 and 64 bit compile of MAME.  Have you tried running Gauntlet Legends? Wayne Gretzky Hockey?

Gretzky plays well enough... Gauntlet Legends plays fine but crashes on me after a bit so I stopped playing.

I'd say Gretzky plays 100% about 90% of the time...

[VanillaGorilla]

AMD Phenom II 555 @ 3.5Ghz + FREE MSI Mobo was $89, an unadvertised weekly special at Frys. They have them every week. This week they have a 2.93 core II duo for $68:

http://www.frys.com/product/6185909

you have to check here for the weekly specials. They wont be in the print ads.

Blitz runs and plays fine. Audio does the 'max headroom' now and then, and gets stuttered..Blitz 99 & 2000 look like they're gonna be fine, but never progress after the match up screen. The 4 squares close on the screen forever....

Gauntlet Legends plays fine. Audio does the 'max headroom' now and then, and gets stuttered..Game always crashes after first 5-10 minutes of game play.
Gauntlet Dark Legacy plays fine. Audio does the 'max headroom' now and then, and gets stuttered (worse than Legends?)..but gameplay doesn't crash!
Gretzky plays the best of the bunch with no issues obvious to me.

[FrizzleFried]

Blitz runs and plays fine. Audio does the 'max headroom' now and then, and gets stuttered..Blitz 99 & 2000 look like they're gonna be fine, but never progress after the match up screen. The 4 squares close on the screen forever....

This is a known bug... from my recollection you need to let the attract mode start.... once it hits the actual "gameplay" part of the attract you can then coin up and play the game...

[cmoses]

AMD Phenom II 555 @ 3.5Ghz + FREE MSI Mobo was $89, an unadvertised weekly special at Frys. They have them every week. This week they have a 2.93 core II duo for $68:

http://www.frys.com/product/6185909

VanillaGorilla,

That is a Dual Core CPU, NOT a Core 2 Duo CPU.  There is a big difference in cost and performance.  Fry's is where I saw the Core 2 Duo I am thinking about getting, but it is $124.99.  Still a good price for the bump in performance, but I can't imagine getting anything close to what you are describing for $85 for a CPU and MB.  Even if it was an AMD CPU and MB.   

[VanillaGorilla]

I was just giving you an example. But I was wrong. My cpu+mobo wasnt $89. it was $77  You have to keep your eye on there...I attached the ad that I originally saw, just so you know i'm not lying. The chip is sold as a dual core, but unlocks to a quad core in most instances. I am a die hard mac/intel guy, so i'm surprised how much I like this set-up! So you gotta look at that fry's site often, the deals are insane!

[ragnar]

There are a few breakthroughs that should cause the MHz to start ramping up in the future.  In 5 years, I expect 5 GHz+ to be commonplace in PC hardare.  When that happens, all of our problems are resolved.

Isnt it cooling that holds this back?

Cooling is a small piece of the pie.  That can make things run faster but ulitmately it is the chip that matters.  I don't know hte specifics but there are breakthruoghs being made in labs that should wind up in manuifacturing years down the road that will icnrease CPU speeds.  Remember, Moore's Law is doubling of transistor counts, not CPU speed which most think.  Moore's law is still alive.  There are only so many ways to add, subtract, and multiply in hardware.  So all those extra transistors are going towards multiple CPUs on one die.  Architectures (liek the i7) are making all that data flow better between system memory, GPUs and CPUs.  That is the bottleneck these days in general computing.

Anyways, CPUs will get faster.  Just give it time.  The only thing that MAME might benefit from is compiler based multi-tasking.  Where the programmer does not write hte multi-threaded code but the compiler figures it out for you.  Java is having changes being made to it's language spec to support this for tasks such as sorting.  Languages have to change.  Eventually, Mame might have to move off of C/C++ and onto something else.  I would love to have it move to java.

[ragnar]

I'm in the process of building a new PC for a project. It needs to be on Mini-ITX board to fit and I've decided to go with the i3-540 processor. It's dual-core and very reasonably priced at around £80. (Well that's reasonable compared to the i5 650+ range). It's 3.0 GHz out of the box and can be easily oc'ed to 4.0 on the standard cooler. Plus being the i3 it's uses less wattage than the i5's, though oc'ing will use more ofc. Gonna go with the Radeon HD5570 (low profile card) so it can also play modern games reasonably well (medium settings).

I have no idea how other emulators perform outside of Mame. I just thought getting the fastest possible processor at a reasonable price would be the most sensible way to go to as it's a new build. Of course if I had other stuff lying around unused that would be a different matter.

For the OP if you can upgrade your processor cheaply without having to change the MB then I say give it a shot. But if you have to change the MB then ofc there's more to think about... and more expense.

I always used to do bulds based on upgrade paths.  I would usually get hte latest motherboard chipset and a cheap CPU to start.  Then upgrade to best CPU for it several years later when a few newer chipsets have apepared.

[abispac]

Sorry to highjack this thread but i didnt make sense to me to start a new one with the same matter, anyway lets say i got 250 dlls, what would be the best mobo and cpu combo i can get with that kinda money? its been  i while since i last bought a new mobo cpu combo, im stuck in the p4 times.... thanks

[LeedsFan]

Sorry to highjack this thread but i didnt make sense to me to start a new one with the same matter, anyway lets say i got 250 dlls, what would be the best mobo and cpu combo i can get with that kinda money? its been  i while since i last bought a new mobo cpu combo, im stuck in the p4 times.... thanks

Are you talking about Mame only? And when you say the "best" do you mean the fastest processor? Are you willing to overclock?

I don't know too much about AMD or motherboards (I'm going Mini ATX just because I need to for my project). But a dual core is the way to go for Mame. So I would go for an i3 530 or 540 and overclock the hell out of it. You can get 4.0 Ghz easy out of those on stock cooling. You should get an E8500 or similar cheaper but it will be harder to get it to 4.0 GHz. I'm sure other people will chime in with suggestions.

[abispac]

Sorry to highjack this thread but i didnt make sense to me to start a new one with the same matter, anyway lets say i got 250 dlls, what would be the best mobo and cpu combo i can get with that kinda money? its been  i while since i last bought a new mobo cpu combo, im stuck in the p4 times.... thanks

Are you talking about Mame only? And when you say the "best" do you mean the fastest processor? Are you willing to overclock?

I don't know too much about AMD or motherboards (I'm going Mini ATX just because I need to for my project). But a dual core is the way to go for Mame. So I would go for an i3 530 or 540 and overclock the hell out of it. You can get 4.0 Ghz easy out of those on stock cooling. You should get an E8500 or similar cheaper but it will be harder to get it to 4.0 GHz. I'm sure other people will chime in with suggestions.

i dont need to go mini, actually a regular size motherboard and cpu combo would do right, so i wonder, between the i5 650 and the i3 540, what do you think would perform better? or, are there any others outheres i can get for 250 dlls? thanks

[JODY]

Each time I've considered upgrading a CPU I've wound up deciding to hold off and upgrade the motherboard, CPU, and RAM.  Upgrading more than the CPU usually results in better performance as well as picking up some new features.  RAM speeds have gone up along with CPU performance.