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Question for computer builders and MAME

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boogieman:

I am thinking about taking the plunge and building a "modern" Mame system. 

Any opinions on a AMD phenom II vs. an Intel I7 processor?

I guess I need it cheap as possible, but would also like a powerhouse playing stuff like nfl blitz or polygon type games...  but mainly cheap lol.

patm95:

I wouldn't call myself an expert by any means, but I have always heard that AMD gives you more bang for the buck.  I have also read on this forum that CPU power is more important than GPU power in mame. 

Turnarcades:


--- Quote from: patm95 on December 04, 2010, 01:32:58 am ---I have also read on this forum that CPU power is more important than GPU power in mame. 

--- End quote ---

Not any more. Since v0.106, MAME's core was re-written to utilise graphics and sound cards and even take advantage of them to boost performance even though the devs said originally they never would do this. CPU power was more important in pre-0.106 builds but now it's a mix of both CPU and GPU; maybe not at the baseline benchmarks but gameplay wise it will differ greatly. Don't also forget the two software factors that many seem to forget; the maturity of the MAME core (and hence it's in-built emulation code) will still also determine playable speed, as will the maturity of the platform drivers/code used to run a particular game. Both of these will always improve over time so what spec may not run a game now may run it just fine in a few version's time.

I couldn't care less about much later arcade games and have always stuck with MAME 0.105, which runs many polygon-based games well, most of the .chd-based games and those tricky Midway games like the MK series on little more than a 2Ghz Pentium 4 and low RAM, without the need for certain graphics or sound cards in order to display the way I want them or suffer from sound or motion lag.

drventure:


--- Quote ---Not any more. Since v0.106, MAME's core was re-written to utilise graphics and sound cards and even take advantage of them to boost performance even though the devs said originally they never would do this. CPU power was more important in pre-0.106 builds but now it's a mix of both CPU and GPU
--- End quote ---

Interesting. I did not know that. I was still under the impression they didn't use the GPU.


I've been using an AMD Phenom II, and it works fine for most Mame games (the newest 3d games drag, but from what I I've understood, that's pretty much going to be the case unless you get into 4+ghz overclocking)

Is it still true that multi cores don't really improve mame perf much (yet anyways)?

boogieman:

thanks for the input so far.  I saw an interesting article here: http://www.pureoverclock.com/review.php?id=794&page=1

If you don't want to read the whole thing the last two pages sum it up nicely.  Basically, hard number wise the I7 is slightly better on some games, but price wise Phenom II blows it out of the water.  They said unless you were doing hardcore video editing Phenom II was MUCH cheaper with a very slight drop in performance.  They said the performance was so close it would be hard to even tell without benchmark tests.

Looks like the phenom II will be getting my vote. 

I am thinking something around a Phenom II 3ghz processor will make this thing scream!  Been looking around though, I can build it for around $500 with a builder version of windows 7.  Thats with a 2TB HD, 8GB ram and misc stuff to hook it all together.  I already have an arcade VGA card and IPAC so I will be re using them.  It will be a few months before I start purchasing components, so hopefully costs will go down some more by then.

What pisses me off is I have to pay $100+ for an OS that I am basically going to bypass by shelling to the front end.    :'(

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