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Question for computer builders and MAME

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Turnarcades:


--- Quote from: shateredsoul on December 09, 2010, 12:00:35 am ---
--- Quote from: Turnarcades on December 08, 2010, 11:38:31 pm ---Such ..... overpowering ....... specs ..... dying under the weight of people's wallets .... It's always baffled me as to what games some are so desperate to run that you want to squeeze even more power out of top-end PC's?

--- End quote ---

like people trying to play gamecube or wii games, yeah a wii would be cheaper.. so what?

 ::)

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It's not the cost of the hardware to do it that baffles me - it's why you'd go to the expense of such a powerful system to emulate 6th generation+ consoles, which generally have games dependant on analog control to play correctly, and generally few games suitable for an arcade environment anyway; even less I would hold in memory as so good I just have to have it in my arcade cabinet.

It's like the dolts who approach us asking for PS3 or 360 compatibility "...cos playing black ops on my arcade would be cool!". Errrr, no it wouldn't. Street Fighter 4 is about the limit of suitable games for these consoles that would play better in an arcade cabinet, and as it's available on PC anyway; pointless to bother with interfacing a console. Even those who ask if it's possible to pay and up the spec we install to emulate PS2 or XBox - I simply ask "OK, for what game in particular?" and always get a resounding silence when they realise the handful of games they have in mind would play awful with arcade controls.

drventure:

The only reason I can think of for putting a higher end machine in is for running other games that could be decent on a cab, like stepmania, or frets on fire, or some of the Doujin shmups, or virtual pinball, or future pinball.

Gotta agree, emulating the old console hardware is kind of an interesting exercise, but it doesn't work out all that well in a cab environment.

Future Pinball, on the other hand....

LeedsFan:

It all depends on what you are building. I agree that a full size cabinet does not need such specs as more modern games would play like crap anyway with arcade controls. I'm currently building a modular Mame-In-A-Box but it must also run PC games as well and other emulators through Hyperspin. It's basically a PC in a compact, joystick shaped box. But I need decent enough horsepower for that. It comes down to what you are comfortable paying. For me personally shelling out for an i3-550 and Radeon 5570 wasn't too much cash. It's certainly not top end but it isn't old technology either. For a purely Mame based system it would be overkill though I agree.

Blanka:

Forget the i7 and go i5 or even i3. The i7 is only a beast in 4-core mode. Using 2 cores the i5 can even beat an i7 at half price, and even the new 32nm i3's are really good.

Turnarcades:

Yeah I guess for certain other apps you'd be better looking at top-end PC's, particularly for Future Pinball (and although I don't believe in front-ends that are more resource-demanding than the games themselves - Hyperspin is now the show-piece of choice many go for), but the original poster did kind of specify the MAME intention so that's where I was coming from.

On a side note, we're about to start work on several new prototypes; the most significant for me is a virtual pinball table. Anyone here built a pinball and can give a simple sum-up of the spec they'd recommend for a single screen, 2-screen and 3-screen setup?

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