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Fastest PC
Blanka:
88% of games runs well on most normal PC's
2 % of games will benefit from a faster processor available today
10% will need serious amount of extra power, not available anytime soon.
So, you will buy the faster processor just for 2% of the games.
My advice: buy the cheapest (a basic dual core i3 or i5) and upgrade in 3 years when processors gained enough for say PS3 emulation, and the PS4 will be out to fill the 10% segment once again.
Corbo:
Back around 1996 UltraHLE hit the internet. It ran Mario64 perfectly on my AMD.... 1.6ghz I'm guessing, at the time. If you tried to run Mario64 on any other N64 emu at the time you would of struggled along at 2fps if it even ran at all.
You need to take a look at the emulators you are trying to run first and foremost. Are they mature and optimised or are they still being developed. Only when you can answer yes can you consider your hardware to be the bottleneck.
scofthe7seas:
I agree with what Corbo is saying. In time you won't need a super computer to run the more modern games. You can see that some 3d games from the older era run like crap, but others run fine, due to optimization. Once 3d hardware is Incorporated to a degree (to take load of the CPU) it will be even faster. Just a bit of time is needed.
However, if you want to go cheap, the Pentium "dual core" series is actually pretty fast and super cheap, cheaper than any of the I series and just as fast. The dual core series is basically a cheap version of the core2duo, but it runs very fast for the price. Plus it comes in 755 chipset flavor which makes for cheap motherboards and ram (ddr2).
Don't build a super computer. In all honesty, buy the time the emulation actually catches up to the hardware, the supercomputers of today will be mostly given to everybody's mom. The cheapy versions of whatever new chip is out will be faster than the i9.
Donkbaca:
A big misconception is that more horsepower will make everything run well. The truth is most of these games are just broken with imperfect emulation. Look at Tekken 3, for example: http://maws.mameworld.info/maws/ It has bugs, the sound and video are imperfect. Doesn't matter how powerful your machine is.
If you can't run something you really want to play, look up the game on MAWS and see what the state of emulation and what the bugs are before going for the upgrade...
Donkbaca:
The dual core series are decent. On the plus side, they can run a 64 bit OS. On the negative side, they draw a lot of power, run super hot and are not at all well sited for overclocking.
I agree though, anything above a 3ghz P4 will suit you fine for MAME. Go cheap/free/Craigs list, you can usually find these machines for next to nothing.