First MAME cabinet, new to PCs

[chewie26]

I am currently building a MAME cabinet with a PC I was lucky enough to get from work. Everything seems to be working fine, however on some games like Golden Tee and Mortal Kombat 2/3 the games are only running at 40-60%. I'm guessing I need to upgrade some part of the PC, but not sure what I need to do. Here is what I'm running-
Pentium 4 1.3 GHz
756 mb of ram
windows XP
Not sure what version of MAME (where do I look for that?)

I thought that might be good enough to run those games, but I guess I was wrong. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!

[Grimoz]

Do you know if it has an external video card or is it using an onboard video device?

[HanoiBoi]

For the version, find the mame executable (like mame.exe), right-click on it and select properties.

[Cynicaster]

That sounds like it should be OK to run most games.

I think MAME defaults to direct3D graphics mode on newer builds, which doesn't seem to play nice with older PC's.  Try switching it back to DirectDraw and it might speed up considerably.  I think you just need to put the switch "-ddraw" in the command line, but I don't recall exactly... the help file should explain it.

[chewie26]

if I'm reading it correctly, I'm running MAME 0.141 and It looks like I'm using the built in video card. Would buying a better video card help me out at all?

I'll check the DierctDraw tonight. Thanks!

[syph007]

More ram for sure.  With that little, xp will be paging constantly.    Not sure about the cpu speed, 1.3 is slow, but 'should' be fast enough to play most things.

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

if I'm reading it correctly, I'm running MAME 0.141 and It looks like I'm using the built in video card. Would buying a better video card help me out at all?

I'll check the DierctDraw tonight. Thanks!

it might. The only benefit mame gets (not including the new HLSL effects) from a newer videocard is the ability for that card to draw DDraw or D3D frames quicker, hence less time is spent waiting on the video card to draw the screen. On a similarly slow machine I saw NeoGeo emulation go from 70-80% unthrottled to 120% unthrottled by switching from the onboard SIS video chipset to an old GeForce 2MX (old, cheap, entry-level nVidia card). The SIS chipset just had poor DDraw/D3D performance, and thus for whatever reason couldn't draw 640x480 at the speed that mame wanted.

[bkenobi]

Also, the video memory isn't taken from the main system memory if you don't use an onboard card.  I think I'm running 512 or maybe 1Gb of system memory on my PC and it runs most things fine.  I don't have a trackball, so I can't say what GT looks like though.

[smalltownguy]

Golden Tee, MK2, MK3 are going to need a faster processor than that. You need something in the P4 2.5-3.0 range.

[Grimoz]

Video cards do make a big difference from my experience although most of the older MAME games will run on poorer systems. I installed a geforce 6600 AGP (pretty old card) into my cabinet and the difference compared to onboard was extreme, i would definitely recommend upgrading. As stated above your pc wont be able to handle newer games, you really need to look at upgrading your CPU if your planning on playing the newer games, i would recommend 3ghz minimum and at least 2gb ram.

[JODY]

I second the need for more RAM.  Plus, if there is not dedicated RAM for the video you are losing some there too which makes it that much lower.

The CPU is also too slow for newer games.

[madmatt]

Yes, your PC is a bit slow.

Yes, more ram is need.

Yes, a graphic card will help;alot!!!  Guessing by your PC stats, i'm thinking your PC does not have a PCI Express
slot.  Which mean you need to buy a cheap PCI card or AGP; which both can be had for $50 or so.

Also, check to make sure nothing is running in the backround(in windows).   Can't tell you how many
times that has screw me.

OUT,
MM

[Green Giant]

Go to www.cpuid.com

Download it.

It will tell you your video card, motherboard, etc.  You should be able to take that information and find some detailed stats on what the computer can handle, and if upgrades are possible.

After that go to ebay and get a cheap video card. 

I know I had a really hold HP from the parents that I managed to chase down mobo information in order to make sure I didn't put too much ram in it.  Had to go buy an old AGP 8X video card from ebay. 

Yes, AGP....LOL, I forgot that was even a standard.

[chewie26]

well after some searching, turns out that computer is so old it would be the same price to get a new one as it would be to upgrade it. So tomorrow I am just going to pick up a whole new machine. I found a refurbished HP with a dual core 2.8 and 3 gig of ram, so that should play all the games I want it to.

I appreciate all the help!

[chewie26]

ok, I transferred everything to the new computer, and it's running things great except for 2 issues.

1. Vector games run so slow they are unplayable (10%). It's gotta be a setting that's different, but I have no idea what to look for.

2. Daphne doesn't want to work now. Is it because I copied it from the other machine? Would I have to download it all over again, or should this work?