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If you were to build a computer...?
honkey:
--- Quote from: Diet_Pepsi on September 27, 2011, 01:25:40 pm ---
--- Quote from: honkey on September 27, 2011, 02:23:46 am ---I am eyeing this, what do you guys think? http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.735688
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That setup will definitely be sufficient.
I tend to agree with the other posters that you should, in theory, be able to run mame on your existing setup. I have an old p4 2.8ghz system lying around and just for fun I re-installed the OS and mame runs just fine with onboard graphics. Many vendors are selling p4 3ghz systems in their arcade cabinets today.
If you do decide to go new then consider the following:
- i have a similar setup (phenom II x4 840) paired with a biostar 760g mobo. I have benchmarked this system against my C2D (using -bench 90) and the C2D runs approx. 25% faster clock for clock.
- if you would like to build with AMD I would suggest a dual core chip -- if all you are doing is running emulators I do not believe emulators use more than 2 cores. If you live close to a Microcenter they have a deal that bundles a phenom ii dual core with a 760G motherboard for under $90, and 4gb of ram for $20.
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Man, I must be looking in the wrong places. I am not finding these prices. The reason I settled on the combo I linked is just because I do not know much about building computers and they already had a combo with everything compatible and it seemed like something that would not need upgrading for a while even if I end up using it for more than just emulation. I have no experience with AMD, but I like their prices better than intel ;) If I understand correctly though, for these emulators, a quad core at 3.0 GHz will run at the same speed as a dual core at 3.0 GHz because two cores would never be used... Is that correct?
newmanfamilyvlogs:
According to the documentation on the mame site, the multithreading in mame splits the emulation engine in one thread and the video rendering into another.
On a dual core system that means that one core is entirely dedicated to emulating the logic of the game, and the other core is fully dedicated to shunting the resulting video data onto the screen. (Though in most cases on modern systems it's unlikely that both cores would be 100% saturated by theses tasks). Now, beyond this there is still other stuff going on: Windows is handling the input from your controller, windows is managing the routing of sound via DirectX, there might be network traffic going on, possibly a virus scanner, etc. In a purely dual core setup, all this stuff still has to schedule itself between the execution of the emulator. When you move past two cores you're increasing the chances that there will be free processing capacity at the instance that mame requires it. The additional cores don't go "unused", they just aren't being dedicated to mame. Mame isn't the only thing happening though.
On the subject of AMD vs Intel, at the moment current Intel processors seem to be more time efficient running mame, as was mentioned by another poster. What that means is that on two random systems, one AMD, the other Intel, running at identical clock speeds the Intel system is likely to be faster. If some cpu instruction takes 7 clock cycles to complete on some AMD CPU, and the same instruction takes 5 cycles on an Intel, the Intel chip would be getting ~28% more work done in the same period of time as the AMD system. (These numbers are purely for illustration).
SNAAKE:
--- Quote from: honkey on September 27, 2011, 02:23:46 am ---I am eyeing this, what do you guys think? http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.735688
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u might get a better deal if you buy things seperate. but yeah that should be good enough to run all mame games and console emulator. need a video card though.
newmanfamilyvlogs:
That motherboard has an HD3000 built into it; that will be just fine. You can run Calamity's ATI drivers on it also for dynamic refreshrates, and run the games at their native framerate to eliminate tearing/stuttering also.
That's a pretty tight combo deal, it's going to be hard to get a much better deal. Keep in mind that case has a PSU bundled with it, so any money you save by not buying a case will be consumed by buying the PSU.
Well Fed Games:
--- Quote from: cotmm68030 on September 28, 2011, 05:40:16 am ---That motherboard has an HD3000 built into it; that will be just fine. You can run Calamity's ATI drivers on it also for dynamic refreshrates, and run the games at their native framerate to eliminate tearing/stuttering also.
That's a pretty tight combo deal, it's going to be hard to get a much better deal. Keep in mind that case has a PSU bundled with it, so any money you save by not buying a case will be consumed by buying the PSU.
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A couple (probably stupid) questions- I've got a build I am going to use component connections for (standard def)... would this motherboard's built in graphics solution be able to output a good component signal via a breakout cable or whatever?
and.... does output format affect anything with Calamity's drivers? As in, are they just for VGA out, etc, or would they help with a component or composite output as well. Screen tearing on my current build was a huge pain.