how much horsepower

[papaschtroumpf]

I'm thinking of upgrading the hardware in my cabinet, but I'm on a budget.
I need a new mobo and CPU (and possibly RAM).

What hardware will run all/most games with framerates of 30fps or more?
The Athlon XP 2700 on my workstation does the job just fine but I don't want to spend that much money.

Would something like a Duron 1.1 GHz or Celeron 1 GHz be enough machine? How about Duron 700?

Also my current video card is an ATI rage-PRo with 8M of RAM. I always assumed this was plenty good to run mame, but am I correct?

Thanks

[BigBri]

i have a 1.8 celeron and most games run smoothly.  games like area51 and maximum force skip frames.  i overclock it to 2.1 and they run at 60 fps.  let me warn you about mobos....you get what you pay for.  my advice is get a decent mobo.  if you don't have the funds for a mid priced mobo, then don't buy one at all.  i bought a cheapo.  that was fine at first, it served it's purpose.  but in the long run it will cost you.

[MiKman]

I just upgraded from an amd K6-2 350Mhz 256megs ram, which only ran the classics at full speed and even then dropped some frames. To a P3 1000 Mhz 512Megs Ram (this was my old setup that I upgraded to P4 2.4) and now virtually ALL games run at full speed (60 fps), except a few fighters (mortal combat comes to mind) and the Hard Drive type games (Area 51, Maximum Force). Of course I haven't tried every game in mame with it yet so there are bound to be others that drop frames as well.

Personally I think that a 1 Ghz machine should be about the bear minumum to get the full enjoyment out of the cabinet and Mame. And if you can pickup a good Used P3 - Athlon Asus motherboard and CPU above 1 gig from someone who is upgrading then go for it, you won't be disappointed.

[Tiger-Heli]

I need a new mobo and CPU (and possibly RAM).

What hardware will run all/most games with framerates of 30fps or more?
The Athlon XP 2700 on my workstation does the job just fine but I don't want to spend that much money.

Would something like a Duron 1.1 GHz or Celeron 1 GHz be enough machine? How about Duron 700?

Also my current video card is an ATI rage-PRo with 8M of RAM. I always assumed this was plenty good to run mame, but am I correct?

Thanks

I'm running a Duron 850 now.  Works fine.  A very few games won't play decently but most are fine.  Oddly, BattleZone needs an older version of MAME, but Afterburner, 1941, 19XX, outrun, Outrunners, etc play just fine.

My daughter had a Duron 650 that I experimented on a little bit.  I would expect the Duron 700 to be fine as well.  However, according to Pricewatch, an XP1900 is only $47.  I wouldn't BUY anything less than this.  But if you already have or have access to the Duron's that should be fine.

I bought a refurbished Shuttle AK38N mobo (VIA KT333) from www.newegg.com for $23 shipped, and it's worked flawlessly.

Memory - I found a 256M PC2700 DDR stick free with rebate from OfficeMax, but it's still dirt cheap - ~$30 on pricewatch now.

Video should be fine.  I was using a 4M Rendition PCI card in MAME with no problems.  I'm using a 16M AGP TNT2 now, but it didn't make much difference in MAME.

[tiggertoo]

Right now with the amd cpus, the best deal on the market is the 2600+ at about $94. The 2700+ runs about $130.

I'm a budget shopper myself. but I always felt that you should get the best you can afford with computer hardware. Generally the price per unit (mhz/ghz) goes down as you go up, until you come to the latest and greatest. And since most AMD motherboards take a broad range of processors, you should spend $20 more and get something faster.

I do agree with Zell, get a decent mobo. You'll save on the headaches, and chances are good it'll have upward compatibility.

Just my .02

[hooded_paladin]

a better video card won't do much.  MAME does all the rendering with the processor (cuz it IS an emulator ...)

[papaschtroumpf]

really? I thought that it did use DirectX (2D) acceleration. If not I understand that the vid card doesn't matter much.

[Tiger-Heli]

really? I thought that it did use DirectX (2D) acceleration. If not I understand that the vid card doesn't matter much.

MAME uses the video card 2D functions for hardware stretch in WinMAME if you have that turned on.  But that isn't very hard on a modern video card.

What Hooded_Paladin means (I think) is that all modern video cards are optimized for 3D graphics games, and MAME does all this processing in the CPU, not the graphics card, so a good 3D card won't matter much.

I can share my experience agian - The 16M TNT2 AGP is not a cutting edge video card, but any stretch, but it's loads faster than my old 4M Rendtion PCI card.  I saw a marked increase in the detail levels I was able to run in Microsoft Train Simulator (3D game) after I swapped cards.  However, in MAME, I maybe picked up 2-5% on some of the more graphic intense games, nothing on the more basic ones.

To put it more clearly, if I weren't running MSTS, I would probably downgrade back to the 4M PCI card, b/c the 2D graphics (Word, spreadsheets) were better on it, and MAME really didn't care.

I think an 8M ATI Rage Pro should be fine.  But you only lose about $5 in extra shipping if you keep that card and then upgrade later if it doesn't work out.

One thing I would avoid with MAME is onboard Video, b/c this uses system memory, and also tends to slow the CPU down (I think), both of which are bad for MAME.