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Decent PC specs for MAME?

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harveybirdman:


--- Quote from: jadder on January 03, 2013, 10:08:53 pm ---its interesting that some people say a P4 is still ok and others say its no good with the latest versions of mame

i imagine which P4 plays a part in it..!

--- End quote ---

FWIW mine is a Pentuim (R) 4 CPU 2.8GHz and I don't have crap for RAM, according to "system" only 504MB

And I'm running 146u5 with no issues, other than no STV and No 3D, kinst and kinst2 are playable, and some games I can get by with frameskip such as Guardians.

BadMouth:


--- Quote from: rCadeGaming on January 03, 2013, 09:54:52 pm ---Ok, say you do want to run demanding stuff like Blitz, Rush, Cruisn', etc., and you want be to as future proof as you can with currently available processors.

AMD's with much higher advertised clock speeds than comparably priced Intels are readily available, but I've also heard that Intels can perform more actual operations per second with lower clock speeds than AMD's, so I'm still undecided.  What is the feeling on Intel vs. AMD for MAME? 

Also, I built my last PC with the idea that more than two processors is of no use to MAME.  Is this still true?

--- End quote ---

The current official MAME build is optomized for Intel. 
The i7 in my laptop (3.8Ghz "turbo boost") runs Ridge Racer at 100%.
If you're talking about flagship processors, there is no comparison.  Intel wins by a wide margin.

AMD is usually a lot more bang for the buck (but it is less bang).
All the PC's I've built for emulators used AMD because they were budget builds.

Browse the processor charts on www.tomshardware.com and you'll  get an idea of how they stack up against each other.
Offered a 4.2Ghz AMD vs a 3.8Ghz Intel for a similar price, I'd take the Intel (even though every PC in my house except my laptop use AMD).

I went from Athlon X2's to only slightly faster X3's on two of my emulator PCs.
The boost was bigger than I would have expected from the .1Ghz and .2Ghz increase.
It's my belief that the third core does help out a lot by taking care of background processes.
I don't have any evidence or testing to prove it, but it's what I believe.

Also, other emulators like Supermodel use the extra cores and eventually MAME will use more cores, even if it's not for the primary emulation.
(kinda like it only uses the video card for effects like hlsl, which isn't part of the emulation)

When my current build is finished, I plan to start building a powerhouse i5 pc.

Yourname942:

I'm not sure what specs you should get but here is a guide that I'm going to be using:

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/af150/The_FalconO6/CurrentLogicalPCBuyingGuide/Guide.png


rCadeGaming:

Thanks for the informative reply.


--- Quote from: BadMouth on January 04, 2013, 09:56:29 am ---Browse the processor charts on www.tomshardware.com and you'll  get an idea of how they stack up against each other.
--- End quote ---

This is a great resource.  Unsurprisingly the Intels top just about every benchmark.  What is surprising is that these Intel Core i7's are doing more at 3.3 or 3.5gHz than the AMD FX's are at 3.9 or 4gHz.


--- Quote from: BadMouth on January 04, 2013, 09:56:29 am ---It's my belief that the third core does help out a lot by taking care of background processes.
I don't have any evidence or testing to prove it, but it's what I believe.
--- End quote ---

My thinking is similar, but why does this require a third processor?  Wouldn't MAME run mostly on one core with the background stuff going on the other?  I guess MAME can make full use of two now?

My fastest PC right now is my home theater PC which I built about a year ago with a 3.4gHz Core i3 (Sandy Bridge if I remember correctly).  It's still a little slow for certain things in MAME, so I want to be sure to make the most of the PC I build for my cabinet.

If I had an unlimited budget, the choice would be easy.  When the time comes I'll have to look at those benchmarks a little harder with prices in mind.  How much of an advantage is there from MAME being "optimized" for Intels?

Steve248:


--- Quote from: kahlid74 on January 03, 2013, 10:00:05 am ---If you're looking to play NFL Blitz 99 you're going to need north of 9Ghz of processing power total. 

--- End quote ---

Hi,

As a 9 GHz processor does not exist I assume you are adding up the total value of the cores? In the case of a 3GHz processor with 4 cores it does not run at 12GHz, it runs at 3GHz but has the ability to multitask much more efficiently but only if the applications are compatible.

Recent versions of MAME do seem to be able to take advantage of muti cores but this does not make it run at 6 or 12 GHZ. I guess a pipe analogy is useful. Multi cores make the pipe bigger but does not make the water go through faster. So more data can be processed at a time but it does not get processed faster. I think that makes sense.

Anyway, where all this helps is with choosing the most appropriate processor. For purely running MAME, a high clock rate and less concern about the number of cores will be better. Even though MAME can make use of multiple cores it will not make very good use of more than one most of the time.

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