Computer Problems

[Elemental]

I am having some problems with my computer that I was going to use in my cab. It is a 2.0ghz Intel Celeron with 256mb of DDR ram on a p4s533 motherboard and a Radeon 9200. I was expecting this to run all the mame games I play, but it seems that it wont. When I try to play Area 51, its is very slow. Is this my CPU, Video Card, or my RAM? I hope it is ram, cause i dont want to have to buy a new cpu! Thanks!

[TalkingOctopus]

It is probably your CPU.  But try messing around with all of the mame settings to make it faster before you buy anything new.

[BarontheFirst]

On my Athlon XP 1800+ 1.53ghz and 512DDR Area 51 runs at full speed. To be honest I never did like Celeron processors and it might be part of your problem. Still first I recommend you increase your ram to atleast 512mbs. If that doesn't fix it then it could very well be the cpu.

[Elemental]

Thanks for the replies.

I never like the celeron much myself, but I had the motherboard, and the price was right. I will try to get 256mb more ram (seems to be cheap these days) and then if that doesnt work I will just overclock the CPU a bit. I bet I could get it to 2.4 with the stock HSF, but thats for another discussion  

[JustMichael]

Your best bet would be to replace the celeron with the pentium (whichever one fits the socket).

[Elemental]

I will pull the RAM out of my main PC and see if the ram is the problem, and if that runs smooth I will add more ram. If it is not, I will overclock it about 400mhz and see if that helps. I will report whatever helps on this thread! And JustMichael, I would rather not spend the money on the pentium 4 proc, this celeron was a steal!

[MUKid]

I've heard that the lack of L2 Cache on the Celeron causes big speed issues in MAME.  MAME is very memory-dependent, so apparently RAM and cache are the most important things.  This is just what I've been told -- in fact, I bought a Thunderbird instead of a Duron for just that reason.

[Spaced Invader]

Interesting reading...notice the wide differences in cache sizes.

http://www.geek.com/procspec/procspec.htm

[MUKid]

Cool site.  It's hard to keep up with all the CPUs unless you're buying them every few months, which I'm not.  Palomino, Hammer, Celeron, Opteron, I get so confused!