Deciding CPU for MAME

[Elaphe]

¿Which one do you think it will perform better in MAME, a new I3 at 3.6 ghz or a new I5 at 3.0 ghz? Anyone has made bechmarks with these setups?

[ron310]

I have not benchmarked either, but I think they are both more than enough power for mame. I run a dual core 2.4 processor, and on another cab I run a mini-itx embedded 1.6ghz processor. I also run an amd chip, in the 2.something range as my main cab. I would go with whatever uses less power and can run cooler to keep the fan noise down to a minimum.

[Malenko]

probably the i3, I dont think MAME takes advantage of more than 2 cores (at least last time I checked)

[shponglefan]

For 99% of MAME games, you won't notice a difference.  It will only matter in 3D games like NFL Blitz, Gauntlet Legends, etc.  In which case the faster processor is probably a better bet.

[Elaphe]

I'm specially interested in Cave SH3 games, some of which are not very well optimized so I don't get constant 60 fps in my old Core2Duo.

[Haze]

I'm specially interested in Cave SH3 games, some of which are not very well optimized so I don't get constant 60 fps in my old Core2Duo.

This statement is a little offensive.

When I got the driver to work on it was 'not very well optimized' and ran at 5-10% (maximum) speed on a 3ghz C2D.  I spent a week+ carefully optimizing a lot of it to make it run at in excess of 300% in places, dipping a bit below 100 in some situations where it was basically unavoidable.

As drivers go it is heavily optimized and optimizing it was an interesting challenge, analysing the generated code, understanding how GCC handles certain things and in some cases outputs far less efficient code when you'd expect it to actually output better code.

You've cross-posted this question elsewhere anyway, and already got an answer there.  You also seem dismissive of the advice to run a 64-bit OS and 64-bit MAME which gives a significant boost to this driver (~25%) without doing anything else.

[Dariusz]

Hi

Stupid question:

What Mame version runs Cave SH3 games?

I don't think that the latest Mame version runs Cave games?

D

[BadMouth]

Hi

Stupid question:

What Mame version runs Cave SH3 games?

I don't think that the latest Mame version runs Cave games?

D

No official version does.  It was in one of the interim "u" builds that you had to compile yourself, but they were yanked at Cave's request.
There are plenty of unofficial builds out there that do, but you'll probably end up setting it up as a separate emulator.