Arcade VGA 4000 wishlist // If you could sit and talk with Andy.

[jtslade]

Ok so if you could sit and have a pint at a pub in London with Andy W. of Ultimarc

What would you want in the Arcade VGA 4000

Please refrain from asking for it to have more 3d graphics power, this would require using a video card that is way more expensive as a base. No one will buy a $400 Arcade VGA card.

I would ask for more modelines supported or even if you could add custom modelines. How many would be needed over the 30 native ones that are in the 3000 to get the majority of arcade games, both classics early and late JAMMA, Neo Geo and others.

What else would you want for the perfect Arcade VGA card?

[rpgposer]

Dear Andy,
Is there any possibility of using an NVIDIA chipset based card instead of ATI?  I have used both brands for years and NVIDIA's drivers appear to have better stability.

Best Regards,
rpgposer

[paigeoliver]

My wishlist begins and ends with lower price.

I want the new arcadeVGA based off the cheapest board/chipset that Andy can source. All I care about is functioning 2D that outputs to an arcade monitor.

Lower price, lower price, lower price.

A 5 pin connector on the back for arcade video output would be a nice touch but not if it drove up the price.

Lower price.

Can you find some obsolete 7 year old cards to base it on. Great, use those. Pass the savings on.

[AndyWarne]

Ok so if you could sit and have a pint at a pub in London with Andy W. of Ultimarc

What would you want in the Arcade VGA 4000

Please refrain from asking for it to have more 3d graphics power, this would require using a video card that is way more expensive as a base. No one will buy a $400 Arcade VGA card.

I would ask for more modelines supported or even if you could add custom modelines. How many would be needed over the 30 native ones that are in the 3000 to get the majority of arcade games, both classics early and late JAMMA, Neo Geo and others.

What else would you want for the perfect Arcade VGA card?

I can name a few good pubs if you like

I am often asked when a new more powerful card is coming out, but I agree that there is not any real need for this. The whole reason for the card is to easily support low arcade game resolutions for Mame and other emulators and these resolutions do not require a lot of card power.

The resolutions available support all games as far as I know but I am open to suggestions for a couple more if justified. One possibility for adding more might be a few more for multi-frequency monitors or possibly some for use on wide screen monitors. Its a misconception that each game must be run at exactly its original resolution to be able to get 1:1 pixel mapping. The fact is, tiny borders are automatically added which means the difference is invisible. On a fixed frequency monitor there are limits on available timings as well owing to the magic formula: Hrefresh = Lines X Vrefresh.

Nvidia chipset: No chance. they don't support small hardware developers. In fact the only reason ATI (AMD) do is historical. I don't think any new developer wanting to do this would be supported at all by AMD.

The price is not going to drop because this is a product which requires a huge amount of support time and development, with 4 sets of drivers to support plus the hardware. In fact I have often thought about discontinuing it owing to the fact it takes more support time than all of our other products put together. I am sure if a bean-counter sat down and costed it, they would tell me its uneconomic!
Also we seem to get a large number of cards returned which have no fault. I have 3 returned cards on my desk right now, absolutely no fault with them despite soak test using both video ports.

Eventually there will come a point where there are too few CRT monitors still left to make it viable but that point is not in sight just yet.

In fact the most likely reason for dropping it is the continuing lack of support for native resolutions using D3D in Mame. This is a constant headache because Windows 7 and later have bugs in DirectX support. I have no idea why the Mame devs don't seem to be enthusiastic about native unstretched resolution support as this is surely in the spirit of Mame to emulate games as accurately as possible. Maybe there is a technical reason in D3D that it cant be done.

[Dawgz Rule]

Andy, thank you for the response.

I think it is a great product and definitely does everything I need it to do.  I think the price is respectable as well.  Worth every penny in my book. 

[lodoss118]

For me the price is not a problem, my main issue is, is the power to play not only mame games but some pc/console (emulators, ps2,dolphin etc..) games. Andy what would be highest base card if a new card was possible?

[Locke141]

For me the price is not a problem, my main issue is, is the power to play not only mame games but some pc/console (emulators, ps2,dolphin etc..) games. Andy what would be highest base card if a new card was possible?

Why not just add a second more power full card?

[lodoss118]

but would you not then have to switch the monitor cable to the second one?

[AndyWarne]

I think the number of people who use the ArcadeVGA card for playing PC games at resolutions higher then 800 x 600 (the highest resolution on a standard resolution monitor) is small. Although it would be possible to use a higher spec chipset I am not sure the extra cost would be appreciated by the majority of customers.

[AndyWarne]

Another point worth making:

the ArcadeVGA card has the ability to create and save virtually any video timing, within the limits of the range possible by the monitors limits. Using the Arcadeperfect add-on you can actually adjust the picture size and (more importantly) vertical refresh while in the game using hotkeys, so you can match the refresh exactly to the game if you wish, and the settings can be saved.

The number of downloads of the Arcadeperfect add-on is small so I don't think many people are using this feature.

[jtslade]

There has to be some reason that the downloads are so low for the arcade perfect utility. Maybe it needs to be integrated into front ends like Hyperspin or others...

Once my card returns, (I hope mine was not one of the ones on your desk that test fine)..

I'm going to start using the utility, has to be a logical reason it's not in more use...