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| Generic Eric:
--- Quote from: jonnik on September 05, 2014, 12:01:48 pm ---Can pick up a 3ghz i5 1150 for about £100 at my local shop. Will not skimp on motherboard and go from there. What would you reccommend for the front end ? --- End quote --- Pick one that has current support. Really, all of them. I thought Hyperspin was the hottest thing since bacon, but when I showed it to other people, they were not impressed. Give mala a go first. If you don't like it, keep looking, there are others. Also, what is your use style? Do you always leave the PC on? Look for an overall low power usage PC. You can build however you want, but I wonder if you might be better off upgrading something you can find second hand? If this is your first time building then maybe that is a better option. If this is your first PC build, first time configuring mame, and configuring front ends, and first time building something from would wood and you don't own any tools... You can see how you might be setting yourself up for a long slog. Which doesn't mean it won't be worth it, you might be setting yourself up for a long journey. 2 links before I finish: http://mamedev.org/devwiki/index.php?title=Developer_WIPs http://www.mamedev.org/devwiki/index.php?title=FAQ:Performance Last two thoughts unless you specifically direct something to me. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time! Do you know of the Paradox of My Grand Fathers axe? Short story short. Something is going to change over the course of time with your set up. Keep asking questions & Good luck. |
| yotsuya:
--- Quote from: screamingtiger on September 05, 2014, 11:55:12 am ---Source? --- Quote from: pbj on September 05, 2014, 10:21:34 am ---Buy the most expensive Intel processor you can afford. Make sure you remove all network functionality from your MAME cabinets. People have gone to prison for their ROM collections. --- End quote --- --- End quote --- Source? His ass. |
| lamprey:
--- Quote from: dkersten on September 05, 2014, 10:32:10 am ---mame can only take advantage of 2 cores currently from what I have read (although I have also read that you can set the number of cores it will use, but that it might still only use 2). So a quad core cpu for mame is overkill, and usually means sacrificing 1 and 2 core performance. However, there are only a small handful of games that really need the power. Other emulators are a different story though. Demul, for example, requires a monster 3d card to run games well, and while you don't need top of the line cpu power, it doesn't hurt. --- End quote --- I can't find a source to say if MAME will or will not use more than 2 cores, but it certainly appears to be using all the cores on my quad core setup (HT disabled). So, I wouldn't rule out a quad core, in fact, I'd rather have one. But, at the end of the day GHz seems to be king with MAME. The newer builds of MAME are slower for the demanding games, like Blitz. So, if you are on the cusp of running those, and you want to play them, try going back to an older build (0149 I think) and it should work better. To the OP, If you have the money, then I'd get the fastest CPU to can afford. If you are comfortable with overclocking, I think the i5 "K" procs are great. However, the latest generation doesn't seem to have the overclocking headroom that previous generations had. So, it may not really be worth it to you. Also, a lot of the motherboards have overclocking functionality built into them. I've never seen them work as well as hand over clocking, but for the convenience they seem to work decently. All that having been said, I'm not sure it helps you very much. But, just about any modern machine with half-way decent specs is going to be able to handle just about anything MAME can throw at it. |
| screamingtiger:
I disagree with getting the latest stuff. Buy "recent" cheapr stuff. What happens is that hardware is the most expensive when it is new. then it goes through a very cheap phase, until it is phased out. Then the price starts going up again as it gets more rare. Buy the stuff that is in the cheap zone now. Older i3/i5/i7, athlon II, Phenom quad are starting to go back up in price. But still can be had cheap. My research stopped at socket AM3 as that is the last time I bulit a PC, when AM3 was the latest and greatest. My Athlon II tri core overclocked to 3.4ghz plays everything I have tried so far. Wii is a bit shakey but the emulators are not very old. But really no need for that yet IMO. Just my .02. |
| dkersten:
I have always subscribed to the idea that overclocking is avoidable and not necessary under normal circumstances. By all means if you are an enthusiast and love tinkering all the time, go for it. If you want something to just plug in and work and last the life of the product, just get something that works for you in stock format and run with it. The bump in performance is usually not worth the life you take off the product, at least to me it isn't. And frankly an i5, particularly the last 3 generations of it, are more than fast enough for just about anything you can throw at it. The difference between a $200 motherboard and a $70 motherboard is usually A) number of pci-e 16/8x slots for SLI, B) number of high performance sata/usb headers, C) overclocking controls, and D) better heat pipes/sinks to cool all the extra crap. Since SLI won't do anything for you, and you probably won't be running 4 Sata 6gbit/s drives, and overclocking for mame is kind of overkill, there is no need to get some crazy cutting edge motherboard. Extra USB headers is nice to have but they don't need to be USB3.0, and most mobos, even cheap ones will have 4 headers (2 ports each) which is more than enough for most cabinets. A Gen4 corei5 with a basic motherboard, 4-8gb ram, an ssd, and a moderate GPU like a 740 will get you way under that budget and run it all without a hiccup. If you really want to blow more money, bump the card up to a 750ti or 760, get a bigger SSD, a bigger PSU, and maybe bump the CPU up to the top i5. The last 2 gaming rigs I built were right at $1000 usd and while not bleeding edge by any means, perfectly competent gaming computers that could play anything on the market at 1080 with some decent options turned on. An extra $500 gets you 5-10% more overall performance over what it could do, and an extra $1000 on top of that will get you another 5%. After that you might get another 3% overall but it will push you into the $5k range to get it. The returns just aren't worth it to me. Your money though. |
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