The "What PC do I need to run MAME?" Official FAQ

[gprime]

*finally* read through this whole thing, what a controversial thread  

paige and howard; you both are talking about different ideas, so you're both right, leave it at that  

im fairly new to mame and was surprised that it's not graphic card intensive (good thing i read this thread, i came here just before finalizing my decision on what to get -- almost bought something for three times and much as i needed to).

just one thing i'd like to ask tho, what power supply would you all recommend? my local computer store has 300watt power supplies on sale for $5 (woo for boxing day sales!) so i was wondering if that would be be enough? only need to power one hard drive, one graphic card, and everything else onboard (sound card, etc). is 300watts safe enough or should i go for 350watt? also, does brand matter very much? these ones im looking at apparently have no brand () so im not sure how long they will last.

thanks  

[paigeoliver]

*finally* read through this whole thing, what a controversial thread  

paige and howard; you both are talking about different ideas, so you're both right, leave it at that  

im fairly new to mame and was surprised that it's not graphic card intensive (good thing i read this thread, i came here just before finalizing my decision on what to get -- almost bought something for three times and much as i needed to).

just one thing i'd like to ask tho, what power supply would you all recommend? my local computer store has 300watt power supplies on sale for $5 (woo for boxing day sales!) so i was wondering if that would be be enough? only need to power one hard drive, one graphic card, and everything else onboard (sound card, etc). is 300watts safe enough or should i go for 350watt? also, does brand matter very much? these ones im looking at apparently have no brand () so im not sure how long they will last.

thanks  

Computers inside dedicated Mame boxes don't really tend to have as much power needs as desktops. Owing to the fact that they usually aren't powering any USB objects, or extra drives other than the hard drive. A 300 watt should be fine.

[Sephroth57]

*finally* read through this whole thing, what a controversial thread  

paige and howard; you both are talking about different ideas, so you're both right, leave it at that  

im fairly new to mame and was surprised that it's not graphic card intensive (good thing i read this thread, i came here just before finalizing my decision on what to get -- almost bought something for three times and much as i needed to).

just one thing i'd like to ask tho, what power supply would you all recommend? my local computer store has 300watt power supplies on sale for $5 (woo for boxing day sales!) so i was wondering if that would be be enough? only need to power one hard drive, one graphic card, and everything else onboard (sound card, etc). is 300watts safe enough or should i go for 350watt? also, does brand matter very much? these ones im looking at apparently have no brand () so im not sure how long they will last.

thanks  

Computers inside dedicated Mame boxes don't really tend to have as much power needs as desktops. Owing to the fact that they usually aren't powering any USB objects, or extra drives other than the hard drive. A 300 watt should be fine.

yeah i agree with paige 300 should be fine. also about the brand, I would say it doesnt matter. I use generic brand power supplys/cases with my PCs and none of them have ever died on me

[Jakobud]

Take a look at these recent Mame benchmarks from a couple days ago:

http://www.classicgaming.com/mame32qa/bench.htm

[paigeoliver]

WHat did they do to make Prop Cycle run so slow? It runs faster than that on my Athlon 1200. I remember playing it a couple times.

[Wienerdog]

also about the brand, I would say it doesnt matter. I use generic brand power supplys/cases with my PCs and none of them have ever died on me

300 watts is more than enough, but brand does make a difference.  I'm not saying don't use a generic, I'm just saying that there is a big quality difference between a good and a bad PS.  You would have to go to a hardware forum to find out what a good PS is though.  A flaky PS can cause system instability and other annoying things.

[Sephroth57]

also about the brand, I would say it doesnt matter. I use generic brand power supplys/cases with my PCs and none of them have ever died on me

300 watts is more than enough, but brand does make a difference.  I'm not saying don't use a generic, I'm just saying that there is a big quality difference between a good and a bad PS.  You would have to go to a hardware forum to find out what a good PS is though.  A flaky PS can cause system instability and other annoying things.

really? i never really researched on them but in my personal experience with over 10 PCs ive never had problems using whatever power supply i happened to have. but thats just me

[Spaced Invader]

also about the brand, I would say it doesnt matter. I use generic brand power supplys/cases with my PCs and none of them have ever died on me

300 watts is more than enough, but brand does make a difference.  I'm not saying don't use a generic, I'm just saying that there is a big quality difference between a good and a bad PS.  You would have to go to a hardware forum to find out what a good PS is though.  A flaky PS can cause system instability and other annoying things.

really? i never really researched on them but in my personal experience with over 10 PCs ive never had problems using whatever power supply i happened to have. but thats just me

It can matter...I had problems with an old dual Celeron system with a Geforce card...everything was trying to draw power from the 3.3V rail=too many amps=flaky system. You probably won't need more than 300 watts. What matters most is how that 300 watts is broken down between 12V, 5V, and 3.3V and what line your MB/Processor/Cards are drawing power from. I've seen some cheap power supplies that provide plenty of power to 12V but not enough to 3.3V or 5V. Just my observations. Opinions vary....

[Harakiri]

What about a NASA supercomputer!  

XXX type PC! hehe

[ErikRuud]

I just purchased a new computer for my cab.  It is a barebones kit from Tiger Direct.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=81577&Sku=TC1-XP-1028&CatId=1219

Based on the firt post in this thread, I would have to call it a B-minus system as it has a 1.6 ghz Duron instead of an Athlon XP.  I was able to go to their outlet and save the cost of shipping, and they gave me PC2100 DDR memory instead of the PC133 SDRAM that the website shows.  I don't know if that was a mistake or not, but the faster memory can't hurt.

I assembled it over the weekend, and so far everything seems to be running great.  I have not tried it with everything yet, but I did try out the games that I cared abot that would not run well on my old 233mhz system.  

Majestic12, Pacmania, Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Warrior, Galaga 84, Galaga 88, and the Daphne games all work at full speed.

[Sephroth57]

nice , thats around what the next comp im building is gonna be. prolly get a athlon 2000xp barebones type of deal. i really want higher so i can play KI2 and beatmania games without skipping but i dont have the cash right now =\

pretty much will play everything non chd

[menace]

so why is this thread stickied?

[SirPeale]

yeah i agree with paige 300 should be fine. also about the brand, I would say it doesnt matter. I use generic brand power supplys/cases with my PCs and none of them have ever died on me.

It's not having a power supply die on you that is the issue.  It's having your PC parts have unnecessary stress on them because of bad voltages.

I have used exactly one cheap PS, it was right in the middle of the other PS's I've used.  While it didn't hose the system, it certainly gave me a slew of problems.  Never again.

[Sephroth57]

so why is this thread stickied?

to give people some basic guidelines on mame PCs.... its been asked here a ton of times and this thread has over 1000 views so its probably been stopping some of them. and if people do ask, its usually in here.

whats with all the haters on my sticky!? just trying to help the community

[menace]

Dude, I don't hate the sticky but when its been completely hijacked, argued over and contradicted, its usefulness is pretty much shot--you should summarize the findings and post somewhere else without all the banter.

[Sephroth57]

yeah, well i wanted some constructive critisism but it really got off topic at parts. Still the first post has all the info and thats what everyone reads first. It still does its job

[gregor7777]

Actually I find this thread alot better than nothing, plus in the arguments comes some info that I find usefull.

My question is : does HD rotation speed make much of a difference in gameplay or would it just effect load times with mame? Is it safe to go with a 5400 RPM drive on the cheap when playing games up to...say...some of the vampire and mortal kombat games?

[XtraSmiley]

Actually I find this thread alot better than nothing, plus in the arguments comes some info that I find usefull.

My question is : does HD rotation speed make much of a difference in gameplay or would it just effect load times with mame? Is it safe to go with a 5400 RPM drive on the cheap when playing games up to...say...some of the vampire and mortal kombat games?

Well it could on games that use a CHD (a hard drive image), although I really am just guessing.  You should just buy a 10,000 RPM Raptor just to be safe.*














*No, not really, although these drives kick ass, it would be serious overkill.  I've seen no difference between my old 5400 2mb drive compared to my 7200 8 mb (for MAME) but hey, I just got a 250 GB 7200 8 mb Western Digital drive for $140 after rebates, that's about $.56 a gig.  Unless you buy used, you aren't going to find cheaper than that.

[gregor7777]

Actually I find this thread alot better than nothing, plus in the arguments comes some info that I find usefull.

My question is : does HD rotation speed make much of a difference in gameplay or would it just effect load times with mame? Is it safe to go with a 5400 RPM drive on the cheap when playing games up to...say...some of the vampire and mortal kombat games?

Well it could on games that use a CHD (a hard drive image), although I really am just guessing.  You should just buy a 10,000 RPM Raptor just to be safe.*

*No, not really, although these drives kick ass, it would be serious overkill.  I've seen no difference between my old 5400 2mb drive compared to my 7200 8 mb (for MAME) but hey, I just got a 250 GB 7200 8 mb Western Digital drive for $140 after rebates, that's about $.56 a gig.  Unless you buy used, you aren't going to find cheaper than that.

Right, actually I was considering throwing in my 4-way Xeon server with dual 15000RPM SCSI drives in my cab but thought better of it. I think I'll buy a 8 gig 5400 RPM used hard drive instad.

[Sephroth57]

i just upgraded my HD from a really old 20GB drive (im guessing it was 5400), to a 80GB 7200 RPM drive and it made a huge difference in other games loading speeds, like star wars:KOTOR, and warcraft III. it made a small difference in loading a couple of the bigger games in MAME but its not like it was unbearable on my old 5400. its definately not necessary to have 7200

[gregor7777]

That's what I was thinking. I wouldn't even mind if it was slightly slower load times either. Cool.

[killbill]

Hi Guys,

I'm going over to Fry's today to pick up my computer for my Emulation cabinet.  I read this entire thread and got a little confused.  I'm very new to computers.  I didn't even know that there was an internet two years ago.    

I want to run: MAME, Daphne, and all console emulators: Genesis, N64, SMS, TB16, NES, SNES, Colecovision, NeoGeo, GameGear, etc.  I want all to run smooth, except for the really high end chd MAME games.

This thread cover MAME well, but not the other emulators and their requirements.

From this thread, here's what I've come up with:

AMD XP2200
256 RAM (2100 or 2700)
80 gig hd (7200rpm)
onboard sound card
DVDR/CDR combo drive

Now, I'm confused on a video card.  What would be a good card to compliment this system?  I'll be emulating through a computer monitor.  Geforce 2 64MB?

Does this look like a system that will do what I want it to do, and more?
Sorry, if this is offtopic or redundant.  I'd really like opinions on this.

Thanks.

[Sephroth57]

that looks like a good setup, even a little overqualified. if youre not worrying about CHD games 2200 is plenty you could prolly even go a little lower but nowadays thats the difference of like 5$ so thats your preference. RAM is fine, HD will have plenty of extra room, and again its just a matter of your preference cause a 80GB is only like 10$ more then a 60 so its what you wanna pay. a geforce 2 vid card would be perfect, dont need anything more unless you plan new PC games

overall it looks good, go for it  

[Agent Davis]

Hey all.  I needed a little cash so I sold my brother my old computer which was a duron 750 w/512mb ram and took the one he had (which was half mine anyway).  It's a 350mhz P2 with 64mb of ram and gf2 mx.  I'll overclock if I can of course.  Been a while since I played mame, so I'm wondering what I can, or if its easier, can't run.  I love pretty much all games but will mostly be shooting for running neo geo and other '90s games.  I got my Dreamcast for more modern arcade fun.  So, what can I run?

[Sephroth57]

id suggest using an older version of MAME, maybe .36. ive never actually ran mame on a computer slower then like 600mhz so i couldnt really tell you what will run but im sure that can run a decent amount of older stuff. try it out and let us know

[ErikRuud]

I have run MAME on a 200mhz and a 233mhz system.  For most older games I had no trouble with mame .76 on these machines.  I only had to use .36 for some some older games like Asteroids (most of the vector games), Gorf, Wizard of Wor.

Obviously most games since 1985 don't run well on a system that slow.

[krick]

Last night I resurrected an ABIT BM6 motherboard that uses the good old Intel 440BX chipset.  It had the leaking cap problem and I replaced about 15 caps.
I've modified the board so it will run a 1.1GHz (non-tualatin) celermine processor.

I had planned on using it as the basis for my new MAME machine.

So I installed the 1.1GHz CPU, loaded it up with 256 megs of memory, a 40GB 7200RPM hard drive, a SB Audigy, a GeForce3 and installed Windows 98SE.

Using MAME 0.79 optimized for Pentium Pro, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 runs at a choppy 19 frames per second or less.  Complely unacceptable in my opinion.

On my primary computer running a P4 2.0GHz, 768 megs of memory, GeForce 4, integrated sound, Windows 2000, I get 50+ frames per second.   Like butta.

So unless anyone has ideas on how I can get better performance than 19FPS on a 1.1GHz, it looks like I'm in the market for some new hardware before I can finish my MAME machine.

...
Krick

[krick]

In case anyone is interested, I ran some benchmarks on my faster system using the batch files found here...
http://benchmark.mameworld.net/howto.html


Motherboard: Asus P4S533
CPU: Pentium 4 Northwood 1.6GHz (400MHz FSB) overclocked to 2.13GHz (533MHz FSB)
Memory: 768MB (512 + 128 + 128) PC2100 using 1:1 memory divider
Audio: onboard sound - CMI-8738
Video: GeForce 4 Ti 4200 128MB 4x AGP
Hard Drive: Western Digital WD800JB 80GB Special Edition 8MB cache 7200RPM


benchmarks:

ROM: umk3

MAME 0.79 - http://www.mame.net/downmain.html
FPS: 74.887929 (10000 frames)

MAME optimized for Pentium Pro - http://www.mame.net/downmain.html
FPS: 87.747528 (10000 frames)

FastMAME 0.79 - http://www.geoshock.com/
FPS: 89.729396 (10000 frames)

MAME 0.79 optimized for Pentium 4 - http://www.redump.de/mame.shtml
FPS: 90.669439 (10000 frames)

[Sephroth57]

nice info there krick, for even better gains you might try getting a sound blaster PCI card to take a little load off the processor.

i wonder if that pentium 4 optimized works for pentium 3 also? my setup im ordering for my cab is pentium 3

[krick]

Optimized for Pentium 4 won't work on a P3 but the FastMAME and Optimized for Pentium Pro will.

[paigeoliver]

Hmmm, I think perhaps I will do some benckmarks on my own to help lay rest to this issue.

I am thinking testing 10 different roms.

Pac-Man
Penguin Kun Wars
Asteroids
Star Wars
Street Fighter 2
Money Puzzle Exchanger
Marvel Vs. Capcom
STUN Runner
Mortal Kombat
Assault

on 8 different systems

P 100
p 200
p2 300
Cel 400
cel 533
Ath 650
P3 733
Ath 1200

using 7 different Mame versions
.36 final
.53
.60
.65
.70
.75
.79

Note, I am not going to bother with CHD games, because everyone has problems with those. I feel the other selected games are a good cross of eras, gametypes, and hardware platforms. I am not going to bother testing faster machines than 1200, because I don't own any faster machines, and there are very few games that see much benefit from faster than that anyway.

[Sephroth57]

that would be very helpful paige, i only have 2 machines , 1.6hz and 2.0 ghz so i cant really test the low end stuff myself hehe.

also maybe throw metal slug 3 in there? a lot of people like their comps to be able to play that game. its probably one of the newest neogeo games emulated

[paigeoliver]

that would be very helpful paige, i only have 2 machines , 1.6hz and 2.0 ghz so i cant really test the low end stuff myself hehe.

also maybe throw metal slug 3 in there? a lot of people like their comps to be able to play that game. its probably one of the newest neogeo games emulated

From what I have seen the Neo Geo games all run at the same speed provided you have enough RAM to load them, with a couple exceptions in the areas of some attract mode animations. I chose an older neo title because I figured it would be in more of the earlier Mame versions (I might indeed alter the final title list if certain games on certain platforms debuted in Mame in earlier versions than other titles).

[krick]

Hmmm, I think perhaps I will do some benckmarks on my own to help lay rest to this issue.

Great idea.

Whatever games you benchmark, make sure you use the batch files from here...

http://benchmark.mameworld.net/

...and be sure to email the results to bench@mameworld.net so they can be posted for everyone to see.

Maybe if they get enough data, someone can put it all in a searchable database on their website so you can search, sort, and filter it.

...
Krick

[Fuzzguitar]

Ok, recently I got a new PC AMD Athlon 2400+XP, 256 MB DDR, 32MB on board video, on board sound, 40 GB etc and
while I'm generally happy with the performance of my machine (fast boot up!) I would like to squeeze out a few more frames on some taxing games. For instance on puzzloop, mk3, sftm etc I'm not getting full frame rates. Normally obtain somewhere around 43-48/60 fps on average. I seem to remember my brother's AMD 2000+XP getting slightly higher results and it's a slower processor - although he does have 512MB (compared to my 256MB) and a Geforce 4 (compared to my on board video).

I know that video cards don't make a huge difference but I'm wondering will it help things if I put in a spare Geforce 2 400MX (64MB) I have? I can't afford more ram right now so what do you think?

Also, how about if I get FastMame or the build for Athlons? I understand Fastmame should crank up the fps but is it lower quality or hacked type emulation? I really like the official mame and surely what I have should give me full frame rates in the games mentioned.

Also, maybe more a software question but I'm here now...I haven't used mame in ages and have forgotten, is there a way (not mame -cc) to create an editable ini or cfg file for
each game? From memory Mame32 has an ini folder right?
If I could just switch off throttle on those games things would be a bit better (i've tried doing so in mame.cfg temporarily to better results). Plus I want to tweak my settings for vector games as they aren't performing well under D3d but I really like that on for everything else.

If anyone has some ideas please let me know ok!

[Sephroth57]

i have almost the exact setup you have except i have a old geforce2 card in my machine and i run UMK3 on full framerate easy. also i use an athlonxp optimized version of MAME with my MAMEWAH setup. which also adds some speed. try both of those and together it should give you that last 10FPS youre looking for

[Sylentwulf]

Just a suggestion for us AMD haters/athlon illiterates.... Can you make the main/first post more like this:

B-Type  Typical Specs -
Athlon XP 2000 + OR P3 1.8ghz


Simply put, I have no IDEA how an athlon stacks up to a pentium (the above looks equal to me?), but have no plans whatsoever in using any AMD parts in my mame computer, and I know if I dare to start a topic saying "what kind of CPU do I need to play every mame game?" I'm going to pointed to this thread immediately

[Sephroth57]

Just a suggestion for us AMD haters/athlon illiterates.... Can you make the main/first post more like this:

B-Type  Typical Specs -
Athlon XP 2000 + OR P3 1.8ghz


Simply put, I have no IDEA how an athlon stacks up to a pentium (the above looks equal to me?), but have no plans whatsoever in using any AMD parts in my mame computer, and I know if I dare to start a topic saying "what kind of CPU do I need to play every mame game?" I'm going to pointed to this thread immediately

good suggestion , Ill add this soon =)

[sirwoogie]

The funny thing about benchmarks is how varied they can be. Take for example, using the following benchmark line:

Code: [Select]

pacman -d3d  -norc -v -ftr 1000 -noafs -noswitchbpp -noswitchres -nothrottle -rdtsc -high_priority -skip_disclaimer -skip_gameinfo -noart -nomouse -nojoy -nogun -nosleep -d3dfilter 0 -d3dtexmanage -d3dprescale none
Yields Average FPS: 463.197490

But

Code: [Select]

pacman -nod3d  -norc -v -ftr 1000 -noafs -noswitchbpp -noswitchres -nothrottle -rdtsc -high_priority -skip_disclaimer -skip_gameinfo -noart -nomouse -nojoy -nogun -nosleep -d3dfilter 0 -d3dtexmanage -d3dprescale none
Yields Average FPS: 687.096515

The best performance to eek out is to enable Triple Buffering (-tb), this:

Yields Average FPS: 925.126927

And this was using the MAME32 (still my fastest runner, not even the specialized compiles go this fast) M.A.M.E. v0.82


HW:
AthlonXP 2100+
1G RAM
Gigabyte GA-7VAXP
Radeon 9600

[Gildersneeze]

Don't kill me if this isn't the kosher thing to do, being my first post and all, but it seems like bumping way old threads is acceptable (and I hate 5,000 repeat threads as much as anyone).

Here's the question:  I'm building a MAME cab (surprise!), and have gathered from the hundred or so threads I've read on the topic that having the latest, greatest video card doesn't matter as much as MAME is mostly CPU dependent.

However, most of those statements are from 2002 - 2003.  I'm curious as to what card to purchase nowadays, not so much in the "OMG HUGE GPU/VPU" aspect, but how much Video RAM should be on the card.  I'm wanting to be able to run pretty much everything that currently CAN run on MAME, particularly fighters, and I've heard that games like Killer Instinct, with the proper setup, can be run pretty well.

I currently have a video card I can use, but it's pretty friggin' old, and I'd like to know if it will "handle" things.  If it will, I'll be able to get two lightguns from Actlabs as well, if not, well, the video card is the way I can SEE this stuff, and I'll just have to wait on the lightguns (which I want to get in, of course, as I build the cab, not after.

Here's the list of computer parts that should be coming in tomorrow, and the card I've already got (I also already have a hard drive, CD-ROM drive, case, etc).

Motherboard: SIS655FX ASROCK P4S55FX RTL
Sound Card: SOUND BLASTER AUDIGY LS
CPU: P4/2.8GHz, 800M 478P/512K HT %
System Memory: 512MB Mushkin PC-3200/400MHz DDR SDRAM

The video card I currently have is the Leadtek Winfast GeForce 2 GTS 32MB DDR.

I've seen from some posts that a 64MB Video Card is the way to go if you want to run EVERYTHING (minus, of course, stuff like Cruis'n USA/Area51).

Is it worth the upgrade?