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

[elvis]

As for the processor itself, is there any games that a 4200+ single/dual core could not run well?

1) There are roughly a dozen games in MAME that will not run at full speed for quite some time yet (people are estimating 6GHz+ needed for these, due to the way they work).  Your choices there are to use other non-MAME emulators, or play console ports (or simply to not play them - really, would anyone with half a brain actually play "Prop Cycle" on MAME?).  You need to ask yourself if it's worth spending an extra $1000 on your system just to make 4 extra games playable?  Honestly, you could play them cheaper (and more legally) on a console port, or on original gameboard hardware.

2) An Athlon64 4200+ X2 is a dual-core unit with a real clockspeed of 2.2GHz, and 640KB of L2 cache shared between two processors.  The Athlon64 4000+ is a single core CPU with a real clockspeed of 2.4GHz, and 1MB (1024KB) of dedicated L2 cache.  It is cheaper than a 4200+ X2, and will run MAME substantially faster.

Definitely buy an X2 dual-core for day to day computing and casual MAME play.  If you are building a dedicated MAME box, go for the faster/cheaper single core solution.

Check out John IV's mame benchmarking page.  Remember that most games run at 60FPS, so anything getting less will not be running at full speed (take note of Gauntlet Legends running at 19FPS on a 3700+):
http://mame32qa.classicgaming.gamespy.com/Bench.htm

I should note that this sort of thing is contained in the MAME FAQ.  It might pay for folks to read it first, and ask questions second?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Woo! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! That's rich.

Sorry... looks like I was expecting too much of people again.  Silly me.

[Silverwind]

I should note that this sort of thing is contained in the MAME FAQ.  It might pay for folks to read it first, and ask questions second?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Woo! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! That's rich.

Sorry... looks like I was expecting too much of people again.  Silly me.

I did read first and ask questions second, smarty pants.

After all you would think a thread titled Topic: The "What PC do I need to run MAME?" Official FAQ would be the right place to look.

[elvis]

I did read first and ask questions second, smarty pants.

After all you would think a thread titled Topic: The "What PC do I need to run MAME?" Official FAQ would be the right place to look.

That was not directed at you, but the other few dozen posts that definitely ARE covered in the MAME FAQ in detail.

And no, this is not the "official" FAQ.  The only people who can say whether an FAQ about MAME is official or not is the MAME authors.  Anything else is unofficial until otherwise told.  Until then, anything "official" is limited to www.mame.net , so check out their docs and FAQs for some great technical detail on their software.

[Silverwind]

I ended up buying an opteron 148.  It is single core 2.2ghz, but supposed to OC well.

[my58vw]

Currently (Oct 06) You can but packages of an Athlon 3400+ Single Core and MB for 100 - 110 + shipping. I can run 99% at 60 FPS...

[kelemvor]

Has anyone actually done any benchmarks with Mame?  Pick certain ROMs and certain CPUs and certain versions of Mame and just do some comparisons and post the Frame rates and such?  I'd love to see something like that.

[rockin_rick]

Hi,

Did you read this thread?     Post 120, about five up has a link to such a site.

Rick

[rockin_rick]

Here's another -

http://benchmark.mameworld.net/

Rick

[Shieldwolf]

Most pc building around here is based on mame, but if I want to run newer emulators and nulldc, stepmania, guitar zero, etc can I get by with somthing like this

AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton 1.833GHz Socket A Processor Model AXDA2500BOX
Antec TRUE330 330W ATX Power Supply
MSI K7N2 Delta-L 462(A) NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 ATX AMD Motherboard
1gb of ram

I don't mind doing an upgrade but I'm can't blow a ton of money.
$500 or less.

[Expressline99]

Its interesting to see there isn't any talk about current CPU's...needed for current roms.

[taz-nz]

Its interesting to see there isn't any talk about current CPU's...needed for current roms.

This thread is all but dead, totally out of date for the current state of MAME, see my thread on MAME preformance on Core 2 Duo's for up to date info.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=72776.0

[Expressline99]

Its interesting to see there isn't any talk about current CPU's...needed for current roms.

This thread is all but dead, totally out of date for the current state of MAME, see my thread on MAME preformance on Core 2 Duo's for up to date info.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=72776.0

Great thanks will move over there.

[shawnmcpike]

**********MY FIRST POST********
ANSWERS TO WHAT I AM LOOKING FOR
AND
QUESTIONS ABOUT WHAT CPU/Processor to begin with?

So there are a lot of posts in this thread....

1. I am a guy who has played the MAME  emulator on my pc for years and now am going to take the plunge and build out a MAME cabinet

2. I simply want the best possible setup, that is futureproofed so i can reasonably expect it to run the new stuff while realizing the reason that I have MAME is because of the 80s classics like galaga, centipede, defender, guantlet, and dragons lalr. If it can also run MK great. if not, MK is not why i am building theis system, it is Pac-Man, etc and the fact that whether on a computer, or iPad ---- nothing feels as good as jetking the stick and mashing buttons on a full-size arcade cabinet.

3. I want it to play all MAMEs, and preferably my ATARI 2600 and Nintendo (mainly for Super Mario), because it is all about the classics games and i want to get the flicker and the CRT resolution lines in my finished product.

4. I am not going to use this computer for anything other than MAMEs.

5. Cost isnt a hindrance to me  - this is a  fun project to build and i will do it as slow as needed. BUT at the same time, if a $50 athlon processor will do, i'll gladly put that extra money i save into my Pinball machine project.

6. ONE difference though is that i am building a 2 screen Cabinet (imagine two cabinets turned 45 degrees away from each other but connected in the same (albeit bigger it actually wont look bad sitting up against a wall. oh yeah and so the LEFT SCREEN will have a VERTICAL CRT (Pac-Man, Qbert, Sinistar, etc) etc while  the RIGHT SCREEN will be HORIZONTAL (Defender, Street Fighter, etc). SO knowing this....

7. Can this be done with one CPU, and then two partitions (one dedicated to each side so i don't have to even see the HORIZONTAL MAMEs from the VERTICAL MAMEs side and vice versa.  I'm hoping there is a way that I can have two sound and two video cards and pump the pertinent audio/video to that side. Plus then I want to have my X-Controls controllers available on each side so essentially Pac-Man and Defender could be played simultaneously and you would see, nor hear, nor experience any blips, drips or glitches in game play. IF THIS IS NOT possible, i will just build a separate setup for each side.

8. Is there a preferred CPU speed that they were intended to be viewed (in other words, is there a CPU that would be TOO FAST to use? Or what is the best CPU featurewise? AND, if speed  needs to be within a certain range to achieve a perfect replication of the arcade experience, then are there any ways to turn down the clock speed of the computer? I seem to recall a computer i once had years ago having a "turbo button" on the front of the case which turned it from 10mhz to 15.  Any of you have that???


ONCE I GET THIS ANSWERED, WE'LL MOVE ON TO Mobo and Memory

[Peabo]

I have an I3 2120 that will run MK3 without issues.  MK4, not.  My I7-2600k will run everything just fine.  Mame doesn't really use the video card, so that's not a factor for you.  I would suggest an I7-2600k based machine.  You could run both monitors/control panels from 1 machine using VM's, but you'd need more expensive hardware than running 2 separate systems.  Not to mention the complicated setup you'd have to configure. 

I'd run an I3 system for the vertical screen and a more powerful I7 setup for the horizontal, i'm assuming MK3-4, KI will be played on the horizontal screen here.  You could get by with older core2duo's or AMD's, but the 1st/2nd gen I3 and I7's are really cheap.  Not to mention that they are both overkill for 90% of Mame games.

[Malenko]

words

2.I was playing MK on an old P4 2.4 ages ago, any modern CPU will run all the games you mentioned just fine. Check TKWarrior's FS thread, he has i5 desktops for like $150 shipped

3. so are you hooking it up to a CRT or going to use HLSL (or a SLG) on a LCD?

5. see #1

6. 2 cabinets or one with a rotating display is a better option.

8. No CPU can be too fast.

[Yenome]

Yea if your building a pc just for mame newegg be having some decent deals on i3/i5 barebones under 400 you could have a full mame computer. the brains of my arcade cab slowly get upgrades as i upgrade the other systems. Mk4 is still unplayable in mame. (20-40% on my i5-4690k during a fight) Ki and the rest of the Mk have been fully playable for years. if you really want to get best performance use this site https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html benchmark for single core performance then buy and build around that cpu. If you plan on using opengl or hlsl for overlays you will want a dedicated GPU.

[JoeStrout]

OK, this thread hasn't been updated since 2015.  A lot has changed since then.  What's a good PC (or Android TV box) to use now?

I was thinking about this Super Console X Pro, which is an Android TV but apparently powerful enough to run even things like TMNT smoothly.  And it comes with tons of emulators and games preinstalled, which is good for me, since I don't have a ton of time to put into this hobby.  But I don't know whether my USB controller interface (which emulates a keyboard) will work with it.

I'd also be happy to buy a small Windows box, if y'all think that works better.  I would like to be able to run Unity apps (though not Unity itself) on it, since I have a couple custom arcade games and may want to write more.

So.  When you have <$300 to spend, and want to be able to run things like TMNT, X-Men, maybe even Gauntlet Legends, what would you suggest in 2021?

[Phreakwars]

@ <$300 I would go with a Ryzen 3 3200G or 3200GE, if you wanna save more, an Athlon 3000 works absolutely fine. Motherboard go with an ASUS Prime A320M-K, basic AM4 board, has everything you need and none of the costly extras you don't, memory you want a minimum 8 gigs. Now keep in mind, at the moment, tariffs and chip shortages are impacting the market so prices are higher then normal. The board is normally like $58, the CPU (Athlon) normally runs about $50, then say another $50 for ram, spend maybe another $30 or 40 on a M.2 or SATA SSD, and you have yourself a very cheap and modern mame machine. If you wanna go used, I'd look for something in the socket 1155 range, great performers when it comes to mame especially when paired with an i5-3570 or i7-3770.

[Malenko]

find an old 3rd or 4th gen i-5 with as much ram as you can put in it, good luck finding a GPU though, I saw 1030s going for $150 and they arent worth $50.

[BadMouth]

"Official FAQ" 

[nitrogen_widget]

find an old 3rd or 4th gen i-5 with as much ram as you can put in it, good luck finding a GPU though, I saw 1030s going for $150 and they arent worth $50.

bought a core2duo the other day with 2gb of ram for $15 at thrift store.
I tossed an nvidia 9400 GT i had in a drawer in there because it was low profile and I was able to run a crt shader with libretro 2003 at almost 60fps on a 1280x1024.

if i dropped down to mame4all 37b i hit 60 fps with the shader.

or it ran just fine with the onboard graphics without a shader.

this was with MXLinux with minimal desktop that uses under 200mb at boot though.
it came with Vista which was then upgraded to win 7.
either way i can't imagine trying to run that pc with that little ram on either OS.

[JoeStrout]

Thanks for the recommendations!  But let's just imagine, for the sake of argument, that I'm a Mac user little experience in assembling PCs and (to a lesser extent) installing operating systems, and rather lacking in the time and desire to learn how.  Are there any good off-the-shelf ready-to-run options (apart perhaps from installing MAME, which I'm happy to do) on a <$300 budget?  (Setting that as the ceiling mainly because of that Super Console X, which is $250 and comes with everything preinstalled, so it doesn't make sense for me to spend a lot more unless it's way better in some way.)

[Phreakwars]

find an old 3rd or 4th gen i-5 with as much ram as you can put in it, good luck finding a GPU though, I saw 1030s going for $150 and they arent worth $50.

Yeppers. Those damn GPU prices will kill ya!! Lucky for me I have a nice horde of brand new ones for upcoming YouTube videos to play with, might even have a GT 1030 I'd be willing to part with at retail price not over inflated internet price. But, yeah, until those prices start dropping even a GT-1030 is ridiculous. My prediction is for a short while, you'll be seeing a surge of Ryzen G series based arcade and PC builds as gamers start getting frustrated with the market but still wanna get their game on. I know lower end old cards like the GTX 960 even, are making a slight resurgence. But getting back on topic (sorry), today's Ryzen APU's just slaughter in MAME and other emulators. Might not pull 100fps in more modern games, but for emulation, gimme a G series Ryzen chip any day when it comes to using onboard graphics. A super Console X (Glorified Android TV), can't even come close to the smoothness and speed.

[Raktageno]

An upside to recent GPU difficulties is that crypto miners are having to buy bundles to get what they're after, so it's likely we'll be seeing the remainders of these bundles (CPUs, motherboards, SSDs) being poured onto places like eBay soon according to this article.

[Zebidee]

This thread is now old enough to vote and drink alcohol in some countries! That deserves a celebration 

[slickam]

An upside to recent GPU difficulties is that crypto miners are having to buy bundles to get what they're after, so it's likely we'll be seeing the remainders of these bundles (CPUs, motherboards, SSDs) being poured onto places like eBay soon according to this article.

Probably not the SSDs because of Chia mining.

[bobbyb13]

This thread is now old enough to vote and drink alcohol in some countries! That deserves a celebration 

I'll drink to that!

I would make it a double if there was a clear answer to this question