Mini itx

[Edgedamage]

Has anyone used a mini itx to run early 80's mame games?

[Witchboard]

That's what I plan on using in my cabinet.  I was going to make it for my big screen TV, but I can barely stand the pixelation of arcade games ported to PS2.  What specifically are you wanting to know.  My Mini-ITX is a left over from an upgrade I did to my wifes computer.  

[Edgedamage]

Well as far as I know the m1000 is great for dvd playback. And great for mp3's. As far as mame goes all I really care about is my diffrent versions of pac man and games like galaga. And williams games robotron/joust/stargate.

[Squid]

I tried this with one of the 800Mhz CPUs and found it more then adequate with the exception of Asteroids.  Is it possible that the vector games use more FPU then other games?  The VIA CPUs suck for FPU performance... bad.

[Edgedamage]

What version of mame were you using? Mame32 or dos mame?

[Witchboard]

I can't remember which one I have thrown in my closet.  I just figured if I've been playing on a Pentium 1 233 then this Mini-ITX shouldn't have a problem.  Then again, I've only been playing Neo-Geo games on my laptop and other games may require even more than the ITX can provide.  I'll just have to see how/what it handles and go from there.

[Brad Lee]

Id suggest using a video card instead of the onboard video. I had awful luck trying hardware stretching in Mame, and like was said above, Asteroids ran dog slow


I think youd be alright with a good pci tv-out card and 512ram, most of the classics should be good then

[Squid]

If you're striving for small size, a good MicroATX board and a cheap AMD CPU won't set you back much more then the mini-ITX, and it's only slightly bigger.  My main machine is an AMD 1700 that is overclocked by more then 60% (comes up as an AMD-2800 on boot).  I got one of those JIUHB labelled CPUs and overclocked the hell out of it.  Runs at around 48C too with normal cooling .  That'll run just about any game!

Info on AMD1700-JIUHB:
http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD01MzYmdXJsX2hpc3Rvcnk9LTI=

[MrDT]

If you're striving for small size, a good MicroATX board and a cheap AMD CPU won't set you back much more then the mini-ITX, and it's only slightly bigger.  My main machine is an AMD 1700 that is overclocked by more then 60% (comes up as an AMD-2800 on boot).  I got one of those JIUHB labelled CPUs and overclocked the hell out of it.  Runs at around 48C too with normal cooling .  That'll run just about any game!

Info on AMD1700-JIUHB:
http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD01MzYmdXJsX2hpc3Rvcnk9LTI=

<ot>
Did you get the JIUHB on purpose or was it pure blind luck? It's a shame that kind of thing doesn't happen more often... then again my 2500+ barton clocks well, and as soon as i get some higher quality ram i'll push it even further
</ot>

Anyway, I would agree on the MicroATX form factor. You've got a better upgrade path, plus the option of an agp slot and a couple of pci's as opposed to the standard one pci on a MiniITX board. I find MiniITX boards to be expensive for what they are, and only worth getting if size is the most important factor. Considering it's an arcade project, MicroATX should be small enough even for a 'penny-arcade'/bartop style project.

May I reccomend an integrated board if you really want to keep prices down. I bought the following when I built a machine for someone else, and it works fine, perfect specs for running the majority of (excluding last few years) mame games imo:
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=54450
850mhz duron, microATX, integrated graphics 8-32mb (select in BIOS), onboard sound, just add RAM If this isn't fast enough though, there are integrated boards with higher clock speeds. Just remember that the processor cannot be upgraded on these boards, but at these prices it doesn't matter!

[rampy]

Id suggest using a video card instead of the onboard video. I had awful luck trying hardware stretching in Mame, and like was said above, Asteroids ran dog slow


I think youd be alright with a good pci tv-out card and 512ram, most of the classics should be good then

FWIW, it's my understanding that not ALL onboard video is bad (just most)... like the nforce onboard video is decent.  The onboard video for the mini-itx VIA m1000 is supposed to be decent... The VT out is supposed to be good, the mpeg2 decoder has already been mentioned....

*shrug* I think if the original poster (hey edgedamage!)  wants to do some sort of multimedia home theater PC entertainment box.... sounds kinda like ApeXtreme... the m1000 is a little underpowered compared to it's intel/AMD bretheren but it's designed to be used in these types of media applications.

Although I personally would consider a shuttle or other flex-atx system, I'm a big fan of the m1000 feature set.

Worst case scenario if you went with the m1000, and it wasn't cutting it for certain older games, you could use an older version of mame or other emulator that runs faster.  Maybe we should ask planetjay as he has a m1000 to benchmark some MAME games fps's...

*shrug*

rampy

[Edgedamage]

Sorry for not making myself clear. My main goal for the m1000 is to make a PVR / dvd / mp3 player. And VERY light mame use. To be honest my mame collection including emu and front end with roms still leaves blank space on a cdr. I have seen a site where someone has used a lesser powered mini itx board to run NES games. Also I found a forum where someone was using the m1000 to run street fighter mame games all he did was use a older version of Direct-x and mame. I think with using older versions of mame and direct-x light maming is possible.

[Edgedamage]

Here's the post I found:
I am using mame32 v71. the games i play are Street fighter , outrun, and sonic 3d. Especially Sonic 3d requires more power but i still don't get any problem. There is no reason for this games to run slow. As original CPUs used were motorola 68000 and Zilog 80 and They are as slow as 10 mhz. So i dont simply understand. Also i never updated any driver. All drivers are the ones which came on cd. I was having the same problems as you when i was using 100% hardware acceleration but when i drop this to 50% or lower it solved my problem.

Let me give full information i have in dx diagnostic

Operating System Windos XP Profesional (5.1 build2600)
Processor VIA Nehemiah MMX 999mhz
Memory 480mb RAM
Page file 293mb used 448mb Available
Direct X version: Direct X 8.1



PS. Rampy I really like your new PVR how to site.