Hardware questions on multi fighter cab

[jmcginley]

I have a Street Fighter 2 cabinet right now. I'm looking into running MAME instead of the Champion Edition pcb and making it a multi-fighter cabinet. The hope is to run CPS I - III, MK1 - UMK3, Tekken 1 - Tekken 5, Virtua Fighter 1 - 4 and anything else along those lines that I'm overlooking at the moment. I will be using Hyperspin as the frontend. Here are my questions:


1) I have a standard resolution monitor in the cab now. If I'm going to do this, I know I'll have to make a sacrifice either on the older games or the newer games. Should I swap it out for a VGA monitor so the new games look better? Or stick with the standard res monitor so the older games look better? I guess this one is subjective, but any thoughtful insight would be appreciated.


2) I'm also hoping to use GroovyMAME 171. This means I'll need to use a newer rom set. I know some of these newer games require a lot of processing power with more recent rom sets, so what kind of PC specs would I be looking at if this is the case? Just anything Intel in the 3.5 range? Or do I need more?


3) Since GroovyMAME requires a specific type of graphics card, I just want to confirm if the newer games I've referenced would benefit from a better graphics card in any particular way that I'd need to be aware of. GroovyMAME allows for use of AMD HD 5000/6000/7000, so I don't think that will be an issue. I know it's all about the cpu clock speed, so I don't think it's going to matter what graphics card I use, but I just want to confirm that.

[Mike A]

Sell your street fighter cab. Find a garbage cab to turn into a multifighter. Wrecking a perfectly good cab is wasteful.

[jmcginley]

Sell your street fighter cab. Find a garbage cab to turn into a multifighter. Wrecking a perfectly good cab is wasteful.

Short answer: No.


Long answer: I'm not changing a single thing with the cab. I'm unplugging the current jamma pcb and plugging in a j-pac to the existing jamma harness. Would you tell someone who swaps a pcb out of their jamma cab to get rid of that cab and buy a garbage cab? I don't understand how this can possibly be seen as wrecking the cab when no wire will be cut, no hole will be drilled, no artwork replaced etc - please explain yourself and how you think it's "wrecking" a perfectly working cab? It's a SFII cab stealthily running MAME.

If you want to provide some insight on the questions I've asked that would be very much appreciated.

[Mike A]

I am not sure how many of those games are VGA, you could get a multi sync CRT.
When you talked about pulling the CRT it sounded like the beginning of a hack job. I apologize for jumping the gun.

[jmcginley]

I am not sure how many of those games are VGA, you could get a multi sync CRT.
When you talked about pulling the CRT it sounded like the beginning of a hack job. I apologize for jumping the gun.

No worries man. I kind of jumped down your throat lol. I'm not thrilled at the idea of swapping the monitor for a VGA. I saw some videos of SFIII on a standard res monitor and I think it looks just fine.

[paigeoliver]

Here is the thing about fighters. It is really hard to find anyone who knows how to play anything that isn't Street Fighter 2 or Mortal Kombat. You will find given the choice that your guests will always choose those two games. Given the choice of Mortal Kombat with the wrong layout or Street Fighter 2 they will probably almost always pick Street Fighter 2.

You already have Street Fighter 2.

Source? 15 years of owning games and having guests.

[Mike A]

Since you already have a standard res monitor you should probably stick with that. I have one with an arcadeVGA card and it works great. Nice and easy.

[burn_654]

crt_emudriver allows a 480i interlaced mode on a standard res monitor. While this may not look the -best- for the most modern stuff, it's not all that bad. Street Fighter IV and Street Fighter x Tekken look great on it (pc versions can run in 640x480) I believe Street Fighter V can as well. Basically imo anything up to ps2 and early ps3/360 stuff will probably look decent to you if you gamed a lot with a crt - I used a crt for most of my 360's life. I run Tatsunoko vs Capcom on it regularly with Dolphin when the original game was only 480i or 480p anyway.

My choice was that I wanted the older games to look perfect and a slight sacrifice for newer stuff so it suits me fine. I'm interested to see how SFV goes. At least with the lower resolutions for pc games you usually have some room performance-wise to turn up details.

What versions of Tekken IV-V and Virtua Fighter IV are you planning on running? I can tell you you're not going to have a lot of happiness with Mame for those for some time, keep console versions in mind if your pc can emulate them. I may look and see how Tekken Tag works with pcsx2 for my cab...

[jmcginley]

Thanks for the info! I did find out pretty quickly that the newest versions of SF, Tekken, and Virtua Fighter are basically unplayable on this PC through emulation. I agree with the sacrifice being on the newer games. I played some SF4 and thought it looked fine. My kids love Tekken because they love to fight as animals lol. Thanks for the tip about usfor by console emulation. I'll give that a shot and see if it works out any better. My PC is running a Core2Duo at like 2.4ghz, so it's not the greatest with newer rom sets in MAME.

crt_emudriver allows a 480i interlaced mode on a standard res monitor. While this may not look the -best- for the most modern stuff, it's not all that bad. Street Fighter IV and Street Fighter x Tekken look great on it (pc versions can run in 640x480) I believe Street Fighter V can as well. Basically imo anything up to ps2 and early ps3/360 stuff will probably look decent to you if you gamed a lot with a crt - I used a crt for most of my 360's life. I run Tatsunoko vs Capcom on it regularly with Dolphin when the original game was only 480i or 480p anyway.

My choice was that I wanted the older games to look perfect and a slight sacrifice for newer stuff so it suits me fine. I'm interested to see how SFV goes. At least with the lower resolutions for pc games you usually have some room performance-wise to turn up details.

What versions of Tekken IV-V and Virtua Fighter IV are you planning on running? I can tell you you're not going to have a lot of happiness with Mame for those for some time, keep console versions in mind if your pc can emulate them. I may look and see how Tekken Tag works with pcsx2 for my cab...

[JDFan]

My PC is running a Core2Duo at like 2.4ghz, so it's not the greatest with newer rom sets in MAME.

I'd swap out the CPU if it can support the higher clocked dual cores -- figure a 3.16Ghz. e8500 can be had for about $5 shipped and is a drop in replacement in most cases - ie. - ( http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lot-of-1-Intel-Core-2-Duo-E8500-3-16GHz-Dual-Core-Desktop-Processor-SLB9K-/332072010482?hash=item4d5108c2f2:g:0RwAAOSwA3dYXtmU ) and would probably help improve things