Hardware recommendation for arcade games? I get a lot of failures currently...

[mickael28]

Hi guys,

I am using a mini-PC with an integrated Intel HD 530 card and I'm having loads of problems loading arcade games, either directly, with Teknoparrot or All Game Loader, eg:
* Outrun 2 - white screen
* Golden Gun - crashes after a couple of seconds
* Heat Dead - doesn't launch
* Elevator Action - crashes before starting
* and many many others...

I don't play the new games which require a powerful PC, so I was wondering if you know what should I look for so that this type of arcade games are compatible without needing to get something too powerful? ie, like some minimum specs regarding:
* graphics card (model, GB, speed, etc)
* processor
* RAM
* anything else?

Many thanks...

[Titchgamer]

Those are actually quite new and demanding games so yes you will need a reasonable spec to play them I am afraid.

[mickael28]

Those are actually quite new and demanding games so yes you will need a reasonable spec to play them I am afraid.

I checked the original specs of some of those games, and the original machine was not powerful at all, so I thought that just to play those, one wouldn't need much?

Eg, the specs of the Sega Lindbergh (http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=731), which played After Burner Climax, Initial D 4+5, Outrun 2:
* CPU : Intel Pentium 4 3.0G HT (800Mhz FSB - 1MB L2 Cache)
* GFX : NVIDIA GeForce 6 Series GPU
* GFX Memory : 256MB (256 bit GDDR3)

The Sega RingWide system (http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=911), which played Operation Ghost, Golden Gun, Lets Go Island, similar:

HARDWARE DESCRIPTION
* CPU : Intel Celeron 440 @ 2 GHz
* Graphics : Integrated “AMD GPU” with 128MB of GDDR3 RAM, supports Shader Model 4.0 and supports 2x 1920×1200 screens
* Audio : 5.1 ch HD Audio
* RAM : 1GB of DDR2 PC5300 RAM

I thought the current arcade games running on PC were running similar to a native mode (without much effort put on top by the PC to make them play). In my case, the problem is that they don't even launch a lot of them mainly due to the lack of Nvidia card I think. The ones that I manage to launch run really fine (even without a dedicated graphics card).

What is your view regarding them? ie, why would one need much higher specs than the original systems above?

[Titchgamer]

It takes more resources to emulate hardware than it did to play them originally.

I have personally found tekno parrot to be a fussy thing at the best of times.
I could get it to run some games on my laptop but hardly any on my cabinet pc which is higher spec.

Elevator action wont run on either but will run on my ms’s laptop which is a bit newer than both.

The only game out of your list I have had no issues with was out run.

Just for reference my cab pc is a 2.4 quadcore with 2x 512mb radeons in x-fire and 8gb corsair ram.

[mickael28]

It takes more resources to emulate hardware than it did to play them originally.

I have personally found tekno parrot to be a fussy thing at the best of times.
I could get it to run some games on my laptop but hardly any on my cabinet pc which is higher spec.

Elevator action wont run on either but will run on my ms’s laptop which is a bit newer than both.

The only game out of your list I have had no issues with was out run.

Just for reference my cab pc is a 2.4 quadcore with 2x 512mb radeons in x-fire and 8gb corsair ram.

Yeah, I noticed on my mini-PC that when there's an emulator in the middle the resources are going to be pretty high, although I thought Teknoparrot was not an emulator as such. Not sure if that's correct though, I thought that Teknoparrot (or All Game Loader) was more like a launcher allowing you to run those arcade games but without needing big specs for it.

Similar to what you're experiencing in your cab PC, that some games don't launch regarless of the specs, which seems to imply that it's more a problem with incompatibilities of hardware components I guess.

I heard that most of the games work with Nvidia cards, but have problems with AMDs (I think Radeon is this model) or built-in graphic cards (like the Intel HD series)...

It'd be good if some of our arcade enthusiasts put their specs if they manage to launch all/most of them, at least so we know for reference what to research.

[Malenko]

your GPU is your big bottleneck , you need a better video card. I'd suggest at least a GTS450 but get the best one you can afford

[mickael28]

your GPU is your big bottleneck , you need a better video card. I'd suggest at least a GTS450 but get the best one you can afford

Problem is that my mini-PC doesn't support dedicated video cards (it doesn't have any slot), so I'd need to buy another tower just for these kind of games. But I didn't want to invest too much as I don't use it a lot anyway. But it'd be good that when I feel like trying some... they work.

I saw quite a lot old specs on ebay (Intel Core Duo I think it was called), but not sure if that'd be enough or better to aim for an i3/i5 at least.

Never heard of the GTS models, I'll check tomorrow how they compare to the GTX I've heard about...

[bigster]

I don't know what kind of mini pc you have but there are low profile graphics cards for them.  I had a project w a gigabyte brix in a GameCube case.  It was powerful w a nice gpu.  Do you have open slots on your mini pc?

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[mickael28]

I don't know what kind of mini pc you have but there are low profile graphics cards for them.  I had a project w a gigabyte brix in a GameCube case.  It was powerful w a nice gpu.  Do you have open slots on your mini pc?

No, nothing. It's an HP EliteDesk 800 G2 mini (http://www.itpro.co.uk/desktop-pcs/26244/hp-elitedesk-800-g2-mini-review), I bought it not long ago mainly for work (because I needed 32GB in a small case) and I didn't check anything regarding gaming, and soon after I discovered all the supported arcade games, so I was thinking about getting something specific for this.

But as all these things give problems and have a lot of incompatibilities, I didn't want to spend too much and then find out that a lot of games are still giving problems...

[Titchgamer]

I suspect you are right about it being more compatibility based than resource based.

A decent core 2 duo should be up to the task though, my processor is the same gen but a quad which I dont think is utilised anyway.

You have prob allready tried this but I had some luck with a few of the games running them in compatibility mode.

[mickael28]

You have prob allready tried this but I had some luck with a few of the games running them in compatibility mode.

I had not tried that, it didn't occur to me that that could fix some of them.

Can you remember what kind of options you change to give them a go? I just tried with Win7 compatibility mode and it crashed some games earlier than before touching it :S