MAME PC CPU question.

[magus90]

Hello,

Have been out of the circle for a few years now. Was looking into building another MAME cab and was curious about which CPU to use for my needs?

-All classic 2d and 3d games(blitz, tekken being the main 2 for 3d) Maybe others i can't think of at the moment
-HLSL i believe is what i had before for shaders to make it look like a CRT with scanlines
-MAME only with Hyperspin

Would an I5-6500 be able to handle this no problem? I can get an older PC that has an I7-4790, but wasn't sure if it was overkill and since the PC is like 3 years older i would prefer the I5-6500 if it works just fine at 100% for my needs. My last PC worked fine for this that had an I5-650 and GT 730.

Full specs
I5-6500
16gb RAM
SSD
GT 1030

Thanks so much

[Alejo I]

That kind of hardware should absolutely crush it at Full HD, specially with a GT 1030 for 3D.

[magus90]

Thank you, i appreciate the advice. I just was getting confused with the clock speeds. Because i know MAME really only uses the base clock speed on a single core and doesn't care about multiple cores and such. So basically the fastest core speed is what matters. Which is tough to grasp as there are some I3's with faster speeds than I5's.

So the I5-6500 should be able to do all of these games at full speed, even with HLSL? Awesome.

[Yenome]

Mame does and has used multi cores for a while now

[schmerzkaufen]

Yah, it goes like this; the top speed is still what matters the most and what you should look at first (more GHz=better, that hasn't changed) but now an increasing number of emulated systems use multiple cores, like the Namco system** games among others that got an over 20% boost on multi-cores about two years ago (made a massive difference on my rig).
MAME also uses multiple cores when available for other things like dedicated audio and input drivers that are sometimes separate from the base emulated game system driver, which happens even for some 2D games. there's also more room for staying away of where Windows keep things the busiest. The benefits are not always pure game speed performance but could be elsewhere like stability and delay.
Well, at least this is sorta compiled what I've read, you can check the MAME official documentation under the performance chapter, it's made clear that this is a multi-cores emulator, but since they don't list which systems and cases specifically, not even a sampled selection to demonstrate (mamedev's eternal poor documentation and communication-explanation effort) it's expected that many users still stick to several years old information and are kinda perplexed  - when not flat out refusing to believe it matters at all - when they read about it.

TL;DR yeah your CPU will be good. 

[Howard_Casto]

Let's not mislead people.  Even mame devs will tell you that the speed of the cpu is by far most important.  The thing about the multi core support is it only makes a noticeable dent in games that aren't going to run 100% full speed anyway...…  games that, themselves had multiple cpus back in the day.     

[Yenome]

yeah devs have said it takes more cpu power to run even older games as the devs make mame more accurate. so if you have an i5 that is older and a current i5 newer i5 will perform better even with the same core speed.

[schmerzkaufen]

Let's not mislead people.  Even mame devs will tell you that the speed of the cpu is by far most important.

Which is exactly what I said...

The thing about the multi core support is it only makes a noticeable dent in games that aren't going to run 100% full speed anyway...…  games that, themselves had multiple cpus back in the day.   

What about Namco system22 that for me went from mostly unplayable to 100% playable after that update that made them run smooth on 4 cores ? (+20% performance is no joke)

yeah devs have said it takes more cpu power to run even older games as the devs make mame more accurate. so if you have an i5 that is older and a current i5 newer i5 will perform better even with the same core speed.

Yes yes yes, the CPU speed is what matters the most everyone inlcuding me says so, but you could find a recent quote from Haze on this very forum saying the ideal CPU for MAME is a 6+ cores, as fast as possible of course, but still a multi-core.

I hate being right when I say inprovements devs make remain largely ignored - and for a long time - if they don't themselves take the lead in advertising and demonstrating those at least a bit.