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Author Topic: R7 240 or R5 230?  (Read 3414 times)

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ZoOl007

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R7 240 or R5 230?
« on: January 19, 2020, 09:55:21 am »
Hi,

Can someone confirm if these cards work fine with groovymame? If both are fine, should I go for the fastest?
ASUS R7240-2GD3-L Radeon R7 240 2 GB GDDR3
or
ASUS Radeon R5 230-SL-1GD3-L 1GB GDDR3

Both are cheap and silent. I'm going to build a new pc and I want to add 2 extra video and sound cards for two scart tv's in a multi seat setup.

psakhis

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Re: R7 240 or R5 230?
« Reply #1 on: January 19, 2020, 12:17:08 pm »
Hi,

Two cards are compatible and R7 240 it's the fastest.




buttersoft

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Re: R7 240 or R5 230?
« Reply #2 on: January 19, 2020, 06:41:28 pm »
I'd go the R7 240. If both cards are the same price or close it's not a contest.

I'm going to build a new pc and I want to add 2 extra video and sound cards for two scart tv's in a multi seat setup.

I'm a bit hazy on some of this, but before you build a single PC have you worked out how you're going to split the focus and controls, and what to do about switchres? I'm sure a lot of these issues could be fixed by running some sort VM instances, but...

MAME and GM can only focus on one instance at once. If you try to run two instances of a driving game and network them only the one in focus will receive control inputs.

If you're running a dual-screen vs game in MAME, like a back-to-back fighting game, or Outrunners, you should be fine in this first regard, but you might have trouble with the video output, as switchres only works with one screen. Unless i've got that bit wrong, and because both screens are the same res, and running from the same instance of GM, it'll all work fine.

Other emulators like M2emu or teknoparrot, are probably going to be more forgiving about the first point, and shouldn't have issues with the latter. You might have problems getting them to open on the correct screen, but you can use something like Actualmultiplemonitors to move things around that if you have to.

Old PC LAN games like Grid or Outrun 2 C2C, and don't kid yourself that last is awesome, might not be possible as you won't get two instances to work cleanly, if at all. Again, instances in separate VM's might get around this. Might actually be better than two PC's, in fact.

So I guess the question is, what are you planning to run? Either way the best thing to do would be to build the single PC and test everything first, don't start running cables through walls or bolting a frame together until you have everything working.

EDIT: oh, and if you were thinking you can simply clone the displays i don't think you can, MAME won't let you. Certainly you didn't used to be able to. You could test this out as well, and if it fails, a SCART splitter would be a better bet.

« Last Edit: January 19, 2020, 10:26:29 pm by buttersoft »

SteelRush

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Re: R7 240 or R5 230?
« Reply #3 on: January 22, 2020, 11:22:26 am »
For what it is worth, there is a GDDR5 variant of the R7 240 that is faster.

The R5 220/230 is nice for a passively cooled device, but if you run anything other than GM, it will be a massive bottleneck.

punkysuen

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Re: R7 240 or R5 230?
« Reply #4 on: February 25, 2020, 08:09:16 am »
I am using R9 290 with active HDMI to VGA adapter, it works perfect.
You can have a true all-in-one gaming PC when you have a better GPU.
I can play 15KHz retro game on an old cabinet, and can easily switch to play Street Fighter V (Steam ver.) on a new cabinet, by just one computer.