ADvertised computer only $299CND....will it run all MAME games?

[marknetwork]

http://www.a-computers.ca/cold%20winter.htm

System Specs:
-AMD Duron 3100+ ( Athlon 1.6Ghz) CPU
-ECS L7VMM3 Mother Board
-256MB 333Mhz DDR RAM
-40GB 7200RPM ATA133 Hard Drive
-NO CD ROM & Floppy Drive
-Integrated Video (Shared)
-Integrated Sound
-Integrated 10/100 Lan
-17" ATX Case With 350W Power Supply (Front 2x USB Port)

$299.00CND

Would this be able to run the latest and greatest MAME games?  I would add a dvd-rom that i have here.

Thanks,
Mark

[Tiger-Heli]

http://www.a-computers.ca/cold%20winter.htm

System Specs:
-AMD Duron 3100+ ( Athlon 1.6Ghz) CPU
-ECS L7VMM3 Mother Board
-256MB 333Mhz DDR RAM
-40GB 7200RPM ATA133 Hard Drive
-NO CD ROM & Floppy Drive
-Integrated Video (Shared)
-Integrated Sound
-Integrated 10/100 Lan
-17" ATX Case With 350W Power Supply (Front 2x USB Port)

$299.00CND

Would this be able to run the latest and greatest MAME games?  I would add a dvd-rom that i have here.

Thanks,
Mark

An Athlon64 3.2 Ghz won't run Cruisin USA or Blitz.  That's a decent MAME system.  There's a whole thread about system requirements stickied to the top of the forum.

[marknetwork]

Hmm what kind of computers do most people use to run MAME?

Mark

[SirPoonga]

You will not beable to get a computer that can run all mame games at full speed, impossible right now.

BUT that should be an awesome machine.  I runa  PIII 500.  I run mostly classics so that's fine.  

[Tiger-Heli]

Hmm what kind of computers do most people use to run MAME?

Mark

As fast as they can afford!  My point is there's a diminishing return, but nothing is fast enough for everything.

I had a Pentium 1 200 for years.  It was fine for Pac-Man and 80's games, but not much else (I could play SkyShark at about Frameskip 8, (dropping 8 of every 11 frames, but it didn't work well).  I have upgraded to a Duron 850 and it is fine for any of the game I play, but I don't do a lot of the MK series, or the other intensive games.

Something like an XP1600 will play the overwhelming majority of the games just fine, but there are the two or three I mentioned that are unplayable on any machine.  And the games the devs are working on now will be even slower, so . . .

[marknetwork]

Oh okay I understand now! I thought there was a standard to play all the games but if most people don't play the newer games on their computers then I'm happy with that.

So this $299 computer would have no problem running the most popular games?  I dont expect to play house of the dead 2 or stuff like that...or is it possible play those kind?

I was thinking of stuff from like 5 years ago and older.  Right now I have a P2 and it can't play any really decent games.

[marknetwork]

Is an AMD 1.6ghz computer faster than a P3 500Mhz?

[Tiger-Heli]

Is an AMD 1.6ghz computer faster than a P3 500Mhz?

More than you can imagine!!!!

Let me put it this way, I've never heard the Duron rated as a 3100, but what that means is AMD thinks it's equivalent to an Athlon (original) running at 3.1 Ghz.  But what they really mean is it's comparable to a P4 running at 3.1 Ghz.  Actually those are XP numbering and I think the Duron specs are maybe saying it's comparable to a celeron at 3.1 Ghz.

Either way, the XP is faster than the Duron, so let's assume the Duron 1.6 is comparable to an XP at 1.4 Ghz, that's still somewhere around an XP1600 or 1700, so you're comparing at least a P3 500 to a P4 1.6 Ghz, and those are conservative figures.

[marknetwork]

Wow you definitely know your stuff!  What I meant was the athlon 1.6Ghz system...is that better than P3 500mhz?

[Pete Harcoff]

Yes, a 1.6 GHz (1.6 GHz = 1600 MHz) athlon will be several times faster than a P3 500 MHz.

[SNAAAKE]

You gonna have problem with onboard video,doing full screen might be tricky.Make sure it has an AGP slot then get a video card.It should run 90% of the games at 100%,60fps.

Nothing relly runs EVERY single game perfect.Games like cruisn't usa will never work on anything.But $300 cdn for the setup is fair.

WTF is up with "no cd rom"  
How am I supposed to install anything without a cdrom

[marknetwork]

Yeah I have a separate video card I will be using.  Cd-roms drives are cheap enough that one can be added easily.

Mark

[Edgedamage]

I just picked up a ECS L7VMM3 MB with PRO 2800A+ CPU onboard for $130CDN

I am planing on using it for my cocktail cab for vertical games.

[paigeoliver]

I have never found much difference in emulation between a real video card and onboard video. There will be very little framerate difference if any.

Either way it is 2D and thus would not in anyway take advantage of the AGP bus anyway. The advantage of an AGP video card is in 3D games where it can do fast transfers of textures from system memory to video memory. 2D games don't do this, Mame doesn't do this.

Basically Mame is not video card dependent at all.

[Tiger-Heli]

Yes, a 1.6 GHz (1.6 GHz = 1600 MHz) athlon will be several times faster than a P3 500 MHz.

Like Pete says, just the clock speeds are more than triple between the two machines.  I'm pretty sure a Duron is faster than a P3 at identical clock speeds, so yeah, it should be more than 3 times as fast.

[Tiger-Heli]

I have never found much difference in emulation between a real video card and onboard video. There will be very little framerate difference if any.

Either way it is 2D and thus would not in anyway take advantage of the AGP bus anyway. The advantage of an AGP video card is in 3D games where it can do fast transfers of textures from system memory to video memory. 2D games don't do this, Mame doesn't do this.

Basically Mame is not video card dependent at all.

Absoulutely agree.

I've used my current computer with a 4M Rendition Verite PCI card, a 32M Radeon 7000 AGP, and a 128M FX5200 AGP.

If all I used the computer for was MAME, I would probably stick the 4M card back in, 2D performance was sharper, and video was not noticeably slower.

[nighthawk2099]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the reasoning behind using a video card instead of onboard was so the memory wasn't being shared and MAME had full use of it ?  Not sure if that would make a difference on a system with 1gig of memory.  Please school me.  

[Tiger-Heli]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the reasoning behind using a video card instead of onboard was so the memory wasn't being shared and MAME had full use of it ?  Not sure if that would make a difference on a system with 1gig of memory.  Please school me.  

That's exactly the reason, and the system in question has 256M of memory.  However, you can set the amount of video memory used by the system, and for MAME use, I would set it pretty low.  Say 16M of Video and 240M of RAM, Mame should run very well.