What are the Minimum PC Hardware requirements for MAME 32

[Postalp]

In the process of building my 1st rig.

What is the Minimum Hardware Requirements for running any game (without a hiccup) on MAME 32 through Windows XP?

I have heard at least 750MHz with 256MB of Memory is Ideal.

[pointdablame]

http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=14155

It's in the sticky up top which advises new people to read it first  Do a search next time, this comes up all the time.

And to answer your question a bit myself: No computer today will run "every" game without a hiccup. It's impossible.  There are games in MAME that won't run full speed on a 4ghz system.

[Apollo]

MAME32 is poos, use windows command line MAME and a FE like Mamewah.

[StephenH]

Depends on the games you want to play.  750Mhz or more will probably run early 80s to Early 90s games with 8-bit and/orsingle 16 bit processors games OK.  Games with many processors or 32 bit CPUs will need much more, probably at least 2Ghz.   There are some games in which a pentium 4 at 3.4GHZ isn't enough to run at full speed.

As for RAM, you can run many games with 128MB or less.  256MB - 384MB is needed for many newer games.

[danny_galaga]

my machine now is an amd athlon 2000xp running windows 98se and mame 32. 256 ram. but i first tested it with my old 400mhz machine. it ran the early 80s games fine with mame32 and win98se up to about 85 or so. but as stated by others games that had more than one processor need a lot more speed. For instance S.T.U.N runner is from 1989 but even with my athlon 2000 is hopelessly slow. It all depends what games you want to play. Ive set myself a limit to 1991 and everything I have except stun runner works fine on the athlon. Actually just checked it on my pc which is a 2.6gig Pentium and stun runner works fine. But still like I say it all depends what games you want to play. I would disagree about mame32 being poo. It works fine for me. And im sure im not the only one around who wouldn

[hulkster]

MAME32 is poos, use windows command line MAME and a FE like Mamewah.

mame32 is for people who dont want to memorize command line.  if you already know commandline then by all means get regular mame, but if you just want to point and click using the mouse for setup and then run a FE over it just like Mame, then use mame32 like a normal person.

[tep0583]

Nothing wrong with Mame32, although it does add some overhead, which might not be desirable in slower machines.

The rig I'm using as my "classics" cab and as a development platform for my later cabs does have a P-III 450MHz in it. I have found that using command-line Mame and Mamewah give me better overall performance, while still allowing me to use Win98 as the underlying OS. (I suppose I could use DOS for even better performance, but I really don't need more)

With a good frond-end, you shouldn't have to memorize anything from the command-line.

If you have the horsepower to spare, Mame32 sould run just fine, with the added bonus of doing pretty much anything you need it to, right out of the "box". I do all of my ROM testing on my desktop machine, using Mame32.

[RayB]

Umm STUN Runner is a 3D game, as such its 3D hardware isn't emulated all that great. So don't judge your rig based on that game (and other 3D games of the era).

[danny_galaga]

Umm STUN Runner is a 3D game, as such its 3D hardware isn't emulated all that great. So don't judge your rig based on that game (and other 3D games of the era).

good point. i guess what i was saying is that its not the year alone that you can gauge the machine on..

[Apollo]

WTF? You don't need any more skills to use windows command line MAME than you do to use MAME32!
I'm a total PC lamer and I had no probem setting it up. I only said MAME32 was poos because of the GUI which bites.

[danny_galaga]

id say youre not such a pc lamer then! honestly, no one has ever said im a dummy yet when i looked at what you had to do to set up mame i was real glad there was mame32...
the GUI is a little boring i must admit, but how long do you spend looking at that?

[Postalp]

I see this thread is getting off topic.

Although I am new at building a cabinet, I am not new to emulation.

I appreciate the input regarding using MAME-Dos to draw less power, but I'm sticking with MAME 32, because I am in the process of Hacking and Tailoring the GUI to take on the theme of my cabinet.

On another note, I ended up aquiring a stick of 512 MB of Kingston Hyper-X Memory and a MB that supports the Athlon XP series for FREE! So with the saved cash I'm going with a Athlon XP 2000.

[danny_galaga]

So with the saved cash I'm going with a Athlon XP 2000.