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Processor upgrade worth it?
sharpfork:
Hello All-
I'm one of those odd people who prefers Mac- a habbit which has extended to my Mame cab. I'm getting sick of the lack of a Mame front end on the Mac side so I'm pondering dedicating a PC as the brain of my cab.
I cobbled together a Dell Optiplex GX1 PIII 500 with 512 megs of RAM for a work project that will be over soon. I want to be able to play MAME games ranging from the classics to somewhere around the Street Fighter II days. I would like to be able to add virtual pinball and Daphnie to play Dragons Lair and Space Ace.
I have had great luck with Mac CPU upgrades in the past and am wondering if it would make sense for me to to upgrade the GX1 CPU. After doing quite a bit of research, I found a company that shoehorns a 1.4 GHz Celeron's into the GX1.
Here is one on eBay for $76 + shipping:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=14292&item=3495731527&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW
more info:
- I'm not sure which version of MAME or windoze I am going to run at this point.
- the Dell has a whopping 2 megs of video RAM (not an issue for MAME from what I have read)
Questions:
- Do I really have to upgrade the speed of my CPU for me wants/needs?
- Anyone have experience with a CPU upgrade like this one?
- am I better off spending a bit more and buying a mobo that will be happy with the PC100- PC133 RAM I have kicking around? (suggestions).
- will more powerful video (the Dell can be upgraded to 6 megs easily) let me run higher quality video in Dragon's Lair?
Thanks in advance,
Kevin
Pieman2004:
I have a p3 500 mhz that runs mame games up to streetfighter II with no problem. I have to use windows 98 though, with mamewah. I tried the same machine with windows xp and it ran noticeably slower.
You might at least try running the games you want on what you have and then you can determine if its worth it to you to upgrade.
If you do run things on this computer test several different programs, operating systems, and configurations. You might find a setup that is perfect with your computer.
Goz:
If I remember correctly the recommended minimum CPU for DAPHNE without sacrificing performace is an ATHLON 800. As mentioned previously the only way you will know if you want / need the upgrade is to try with the system you have.
Hope this helps,
-Goz
DvMxDv:
When I started playing MAME on a PC years ago, I was using a Cyrix 686 200MHz with 32 Megs of RAM. I was able to run all the then current ROMS under MAME running in Win98. You should be able to play almost anything on that 500 PIII as long as you keep the OS very light. XP, 2k and other M$ Windows tend to hog resources for themselves that can degrade game performance on an older machine. You may consider DOS or even Linux if you're comfortable with the in's and out's of 'nix-based OS's.
As far as video goes, it sounds like you're using the Dell onboard video card. If that board has an AGP port, you may want to consider looking for an old Nvidia TNT2 or Geforce with about 32MB of video RAM so that the video isn't sharing system memory which will slow your system down. You should be able to get an older card like that for really cheap. Check with the local PC recycler or maybe even Ebay :P
Good luck!
Dave
sharpfork:
Hello-
Thanks for the input.
I'll play around with this box (I'm on it now) and see what it can do. I prolly will have to ebay the Mac to pick up the CPU upgrade. If I can scrounge up a little extra $, would it be worth buying a Mobo/CPU that can use my PC 133 RAM? Since I'm a Mac guy, I need to know what my processor limits are if I'm sticking with PC 133 RAM.
Can anyone reccomend a decent bare bones sytem that will run my RAM and an ATA harddrive and optical drives?
Thanks a ton,
Kevin