Anyone tried the new ArcadeVGA model?

[Gradius]

I'm thinking of changing my 7000 to the new 9200 model. Do you have experiences with this one? Does it work as perfectly as the former with MAME? Does it have any other values with respect the 7000 apart from better performance with native 3D PC games? Any extra res modes? Any fix? Have you tried any of these PC 3D games and have tested their performance? Is the improvement gain in preformance clearly noticiable over the 7000 Avga? My 7000 was unable to run many 3D games at a decent framerate. I think it's even slower than my old Geforce 1 DDR. Do you recommend me to sell my 7000 for 50 euros? Too cheap? Too expensive?

[Vicious]

If you're looking to play PC games, neither is your card.  It's a great card for MAME and such, but not so for games like Doom 3, Hitman Contracts, etc.

But if you do sell, 50-60 EUR seems like a fair amount.

[stiffarmleft]

Mine runs  great with mame, daphne and pc games.  I currently am playing Tiger Woods 2005 and the GTR demo on my arcade.  I will be downloading the Need for speed underground demo when I get home, should be fun with the steering wheel.

[Lilwolf]

I thought both cards where really based on the same chip.

ATI renamed one of their old chips (7k?) to 9200 to make it fit in their new naming.  

ie, you might find that you wont' get any extra speed out of it... Not sure.

[pointdablame]

I'm not sure which exact 9200 chip (as in ram and clock speeds) Ultimarc is using, but the 7000 and 9200 are not the same chip as far as I know.  The 9200 has a higher clock and memory speed, more ram, 2 extra pipelines, as well as some Ati perks like smoothvision and smoothshader.  Overall, the 9200 is a better chip than the 7000.

I'd have to disagree with Vicious: the 9200 could very well be a good card for 3d games.  Vicious mentions the latest and greatest, but for everything else, a 9200 should perform admirably.  You won't play FarCry, Doom3 or HL2 on it, but you should be able to play pretty much any 3d game around at a fair clip.  If this is for a MAME machine, I doubt you'll be playing FPS's anyway.  I have a mobility 9200 on my laptop, and while they are not the same chipset as the desktop 9200, as a general note, I can play almost anything on it.

As for whether it'd be worth it for you to upgrade, I guess that depends on what you value really.... this upgrade won't be a monumental change.  It's very possible though that you will be able to play a lot more 3d games than you previously were, excluding today's top of the line games.

Also note, I'm talking about desktop chipsets here, not the ArcadeVGA.  The chipsets are the same, but I just want to be clear that I haven't played with the 2 AVGA versions myself, but I HAVE used the chipsets before.

[Vicious]

I'd have to disagree with Vicious: the 9200 could very well be a good card for 3d games.  Vicious mentions the latest and greatest, but for everything else, a 9200 should perform admirably.  You won't play FarCry, Doom3 or HL2 on it, but you should be able to play pretty much any 3d game around at a fair clip.

I agree.  I play more current games on a Mobilty 9600 Pro, so everything runs great for me.  But yeah, I didn't really think about older ones though so you're probably right about that.

[AndyWarne]

The 9200 is certainly a more advanced and faster chip than the 7000. But don't overlook the fact that using an arcade monitor you are limited to 800 X 600 (or possibly 640 X 480) resolution, so even the 7000 is not having to deal with the amount of data that a higher resolution needs. Hence the difference is not as great as it would be if running an SVGA monitor.

[dabone]

Is the video overlay bug fixed in the 9200 version?
Also, I have some problems with system 11 games (Display will be compressed to the middle of the screen with the screen test pattern filling the rest) with the 7000.

You can fix the overlay bug by disabling most of the acceleration, and If I remember right to fix the system 11 games you have to turn on the acceleration again.


Later,
dabone

[Rocky]

It's been reported in the Daphne forums that you can run the Daphne games with hardware acceleration on with the new chipset.

[Flinkly]

kevin at retroblast is hopefully going to do a review on the new model arcadevga when he finally gets his cab up and running.  i'd expect it within a week, if he's not too busy.

[paigeoliver]

I ordered the new one the other day without realizing that it was a NEW one!