MAME and RAM vs CPU

[EmuHead]

Just about finished setting up my 1ghz athlon for use in a cab, overclocked it to 1.3 and it made LOADS of difference. My question is this - is it worth upgrading the RAM in this system? I currently have 128mb installed, and i know most say 512MB is good for mame these days but is it really worth forking out for that considering the CPU isnt all that powerful? I mainly want this for 2player fighting games but would hate it if i found a great game that wouldnt work well.

     -Shawn

(just checked my 0.88 rom download, its at 61%, cant wait!)

[RacerX]

From everything I have ever read about MAME, CPU speed is *far* more important than RAM as far as the games running full speed.

As far as 128MB being enough, I'm not up on the latest versions of MAME.  I still run an older version.  So I'll let someone else answer that who is better acquainted with it.

[Minwah]

It should make a big difference, I would think loading speed would increase for one.  If you can't afford to go to 512, why not try 256 first - I think that in itself would make a good difference.

[calicyco]

How about on the flip side - is there some amount of RAM which would be a waste to use in MAME?

I was planning on using a P4 1.8ghz box with 2 gig RDRAM. Since this is the only box that can hold the RDRAM I can't really put it elsewhere, however I have an Athlon 2400+ which is 2ghz, but only has 768 mb of ram.

So, the Athlon is slightly faster cpu wise, but has a 266 FSB, which is much slower than the 800 FSB of the P4. So I have faster RAM bandwidth and more RAM on the P4, but a higher clock rate on the Athlon.

Which one would perform better? I haven't setup the P4 yet so I can't test it. Would 2 gig really help MAME, does it do heavy memory stuff?

Thanks!

[paigeoliver]

Mame wouldn't even come close to touching your 2 GB of ram.

As for 128 Mb being "enough" it really depends on your operating system, system setup, and mame version (the big unpacked mame exe that you can compile uses a lot less memory than the normal one).

A poorly setup system running XP might use up 400 MB of ram just booting, while a super tuned win9x system might use up less than 20 MB, while DOS systems will use basically none at all (less than a MB).

[JustMichael]

I would recommend 512MB of ram and a 2+ GHZ cpu.

[krick]

There are a *few* new games in MAME that will use the whole 512M of memory but they're recent editions that haven't been modified for efficiency (or playability for that matter).

I think that a dedicated MAME system running a modern version of mame should have:

512M optimal
256M normal
128M minimum


If a game requires more memory than you have, then the bottleneck will be your hard drive speed read/write speed as chunks of memory are swapped out.


I've also read that using a MAME executable that is *not* UPX compressed (like the official releases are) is better in low memory situations.

This is because with UPX, the entire executable must be uncompressed in memory before mame can be run.

[BLACK KNIGHT]

I don't build any computers without at least 256megs of ram.  However, going from 256megs of Ram to 512 I saw very little difference except for games like Doom 3.  I did see a BIG performance increase going from 128 to 256 however.  I currently have 512 in my main rig and my secondary, third, fourth, and fifth computers all have 256megs as well as my wife's and they all run fine running Windows XP Pro and Mame.  As for processors my main rig runs an XP 2000+ oc'ed to a XP 2400+, and my fifth computer is running a Duron 750...all of my other computers are in between, my MAME cabinet rig has a XP 1600+ at default speed right now.

[subzero23]

If I had a 2ghz computer and I didn't have weird expectations like playing blitz...would 256mb suffice?

Play everything 2D? Like UMK3, Killer Instinct etc

[Tiger-Heli]

Hard to give definitive answers . . .

How about on the flip side - is there some amount of RAM which would be a waste to use in MAME?

I agree with other posters . . .  There is a point of diminishing returns.  64M will run very slowly.  128 would be acceptable, but 256 will make a noticeable difference.  512 will run better than 256, but not significantly for most games.  I wouldn't expect to see much of any difference with 768 over 512, and probably only a marginal increase with 2 Gig.

Which one would perform better? I haven't setup the P4 yet so I can't test it. Would 2 gig really help MAME, does it do heavy memory stuff?

Without starting a flame war, I think that the Pentium 4 will perform better at equivalent PR rating (mainly b/c HAZE does his development work on a P4, AFAIK).

Personally, I run an XP2800, but I couldn't say how your faster Athlon compares to the slower P4 with more memory.

[EmuHead]

Thanks for all the advice! Ive tuned my XP system to hell and back over the last few days, but would prefer a DOS setup I think. Is is hard to set up a cabinet running from DOS???

      -Shawn