Worth it to put a 3D card in a MAME cabinet? (eg. any good 3D arcade games?)

[sofakng]

Right now I have a pretty basic PC in my MAME arcade cabinet:
Athlon 1.0 GHz (w/512mb RAM), Radeon 7500 AGP Video card

Since I've rebuilt my main computer, I can now upgrade my MAME arcade computer to this:
Pentium 4 - 2.53 GHz (w/512mb RAM), Radeon 9700 PRO Video card

One thing I've noticed, is that on my current MAME/PC machine is that games like Hamsterball run very slow and sluggish.  I haven't tried many other games because I mostly use MAME (eg. Non-3D games).

Would it be worth it for me to put that new computer into my MAME arcade cabinet?  It would be nice if the Dreamcast emulator was better, but since it's not I'm in the process of putting a real Dreamcast in there.

Are there any other good PC 3D games that are arcade-ish?

[HaRuMaN]

the Zinc emulator makes use of your graphics card 3D abilities.

[sofakng]

Are there any good games for Zinc?

[Scott84]

Mame Arcades dont need good video cards because it is not coded to take advantage of them. Correct?

[krick]

Mame Arcades dont need good video cards because it is not coded to take advantage of them. Correct?

MAME does not use any 3D rendering capabilities of your card at all.  I think there are a few features on newer video cards like hardware stretch, screen rotation, or virtual desktops, that sometimes come in handy, but for the most part, it doesn't matter what card you have in MAME.

This only applies to MAME.  Other emulators are different.

[SmartBomb]

Even though MAME itself won't take advantage of the 3D card, there are several front-ends that do, e.g. Emulaxian.  There's just something so call about wandering around a virtual 3D arcade, then selecting a game by clicking on it.

[terryd]

Are there any good games for Zinc?

Yes, there are some great games for zinc.  Street Fighter EX Plus, Tekken, Tekken 2, Tekken 3, Xevious 3D, Beastorizer, plus whole bunch more...

The nice thing is that Zinc now uses the same roms as current MAME.  Just point Zinc to your MAME roms and your up and running.

[ErikRuud]

I have an ATI Radeon 7000 in my MAME Machine.  Its is not the latest and gratest in 3D cards, but it is a good 3D card, and it has good TV out if I should choose to go that way.

I have several non emulator games that play well on my MAME machine.

My favorite right now is BraveTree's ThinkTanks from GarageGames.  I use my top fire joystick and trackball.  It is much better than the keyboard and mouse that the game is intended to use.

HamsterBall is also good on a mame machine, although more than two players can be hard to setup.

[Minwah]

HamsterBall is also good on a mame machine, although more than two players can be hard to setup.

Seemed to have issues with my ArcadeVGA when I tried it

[Arcade82]

how do you change the default controls in zinc

[Kremmit]

I love Mutant Storm.  It uses 2 joysticks per player, and plays similar to Robotron or Smash TV. 

[jelwell]

I have an ATI Radeon 7000 in my MAME Machine.