Main > Main Forum

Help me buy a good MAME system

Pages: << < (13/13)

krick:

the computer in my mame cab is a 2.8Ghz P4 with 512M of memory.

The board is a hand-me-down from a friend.  He got rid of it because it tops out at 533 FSB and doesn't support hyperthreading.  ASUS P4S533 if anyone cares.

The memory is a couple of sticks that I had laying around from other upgrades.

I bought the CPU.  2.8GHz is the fastest non-hyperthreading intel P4 (533 fsb) CPU available.  Or at least it was at the time.

I also bought a good power supply, the Vantec ION.  It has a standard 3-prong power outlet on the back that turns on and off with the computer.  No need for a smart strip.

I really like the board for several reasons...

1) very stable and not too much onboard crap

2) decent onboard sound that doesn't use a lot of CPU cycles.

3) dual serial ports in case I decide to run DOS mame with my Opti-PAC and two trackballs.

4) ASUS has a cool utility to create custom BIOS boot screens.


Anyway, it's capable of running every game I've tried so far.  I don't run any of the really cutting edge stuff (mainly CHD) though.

Fat_Trucker:

My MAME cab runs on a socket A, Athlon 3200+ and 512Mb Ram and runs everything without any problems except some of the CHD games like cruisin etc.

My Main PC is an Athlon 64 4000+ with a GeForce 6800GT, 1Mb RAM etc etc and it still doesn't play some of the CHD games like Cruisin etc with a playable framerate.

In terms of a MAME machine any Mid level Pentium or Socket A Athlon will run everything that is currently playable in MAME. There's nothing wrong with future proofing and building it on a high spec system just bear in mind that for a dedicated MAME machine its money down the drain at the moment and for the foreseeable future since some of the CHD games won't run in a playable state on any home system regardless of how many whistles and bells its got.

Might make more sense to build a cheap mid level system now and spend the extra moolah in a year or two when there might actually be a need for it.

HaRuMaN:

I run Killer Instinct 1 at 100% and KI2 at close to 100% with a P4 2.8 ghz with hyperthreading, and 512 megs of ram...  god I love my laptop...   :D

Tiger-Heli:


--- Quote from: CPickler on April 05, 2005, 11:22:34 pm ---how do they run them in the arcades then?

whoa.... do they have to run like quad Xeon boards or something?

--- End quote ---
According to MAWS, Blitz used a RISC (??? I think) R5000 @ 150 Mhz.

Okay, here's an example that maybe some of us (older) folks can relate to.

PacMan according to MAWS ran on a Motorola Z80 @ 3.072MHz

This is roughly equivalent to the first IBM Desktop PC's which ran an Intel 8088 @ 4.77 MHz.

For Desktop PC's this was replaced by the Turbo 10 Mhz machines, The 80286 - 20 Mhz, The 80386, 80486 (around 75Mhz), the Pentium at 150 to 200 Mhz, and modern hardware.

Somewhere around the Pentium 150 - Pacman became playable in MAME (older versions), but this is a 30x increase in clock speed, not to mention 5 GENERATIONS of processors.  (A game that was designed to run on a 80286 without speed throttling would be unplayable (too fast) on the same system).

By the same logic, a 4.5 Ghz system should handle Blitz, but you also need a 4.5 Ghz system that is five generations beyond a Risc R5000 processor (probably about Pentium class hardware).  So the MAME devs are probably pretty close with estimates of a P4 at 7-10 Ghz or a P5 or P6 at 5 or 6 Ghz.

--- Quote ---Another thing to keep in mind is that performance is going to change with each new release ... games that you might be gearing your system towards today might be slower or even unplayable in the a future (hence, so many people locking in on particular versions).

It's a moving target and the target doesn't always move in the direction you might think.

CheffoJeffo

--- End quote ---
CheffoJeffo -

It IS a moving target, but you don't have to move along with it.

Case in point - PacMan is currently probably unplayable on a Pentium 200 with the latest build, but they haven't updated the driver, so it won't play any better in MAME 0.96 on a Sempron 1.5 than it did in MAME 0.36 on a Pentium 200.

For that matter, some of the sound in CABAL was fixed in MAME 0.8x something, but it was fun to play before that, so if you never tried the later one, you wouldn't notice.



Pages: << < (13/13)

Go to full version