but do you think that the .97 version would run ok? if so why would i need .55 or .61? im not really interested in any games that use the trackball like golden tee , also not really interested in the really old games like donkey kong and all those, i want to be able to play all the metal slugs up to ms4 unless i ca play 5 to? and i want marvel vs capcom are those on the .61 version?
1ghz is on the edge as to whether you will be playing full speed or not. As I mentioned, I have not used .97, but my guess is that it probably won't run that great on your system. My suggestion of using .55 was so that you could have 99% of the games that are currently in mame with .55 (percentages might be wrong, but almost everything is in there)... and most importantly it'll run great on your system. I have a 950mhz bartop running .55 and everything except for maybe 5 trouble games runs perfect. I know it has a few Metal Slugs on it, but I think 3 and 4 might have been released after .55.
By having most of your games on .55, your system shoudl run the games much much faster. Then, try .97 for the few newer games you wanna play and see how it works out. That way, almost all of your games will be running under .55 with little or no problems, and you can test out other versions for the other games you want to play. It's super simple to run multiple versions of mame on teh same computer, and that way, you can get your games running at their best for your system.