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Author Topic: What version of MAME should I be using?  (Read 3812 times)

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Jop

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What version of MAME should I be using?
« on: December 05, 2007, 05:39:30 pm »
Hi, sorry if this question has been asked many times before... but I have tried looking!

What version of MAME would work best with the PC I'm going to use in my project? Specs below:

P4 1.7ghz
384mb RAM
geForce 2mx

Thanks

Green Giant

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Re: What version of MAME should I be using?
« Reply #1 on: December 05, 2007, 06:06:49 pm »
Have you tried running some games with the latest version?  I think what you have can handle it.
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Lilwolf

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Re: What version of MAME should I be using?
« Reply #2 on: December 05, 2007, 08:37:33 pm »
The latest version of mame will be able to run 98% of all the games out there.

And if you find the fastest version of mame, you might get 100 more games running.

Fastest version is v.36 (or so) when they moved off 8bit color.  But you will loose 1000s of games
Then .58 had a descent slowdown

But, all in all... get the latest mame, and a frontend that allows more then one version of mame... then try others and see if you can get a few more games running?  why not.  (I do this when you want to play a game that the latest mame has broken..)

TOK

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Re: What version of MAME should I be using?
« Reply #3 on: December 05, 2007, 09:50:43 pm »
While I have later versions for specific games, my favorite version of MAME is .99.
Its faster than the .1xx versions, Highscore.dat is still supported, the Robotron speed issue was corrected, and all of the MAME'd Golden Tee games are in there.

I'm running .99 on both my cabs, with similar specs to yours. One is a 2ghz Pentium 4, the other is a 1.9ghz Athlon XP.

Anubis_au

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Re: What version of MAME should I be using?
« Reply #4 on: December 05, 2007, 11:44:22 pm »
What about running a newer romset on an older version of MAME?

I have the full romset for v1.18, but all I want is to play the classic arcade games (pacman, galaga, bombjack, wonderboy etc).

Is it better to play these with MAME v1.18 or newer, or with an older version, like v0.99 as TOK suggested?

Or is there some app that 'downgrades' the romset accordingly to the MAME version. If so, is there any benefit to this?

SGT

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Re: What version of MAME should I be using?
« Reply #5 on: December 06, 2007, 12:12:21 am »
You can get a "rollback" set of roms which will allow you to take your .118 set and create a set that will work for any older version of Mame. You do this by using a utility such as clrmamepro.  You will definitely see a performance improvement with an older version such as .99.
« Last Edit: December 06, 2007, 12:14:04 am by SGT »

Anubis_au

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Re: What version of MAME should I be using?
« Reply #6 on: December 06, 2007, 10:19:12 pm »
You will definitely see a performance improvement with an older version such as .99.

How noticeable would this performance improvement be? Also, what's the reason why these old games would perform less well with newer MAME releases? Surely by now, these old games have, for the most part, been 100% emulated and are unchanged through the versions of MAME?...

SGT

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Re: What version of MAME should I be using?
« Reply #7 on: December 06, 2007, 10:55:55 pm »
For one thing, there was a major change in the video portion of the mame code around version .106 or .107.   As Mame is enhanced, more powerful computers are needed to run it.  And again, it depends on which games we're talking about.  Some games will run just fine with the newest version of Mame.  Don't take my word for it.  Do your own tests.

Anubis_au

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Re: What version of MAME should I be using?
« Reply #8 on: December 06, 2007, 11:18:31 pm »
I've a hyperthreaded P4 3.2GHz with 1gig RAM. It should be able to run old games at 100% speed.. should.

SGT

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Re: What version of MAME should I be using?
« Reply #9 on: December 06, 2007, 11:39:30 pm »
I have the same P4 at 3.19 Ghz with 2 GB of ram.  There are still some games that I prefer to run version .100 with.  Ideally I want a Core 2 Duo clocking close to 4 Ghz with 64 bit Mame running on 64 bit Vista.  That will run a lot of the more demanding games.  There's a thread on the main forum about it.

elvisart

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Re: What version of MAME should I be using?
« Reply #10 on: December 08, 2007, 01:51:13 am »
Why would anyone run Vista? It's a proven memory hog!
If I wanted a stable 64 bit OS, I'd use XP 64 or the latest
64 bit Linux OS.

Haze

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Re: What version of MAME should I be using?
« Reply #11 on: December 08, 2007, 09:48:52 am »
Best 64-bit platform for MAME right now is a 64-bit Linux distro with SDLMame.

Vista just takes too much effort reconfiguring to be 'not annoying' to be worthwhile, XP-64 has bad driver support.

Given the lack of what I would consider a viable 64-bit Windows platform I'm seriously considering switching my day-to-day OS to Linux.  I've tried the recent Ubuntu distributions briefly and they're *very* good.  Something I've definitely not been able to say about Linux before.


SGT

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Re: What version of MAME should I be using?
« Reply #12 on: December 08, 2007, 11:08:36 am »
Why would anyone run Vista? It's a proven memory hog!
If I wanted a stable 64 bit OS, I'd use XP 64 or the latest
64 bit Linux OS.

The best options are Linux or Vista because as Haze pointed out, driver support is so bad with 64 bit XP.  Then you get into which you had rather do, pare Vista down so that it runs well, or learn Linux.  The driving factor for me is that I run a lot more than Mame on my machine which will make the choice "Vista" for me.

Red

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Re: What version of MAME should I be using?
« Reply #13 on: December 08, 2007, 05:34:55 pm »
"The best options are Linux or Vista because as Haze pointed out, driver support is so bad with 64 bit XP.  Then you get into which you had rather do, pare Vista down so that it runs well, or learn Linux.  The driving factor for me is that I run a lot more than Mame on my machine which will make the choice "Vista" for me."

Would it be best then to just install Vista Basic 64, so you don't have to worry about all the bells and whistles of the other versions of Vista bogging down your system?

SGT

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Re: What version of MAME should I be using?
« Reply #14 on: December 08, 2007, 06:09:50 pm »
Red,

I am assuming you have a Core 2 Duo?  Have you seen the thread linked below?  Taz-Nz's benchmarks show excellent results with Vista.  You might PM him to see if he did anything to optimize Vista and see what version he has.  I'm not sure what the results would be for a 64 bit processor other than the C2D.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=72776.0

Red

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Re: What version of MAME should I be using?
« Reply #15 on: December 08, 2007, 06:12:22 pm »
Will do.  Thanks SGT.

Red

retrometro

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Re: What version of MAME should I be using?
« Reply #16 on: December 09, 2007, 04:51:37 pm »
I agree with some of the above posts.  If you're on even a Pentium 4 or above, try using the latest version of mame and make sure all the games you want to play will work... fix the ones that don't and then stay there until a reason to upgrade comes along.

I'm running v.118 and even though upgrading to the latest version of mame is trivial (replace files), auditing the games you enjoy and having to find updates for the games that no longer work because of one update or another, is time consuming.

so in short, use the latest version and upgrade if there's a feature you've gotta have.
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