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computer hardware...
rampy:
--- Quote from: u_rebelscum on March 14, 2003, 05:04:07 pm ---
--- Quote from: Mike on March 14, 2003, 02:59:09 pm ---... as soon as mame begins to support hyperthreading you have the motherboard and will just need to get a new processor to take advantage of it.
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Which will be as soon as mame supports SMP, ie: not in the near future. Mame is not multithreaded, and it would take some MAJOR changes to get mame multithreaded to see a speed increase and still be as accurate in emulation as it currently is.
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FWIW advancemame supports SMP (but in linux only)... that doesn't necessarily mean it's optimized or anything for it (it might be I don't know... i'm just going by whats on their sourceforge page).
But your right - probably won't see it in mame in the near near future... but that's what we all said about games with slapstick protection way back in teh day too =P
rampy
u_rebelscum:
--- Quote from: rampy on March 14, 2003, 05:13:20 pm ---... probably won't see it in mame in the near near future... but that's what we all said about games with slapstick protection way back in teh day too =P
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Shhhhh. Don't you know one of the best ways to make a hacker try to do something is say "you can't do it" or "it's impossible"? ;)
Ted_Striker:
Well here goes. I've pretty much broken every suggestion that people have mentioned in this thread.... and my cabinet plays great. I went with a pc chips motherboard, a duron 700 and 128mb ram, onboard audio. And it plays fine! I use a 3mb hard drive for my os and a 6mb drive for roms. I suppose a bit of background is in order to explain my position.
I'm in my 30's and basically quit playing (well quit keeping up) with arcade games around '95 when I left college. So when I built a mame cab I was interested in the old games. I never really saw a neo geo cab before... and missed the fighting craze...
So with that said, mame hardware should be chosen based on the games you want to play. Why spend the money on an (AMD or Intell) 2ghz+ processor when your favorite is game is Galaga. And a 64MBddr video card is just plain overkill. I'm running an old ati rage pro 8mb agp card. runs fine. Even the newer games... no stutters. Now I suppose if Area 51 and the Cruisin USA games are what you live for... then buy the expensive stuff.
Also consider your own upgrade path. If you are building your own pc for a mame cabinet I am assuming you built your own main computer. If you want to spend money on fast pc's, why not upgrade your main pc and then drop your old stuff into the mame cab. Most people who have multiple pc's in the house have a pretty decent main pc.
So the moral of the story is don't break the bank on pc hardware for mame. You don't need to. Consider what games you want or can't live without. Of course multiple use cabinets (other emu's, daphne, jukebox etc) will have different hardware req's than mame.
Also check out MSI motherboards. I have had good luck with them, they are relatively cheap but good quality.
oh yeah and pc chips mbs are worthless (I hate mine) but it doesn't lock up and has been stable. I had problems with it when I tried to upgrade the processor. From what I've read on these boards, the fact that mine works fairly well is a freak of nature.