Best compatibilty/speed combo MAME version for low-end system?

[MartyNg]

Does anyone have a recommendation for a version of MAME that will run good on the following system while still playing a lot of games?

Win98SE
Athlon 750
192 Meg RAM

I NEED compatibility with games that take a while to play through in which people can jump in and out at will, such as TMNT, Simpsons, Tower of Doom, etc. Classics like Ms. PacMan and Galaga will also be played but will take a back seat. Gracias.

[rohan]

Raine or MAME .36

[AtomSmasher]

I've been told versions 36 and 55 are the two versions people like to use for older systems, for your machine v55 should be good enough.  I had a similar machine, except it was 800mhz and win xp, and ran version 96 of mame, it was able to run all of the older games and several of the newer games without a problem.

[MartyNg]

I've been told versions 36 and 55 are the two versions people like to use for older systems, for your machine v55 should be good enough.  I had a similar machine, except it was 800mhz and win xp, and ran version 96 of mame, it was able to run all of the older games and several of the newer games without a problem.

Cool. Thanks guys! I'll try those versions out. 

[gonzo90017]

Is that 750mhz? Dude you can run almost everything with that! I would recommend you use fastmame84 http://files-upload.com/files/173598/fastmame084u3.zip
Just keep clicking in the "Show More" link in the bottom of the page until you get to 84. I'm currently using FastMame 71 with a 500mhz pc. I run all emulators including NeoGeo full speed! I didn't see a need to go up any higher since not many games have been added since then.

TMNT, Simpsons all those games will run full speed on your setup. All games run on mine with little to no frameskip!

[danny_galaga]

i think with 750mhz you dont need to go as low as 36. i ran a 400mhz with 78, and it was mame32. games like raiden were too slow with that combo so id say start with mame 70 something and start going downwards if speed is too slow on your favs...

[monkeybomb]

I used .83 on a PIII 550 for a long time and most games worked fine.

[MartyNg]

Thanks to all for the information. I will definitely try out several versions of Fastmame. Being 'heavily optimized' from the main build of MAME, surely there is some sort of tradeoff. What might this be missing out on over the normal version of MAME?

[gonzo90017]

There is none. Unless you consider command line a trade off.

[MartyNg]

There is none. Unless you consider command line a trade off.

Interesting. Why don't the MAME developers implement these enhancements into the main build?

[Dreamwriter]

Because to the developers, Mame isn't about enhancements or running games quickly.  It's about documenting how the arcade hardware works by emulating it, and to do that they try to make the code easy to understand rather than uber optimized.  For example, a few games had Voodoo 3D cards in them.  But Mame doesn't just pass on the 3D commands to 3D cards, even in Mame 1.07 which can use Direct3D; it emulates the Voodoo 3D cards in software, and thus runs those games extremely slowly.

[MartyNg]

Because to the developers, Mame isn't about enhancements or running games quickly.  It's about documenting how the arcade hardware works by emulating it, and to do that they try to make the code easy to understand rather than uber optimized.  For example, a few games had Voodoo 3D cards in them.  But Mame doesn't just pass on the 3D commands to 3D cards, even in Mame 1.07 which can use Direct3D; it emulates the Voodoo 3D cards in software, and thus runs those games extremely slowly.

Ah. That makes sense! Thank you for clarifying.