Main > Main Forum

what is a computer good enough to run MAME?

Pages: << < (4/6) > >>

ChadTower:


You probably want to lurk around, read as much as you can for a while, buy Project Arcade and read it, and then try a project.  It is the best way.

Arcade82:

whats required for every game?

pointdablame:


--- Quote from: Arcade82 on December 15, 2006, 12:57:49 am ---whats required for every game?

--- End quote ---

No current PC will really run "every" game.  If you're really going for the fences, the fastest PC you can possibly get is best, but you still wont' have "every" game.

Plus you have to remember that once you pass a certain level, it takes a lot of extra horsepower (and wasted money IMO) to add 1 or 2 more games.  I doubt you'll ever be at a point where a given PC can run truly every game in MAME, but I could be wrong.

Kremmit:

Dang, the guy's pretty much said he doesn't want to build, he wants to buy.  Let him have the X-Arcade.  Sure, you can build one cheaper, but can he build one that looks as professional, and how much time and effort will go into it?  Some people would rather pay a little extra and skip the work.  Besides, he'll have enough work to do digging up an old version of MAME, a romset to match, a frontend, and configuring the system. 

He can always replace the X-Arcade joys and buttons down the road if they bug him, and that'll be a lot easier if he's got a pre-built and wired CP box to work from.  It woull make a good starter project, in fact.

Gavica:  If you can afford a little more, look at the "Tankstick" instead of the "Dual Joystick"  It adds a trackball, which will let you play more games.  The USB 2.0/1.0 thing will not be an issue.  But you might want to consider PS/2 instead of USB, if you decide to downgrade that computer to DOS or Win98 then USB support will be iffy.  Also, don't sweat the video card, MAME doesn't make use of fancy 3d vid cards anyway, or at least not the old versions of MAME you'll be able to run on that computer.

BLah247:

I used to run dos MAME on a Pentium 100 with maybe 128 megs of ram.  It ran most of what I wanted to play.  For my new MAME cabinet I will probably go with an older AMD board and chipset, 512 ram (just cause it's cheap), 40 gig HD I have laying around. I haven't decided on the software but it will only be used for MAME and maybe some webstuff... maybe not.

I have a version of MAME running on my xbox which doesn't allow any game needing more than 64 meg to play.  My workstation/game computer is pretty beefy with a AMD64 4000 processor and 2 gigs of ram and a 256 meg video card and I think that is way overkill.

Pages: << < (4/6) > >>

Go to full version