what is a computer good enough to run MAME?

[Gavica]

Since I plan on building my MAME arcade, I need a PC.

I already have a spare one, the characteristics are as follow:

*P3 500mhz
*768mb Ram (either PC100 or PC133)
*20gig HD
*32mb Video Card (I have a spare 64mb vid card but dunno if it works)
*52X cd-rom


I havent been able to test them on this pc beacuse it is in storage.

But is this fast enough to run MAME and its games? or I need something with more punch?

[pointdablame]

This question has been asked a thousand times, and there is no set answer.

Your PC will run MAME... but its a matter of what you want to play.  You can run an older version of MAME on that PC and run all the classics without breaking a sweat.  If you want to use the newest MAME and play "every game I can" then no... you'll need a much, much more powerful PC.

Do some reading on the Wiki, I think it goes into it.  There's also a thread on here with a title like "What PC do I need for MAME?" or similar.  That should help out, just do a search for it.


Basically... almost any PC that turns on can "run MAME"  Its a matter of what version you want to use, and what games you want to play.

[sphetr2]

*768mb Ram (either PC100 or PC133)

Errr...are you serious? 500mhz with 700 MB RAM? Wow. That seems to be a bit overkill.

Anyway, of course you can run MAME. I would suggest MAME version .55 i686 optimized.

[SithMaster]

no kidding its overkill and im sure your going to run win98 on it right?  then youll need to remove ram becuase of a cap it has.  (512mb cap i think)

wasnt there a sticky on this?

[Gavica]

Actually I have windows xp installed on it

[sphetr2]

Actually I have windows xp installed on it

Probably not a good idea. You might want to go with DOS or and optimized XP version (like TinyXP - check out the "nLited XP installs" thread in the Software forum). 98 is a good idea too.

Sure, XP runs, but it takes a while to boot and slows some games down.

[Pekay]

Wow 700+Meg of RAM is overkill :O. Isn't it MAME requires like 128 MB RAM? :S Not sure. But yeah get a fresh install of Windows XP, and don't install no stuff you really don't need . Looking at your graphics card, may need a upgrade .

Sure, XP runs, but it takes a while to boot and slows some games down.

I'm sure the games would slow down if a background service/process is doing something like optimization. Turn that all off I suppose.

[Tiger-Heli]

Optimized XP should be fine on it.

[Gavica]

I just realized something, since that PC is kinda old like 6 years old, the USB ports are 1.1 I believe.
I'm planning on buying the X-Arcade dual Stick, which comes with USB 2.0 if I remember correctly, will this be an issue?

[RayB]

How much is that X-arcade? I'm thinking you MIGHT be better off buying a faster cpu and motherboard, and building your own control panel.

[Gavica]

I'm not too good when it comes to building stuff  , specially electronics

[MustardTent]

I just realized something, since that PC is kinda old like 6 years old, the USB ports are 1.1 I believe.
I'm planning on buying the X-Arcade dual Stick, which comes with USB 2.0 if I remember correctly, will this be an issue?

No, USB 2.0 devices are backwards-compatible with 1.1.  Additionally, you won't be sending enough data from your joys & buttons to need the extra bandwidth that 2.0 provides.

[Gavica]

so the joystick will lag and stuff right?

[SithMaster]

i think hes saying it wont lag.

but depending on your budget you could just build a box, drill holes for buttons and joys, and hookup to a keywiz.

maybe 40 dollars depending.

for disabling processes a mame pc wont need go to blackvipers page.

[Gavica]

ah ok.

I'm really not much if any building arcade parts, I don't think I could build a pc by myself and thats supposed to be easy.

[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]

whats required for every game?

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.

[Arcade82]

Just browsing some cheap Dell computers (probably will be cheaper or more bang for my buck when I actually build my cab)... Are AMD Semprons bad? Should I go with Athlon?

Will anything more than 512mb really be overkill for games like all the Capcom games (Street Fighter), King of fighters, metal slug, mortal kombats, maybe some tekkens in the future... ? I'd like it to be future proof to a certain extent.
Also would it be a good idea to go from Windows Vista back down to Windows XP?

For $359 I could get

PROCESSOR AMD Sempron™ 3400+ edit
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows® Vista Home Basic edit
MEMORY 512MB Single Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz - 1DIMM edit
HARD DRIVE 80GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™ edit
OPTICAL DRIVE 16X DVD-ROM Drive edit
MONITOR No Monitor edit
VIDEO CARD NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE Integrated Graphics GPU edit
SOUND Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
SPEAKERS No speakers (Speakers are required to hear audio from your system) edit
KEYBOARD & MOUSE Dell USB Keyboard and Dell 2-button Scroll Mouse edit


Or I could go with maybe

$349 (Yeah this one's a better deal obviously.. right?)

PROCESSOR AMD Athlon™ 64 3200+ edit
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows® Vista Home Basic edit
MEMORY 512MB Single Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz - 1DIMM edit
HARD DRIVE 80GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™ edit
OPTICAL DRIVE 16X DVD ROM Drive edit
MONITOR No Monitor edit
VIDEO CARD NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE Integrated Graphics GPU edit
SOUND Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
SPEAKERS No speakers (Speakers are required to hear audio from your system) edit
KEYBOARD & MOUSE Dell USB Keyboard and Dell 2-button Scroll Mouse

I could make some upgrades to that one too.

This next one seems like a pretty good deal at $529
I kinda wish I had this for my own home desktop (maybe I should switch with the one I have now??)

PROCESSOR AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 3800+ edit
OPERATING SYSTEM FREE Upgrade to Genuine Windows® Vista™ Home Premium w/1GB memory edit
MEMORY 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz- 2DIMMs edit
HARD DRIVE 250GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™ edit
OPTICAL DRIVE 16x DVD+/-RW Drive edit
MONITOR No Monitor edit
VIDEO CARD NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE Integrated Graphics GPU edit
SOUND Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio edit
My Accessories
SPEAKERS No speakers (Speakers are required to hear audio from your system) edit
KEYBOARD & MOUSE Dell USB Keyboard and Dell 2-button Scroll Mouse



Should I maybe go with the middle one, and add a video + sound card?

[danny_galaga]

are you building an upright? ive got the perfect specs for you:

*P3 500mhz
*768mb Ram (either PC100 or PC133)
*20gig HD
*32mb Video Card (I have a spare 64mb vid card but dunno if it works)
*52X cd-rom

 

hey, you already have that stuff! off you go then...

[Arcade82]

^^ wrong guy.

And yeah mine will be an upright.

[Chris]

MAME is very CPU-dependent.  I'm currently testing an AMD Athlon 64 4000+ with 512 MB of RAM; I've also tried various other Athlon 64's at various speeds.  You can see my results at http://benchmark.mameworld.net/ ; I think pretty much all the Athlon 64 entries are mine.  My video card is an integrated GeForce 6100, similar to what's in that system.

--Chris

[BamBam]

Actually I have windows xp installed on it

I have a second P3500 PC running mame on Win98SE.  It's cheap and supports USB.  It runs all of the older games, which is what I wanted in the first place.  My actual arcade is an AMD 2600XP on WinXP, 1 GB RAM, ATI 9600 video and it runs everything except Area 51 and similar games.  Not sure why though
I'll get to it one day and sort that part out.  For now Galaga and Metal Slug are keeping me busy.

John

[amerish]

Just a thought but you may want to put a second 20 gig hard drive in there and make a backup of your primary drive once you have everything setup. Or perhaps use an external dvd burner to copy all the important folders for that fateful day when xp or win 98 crashes.

[Teebor]

Bliimey

I thought my AMD 3200+ was an ideal machine to use with Mame.  I guess I won't whine about upgrading it now :/

It does run XP with a frontend though, and has a DOS mame actually doing the work.

Killer Instinct runs like a beauty though so can't complain too much as thats pretty much why I built the thing (and of course the other beat em ups)

Great thread, please keep the convo going its making for interesting reading.

[Chris]

It does run XP with a frontend though, and has a DOS mame actually doing the work.

Are you really using DOS MAME (dmame.exe), or just the Windows command-line version of MAME (mame.exe)?

[Teebor]

erm dos mame I think.  Thats a good question though,  I built the panel and os quite a while ago and been making room for the actual cabinet since

I will check it, as it needs updating with a newer romset, chd's and version of mame anyway.