PC Vs. XBox

[sportswizdan]

A question to those of you who have had the opportunity to compare PC emulation versus XBox emulation. This would include Mame and the following console systems:

Atari 2600, 5200, 7800
Nintendo NES, S-NES, N64
Sega Genesis, 32X, CD
Colecovision
Intellivision
Commodore 64

For the above mentioned, would the PC or the XBox be better for those emulations, as far as performance and overall graphic appearance? What would the pros and cons be for these set-ups? I am just trying to see if I should go the XBox route (which I have NEVER tried) or keep the PC method. Thanks in advance to all of you

Dan

[steveh]

as far as performance goes i believe it is about the same.  But on the xbox you will have to get it modded in order to play the games.   

[meltman]

as far as performance goes i believe it is about the same.  But on the xbox you will have to get it modded in order to play the games.   

And you will be seriously limited by the available RAM on the xbox. I honestly built my PC cabinet BECAUSE of the limitations of the xbox.

[Crax]

I've honestly had a lot more frustrations with console emulators on the xbox than mame.  Mame is easy to get working.  I have all sorts of troubles with the nes/snes emulators I have tried and moderate problems with the genesis ones.

[Mctittles]

I've never tried an X-Box but if you compare by pure specs I think you could get a PC for cheaper.  Not sure if you would want X-Box for price reasons or not, but here are some specs for the X-Box (not 360, 360 is much better)

CPU: 733 MHz chip crafted by Intel
Graphics Processor: 250MHz custom chip named XGPU, developed by Microsoft and nVIDIA
Total Memory: The RAM in the Xbox will be supplied by Micron, it will be 64 MB running at 200MHz DDR (Double-Data-Rate)
Memory Bandwidth: 6.4 GB/sec

If you look on newegg or somewhere for those type of parts for a pc you could get off cheaper I think.  What I do for parts sometimes is look on newegg and read reviews for the part I want, then search e-bay and froogle for someone selling the board or processor at a cheaper price...

[whatzcrackn]

CPU cheaper?

No way.  The xbox is $99 used and another $50 to mod it unless you can do it yourself, then it would be $20 more.  So on average $119.99 to $149.99.

The xbox MAME is great for classics and scroll games.  If you are looking to the high quality graphic and some medium graphic games, then this is not for you (xbox that is).  I have two modded xboxes and have never looked back. 


My current cab has a PS2 and Xbox in it.  Why you say, the abilty to play those types of games on the system.  Some games will not play without the digital function, thus I have to open the coin door and have the wireless or wired controllers hooked up.  The wireless controllers actually work with the coin door closed.  So it is not that bad. 

So I guess in the long run it is what you want.  If you want to play MAME and every game on it, then you must go the PC route.  Unless you can find someone to add RAM to the xbox, I have yet to find someone to do it for me.  But it will increase your RAm and open more games.   Either way you should have hours of fun.

My .02 on the subject.  I am off my 

PS
Xbox has some other emulators that run full speed too.  I do not have a problem playing the Neogeo, SNES, N64, and other emulators.  It is MAME that demands that thing called RAM.

[BLah247]

I have a modded Xbox.  I run a v1 Xbox with a Xenium Ice mod chip and a 160 gig harddrive.  Can't remember the bios version off hand but it doesn't really matter.  It serves two purposes; One I can backup games onto the drive and play the game off that thus avoiding Xbox's (especially older ones) dvd drive errors which will halt a game in the middle of playing.  The second purpose is to use it as a MAME box and run emulated games.

As far as MAME goes I think it's called MAMEox or something of that sort.  It's extremely easy to set up and runs most the old games fine.  The problem is with some of the newer (by newer I mean mid 90's) games.  There is the ram limitation of being able to load the game.  I think you can get some sort of RAM upgrade but I never bothered.  An example is the Samuri Showdown series... one of my favorite fighting games it will run out of ram and not be able to fully load the game.

In the end the modded Xbox works great as a MAME player supplement for someone who doesn't want to either sit at a computer and play or doesn't want to make a cabinet or control panel.  This has actually tied me over for a few years until I finally broke down and wanted the 'real' arcade expierance by making my own cabinet.

[whatzcrackn]

I have a modded Xbox.  I run a v1 Xbox with a Xenium Ice mod chip and a 160 gig harddrive.  Can't remember the bios version off hand but it doesn't really matter.  It serves two purposes; One I can backup games onto the drive and play the game off that thus avoiding Xbox's (especially older ones) dvd drive errors which will halt a game in the middle of playing.  The second purpose is to use it as a MAME box and run emulated games.

As far as MAME goes I think it's called MAMEox or something of that sort.  It's extremely easy to set up and runs most the old games fine.  The problem is with some of the newer (by newer I mean mid 90's) games.  There is the ram limitation of being able to load the game.  I think you can get some sort of RAM upgrade but I never bothered.  An example is the Samuri Showdown series... one of my favorite fighting games it will run out of ram and not be able to fully load the game.

In the end the modded Xbox works great as a MAME player supplement for someone who doesn't want to either sit at a computer and play or doesn't want to make a cabinet or control panel.  This has actually tied me over for a few years until I finally broke down and wanted the 'real' arcade expierance by making my own cabinet.

Use the Neogeo emulator for Samuri Showdown series.  I play 1-5 with a problem, FBAX and Kwax (could be wrong with the speeling).  Both those emulators loads roms with out a problem.  RAM is not an issue, they some how by pass it and load fine.  NEogeo with the exception of maybe a handful run fine.  WHen I say a handful it is about five or so games.

[Mctittles]

CPU cheaper?
No way.  The xbox is $99 used and another $50 to mod it unless you can do it yourself, then it would be $20 more.

Well I didn't look up the prices on that type of system.  I just know that I'm building a 3Mhz Celeron Board /w enough on it to run mame for under $100, so I figured for those specs I could get it for 50 bucks...Just a guess, but in the end I suppose they are both about the same.

[jWin]

At first I thought I would use my Xbox for my arcade cabinet, it seemed perfect and looked great, plus you could load Street Fighter III, Mortal Kombat Armageddon onto the hard drive, etc etc,  until I tried midway games in mame, I think MAMEOX .72 plays midway games fairly good, but then you lose a lot of other games so in theory you need to run 2 versions of mame.

If you ignore midway games then xbox is very ideal, it runs neogeo, capcom and MAME classics fairly well,  plus theres other games ported to xbox such as Marvel vs Capcom 2 which no emulator supports.

Xbox Pros:
Component video connection
SFIII series
Mortal Kombat Armageddon
Marval Vs Capcom 2
Capcom Vs SNK 2 EO
Guilty Gear
Soul Calibur 2
Dead or Alive series

Xbox Cons:
Midway games dont run well (MK, MK2, MK3, UMK3, NBA Jam and more)
Requires more then 1 emulator

So in the end I decided to go ahead and use a PC for everything and still hookup a Xbox for the non-emulated games, with a component video selector box, and eventually a ipac2 xbox adapter.

[BamBam]

CPU cheaper?

No way.  The xbox is $99 used and another $50 to mod it unless you can do it yourself, then it would be $20 more.  So on average $119.99 to $149.99.

The xbox MAME is great for classics and scroll games.  If you are looking to the high quality graphic and some medium graphic games, then this is not for you (xbox that is).  I have two modded xboxes and have never looked back. 


My current cab has a PS2 and Xbox in it.  Why you say, the abilty to play those types of games on the system.  Some games will not play without the digital function, thus I have to open the coin door and have the wireless or wired controllers hooked up.  The wireless controllers actually work with the coin door closed.  So it is not that bad. 

So I guess in the long run it is what you want.  If you want to play MAME and every game on it, then you must go the PC route.  Unless you can find someone to add RAM to the xbox, I have yet to find someone to do it for me.  But it will increase your RAm and open more games.   Either way you should have hours of fun.

My .02 on the subject.  I am off my 

PS
Xbox has some other emulators that run full speed too.  I do not have a problem playing the Neogeo, SNES, N64, and other emulators.  It is MAME that demands that thing called RAM.

Hmmm. I bought 1.1 Ghz AMD Athalon system with 512MB RAM, 64MB GeForce Video, SB Live Audigy, 20 Ghz HD, Ethernet card in a case with a 500 watt power supply for $100.00 CA. Not to mention the free 17" monitor I found in the recycling center at our local dump.  It wouldn't be fair if I didn't tell you that I had to replace the CPU fan for $13.00.  Total cost $113.00 Ya baby!
Uh...So my vote is PC 

John

[whatzcrackn]

But that set-up will not play all the CHD files.  And if so, isnt sluggest and not at full speed?

[Chris]

But that set-up will not play all the CHD files.  And if so, isnt sluggest and not at full speed?

The fastest PC setup in the world won't play all the CHD games at full speed.

[Hoagie_one]

xbox ram upgrade = extremely difficult solder job

[ChadTower]

Go to your local town recycling center or wherever your town brings the thrown away PCs.  Ask to take home a couple of dead ones.  Pick out anything with USB ports and bring it home.  9 times out of 10 it's a simple easy fix or the thing isn't even broken.  Worst case is you build one or two PCs out of the parts of 4 dead ones.

This will generally get you things in the 500mhz-1ghz range easy, as much RAM as you need, and a couple of hard drives good enough to do the job.  It probably won't get you a 15mhz capable graphics card but it just might.

And it's all free.  Just don't take any monitors from there as they rarely work.  Go to Freecycle.org, sign up, and ask for spare monitors there.  So many people have a spare 15-17" CRT sitting around from their last PC that it will be easy to find one (or more) for free.