Mame pc specs?

[wonkalow]

I have everything for my PC minus Motherboard, and CPU. I was thinking of a mid end intel dual core CPU, and any compatible motherboard I can find... I cant seem to find any solid info on what a pc should or shouldnt have for this kind of thing. Is there really anything specific I should be looking into getting for the PC for an arcade machine? I have what I think is a fairly decent vid card (it was free heh so im hoping anyways) a Geforce fx5200 128 mb card with s-video. and 2gb of ram, so now im just looking at the MB/CPu (unless thats a bad card for some reason). I was thinking whatever motherboard I could pick up off newegg for a decent price would work, as long as it was compatible and had onboard sound, a cheap MB couldnt really slow down the pc could it? as long as it was capable of running what I put on it right? and for CPU I wasnt too sure what was needed, but intel's are fairly cheap so I was going to just get the biggest one I could afford

[Jeff AMN]

Yeah, don't break the bank on your PC. MAME runs well on pretty low-end specs, but having a good processor will ensure that you can run way more games at a good speed. With a dual-core processor, you'll be able to pretty much run anything up to pretty recent releases (aside from the games that never work on any machine well).

[mrserv0n]

Yea my athlon 4000+ runs everything except most CHD games, I also have a dual core E6600 4mb cache, the only 2 games it can run that the athlon cant smoothly are KI2 and Wargods, but neither will run carnevil or gauntlet legends or anything, and thats about a $200 price difference just for 2 games literally.

[tommy]

With a dual-core processor, you'll be able to pretty much run anything up to pretty recent releases

Dual core is overkill for mame.

[falkensmaze]

Dual core is overkill for mame.

For mame yes but game emulation can be addictive so you may want more than mame. Also you prob wont want to upgrade for at least 3 years so try find that balance between what you want and what you need.

[tetsu96]

Dual core is overkill for mame.

For mame yes but game emulation can be addictive so you may want more than mame. Also you prob wont want to upgrade for at least 3 years so try find that balance between what you want and what you need.

Pretty most game emulation I know of is single threaded so far (some exceptions, but minimal speed increase if any).  This may change in the future, but not in the short term.

That said, the core2duo chips are known to be good overclockers, and CPU speed is what makes emulation, MAME in particular.

[paigeoliver]

Guess what, these days the computer you can get for free simply by asking around is good enough for mame provided you don't care about the CHD games. Use a mame version between about .55 and .70 and even a p3 500 mhz will run everything. Or you can spend $600 on a system that will play like 10 more worthwhile games (sure every version adds games, but most of them aren't anything anyone is asking for).

I specifically recommend mame version .55 because that particular version has just about anything anyone would want to play and will run everything full speed on total garbage hardware. I like version .72 for processors that are faster than 1 ghz and version .55 for those that are slower.

Use a freebie (or nearly free) cast off computer and funnel the extra money into a quality display. You can always upgrade the computer later. Most of the decent games that can't be run on junk hardware have weird controls that you probably won't have anyway. Sure you could name a few that don't, but are those games worth another $500 in hardware to you? Plus, if you really want the most games for your money then your money is better invested in different control types and not a bigger processor.

Plus, in 5 years you can replace the garbage computer with a newer garbage computer and get those newer games then.

[xmenxmen]

Here's what I have on my 2 mame cabinet to give u a clue on what's needed.

1st one:
Athlon 1800+ (1.3G, me guess)
512mb pc3200
radeon 7500 with svideo out.
---Plays all games at full speed except - sfiii only at 70 percent, but still full playable.  ki/ki2 run at full speed.

2nd one
Pentium 4 prescott 2.4G
512mb pc3200
radeon 9800 pro (spare I had around) connect to vga
--Plays everything at full speed including sfiii3.

If you had to buy, I would get at least a Athlon 3500 or high, or Intel dual core.  This would leave room for future games.  And BTW, if you need to do other emulation like dc, either my machine will cut it.  Had sfiii on the Pentium 4 machine, but it was doggy slow, before the mame version was available.

[Texasmame]

Yeah, don't break the bank on your PC. MAME runs well on pretty low-end specs, but having a good processor will ensure that you can run way more games at a good speed. With a dual-core processor, you'll be able to pretty much run anything up to pretty recent releases (aside from the games that never work on any machine well).

My cab runs MAME32 on a PII 450.  Just fine for any pre-Kombat classics.

[telengard]

Yeah, don't break the bank on your PC. MAME runs well on pretty low-end specs, but having a good processor will ensure that you can run way more games at a good speed. With a dual-core processor, you'll be able to pretty much run anything up to pretty recent releases (aside from the games that never work on any machine well).

My cab runs MAME32 on a PII 450.  Just fine for any pre-Kombat classics.

Are you running the latest Mame?  I'm finding that even on my pretty new dell box in the mame cab old games like
Tron hiccup.  This is fairly recent too.  I did an upgrade from maybe 4 or 5 revs previous and performance dropped big time.

~telengard

[Texasmame]

Yeah, don't break the bank on your PC. MAME runs well on pretty low-end specs, but having a good processor will ensure that you can run way more games at a good speed. With a dual-core processor, you'll be able to pretty much run anything up to pretty recent releases (aside from the games that never work on any machine well).

My cab runs MAME32 on a PII 450.  Just fine for any pre-Kombat classics.

Are you running the latest Mame?  I'm finding that even on my pretty new dell box in the mame cab old games like
Tron hiccup.  This is fairly recent too.  I did an upgrade from maybe 4 or 5 revs previous and performance dropped big time.

~telengard

Gosh, been months since I tinkered with it.  Think it's 1.13 or something like that.  Just fine for what I want it to do. . .