4Ghz Core 2 Duo vs M.A.M.E. 0.120 (benchmark results)

[Red]

Benchmarks for all the NFL Blitz games.  Thanks.

[DillonFoulds]

Gauntlet Legends, and play through the entire first world!!!

[Epyx]

So the question is now people what do you want benchmarked?

Dealer's Choice

You started the thread and must have a list of games that you have been itching to "get revenge" on with a faster processor...start with those  

[SlayerAlex]

heo yea! all the big dawgs if possible. Blitz, gauntlet,  and maybe even Tekken 3 in Ling Xiaoyu stage with the Merry go round in the back. oh and a DDR if you have the CHD.

[taz-nz]

All Benchmarks were run on MAMEUI 64bit version 0.138u1 in Windows 7 64bit.

First set of benchmark I ran were using the same Roms & setting as John IV.

I ran the benchmark set three times, once with the I5 655k @ 4.6ghz, then again at 4.8ghz, and then with the I7 875K @ 4.0ghz.



The Command Line was as follows:
MAMEUI64.EXE -str 90 -nothrottle -norc -mt -nosleep -view standard [Rom Name]

ROM	i5 @ 4.6ghz	i5 @ 4.8ghz	i7 @4.0ghz
1942	5294.06%	5656.39%	5049.09%
Blitz	211.76%	219.89%	247.23%
Dolphin	33.44%	35.91%	29.27%
Gauntleg	295.30%	300.43%	322.49%
Gradius4	163.59%	169.82%	182.35%
Propcycl	159.75%	159.93%	203.97%
Radikalb	199.64%	209.44%	159.87%
Scud	119.33%	124.38%	115.24%
Starsldr	139.56%	144.96%	120.40%

I ran another benchmark set with a large set of ROMs on the I5 655K @ 4.6ghz using my old command line.

MAMEUI64.EXE -noautoframeskip -frameskip 0 -seconds_to_run 240 -nothrottle -nosleep -video ddraw -skip_gameinfo -effect none -nowaitvsync -noreadconfig -m [Rom Name]

ROM	Result
1942	5300.81%
Airco22b	165.88%
Alpinerd	106.31%
Blitz	201.74%
Blitz99	210.60%
Cybrcycc	222.12%
Dolphin	34.44%
Gauntleg	330.59%
Gradius4	156.53%
Hyperdriv	240.46%
Propcycl	162.43%
Radikalb	193.13%
Raveracw	153.87%
Ridgerac	184.33%
Scud	115.35%
Sidebs2	219.05%
Starblad	168.09%
Starsldr	137.76%
Stunrun	886.06%
Surfplnt	177.45%

Sorry I didn't get a chance to do more, but I only had a limited amount of time with the CPU's.

[Epyx]

Would be neat to see how these scale every 100mhz compared to your original set of benchmarks which you said at the time were pretty linear with each additional 100mhz.

Also, was there still sound stuttering on Gauntlet Legends or was that finally smooth?

Thanks for posting these! 

[kronic24601]

Would be neat to see how these scale every 100mhz compared to your original set of benchmarks which you said at the time were pretty linear with each additional 100mhz.

Also, was there still sound stuttering on Gauntlet Legends or was that finally smooth?

Thanks for posting these! 

I don't have any stats to post, but I have a i5 oc'd to 4.52 Ghz running W7 64x and Gauntlet Legends runs pretty smooth with an occasional voice glitch in heavy battle. HOWEVER, that game is pretty buggy, 4 out of 5 times it will freeze on me when trying to run up the first set of stairs. I noticed it is a logged bug in MAME. Gauntlet Legends DL works better... but same problem with occasional voice glitch during massive battles. I think the ideal CPU speed would be around 5Ghz ... but that's a guess.

[DillonFoulds]

When you say it runs fine, how far have you got on it, if you don't mind me asking?

Edit: "has you got"? Guess my Albertan is sticking out...

[kronic24601]

I haven't played with it too much but this was my exp.

GL (1st level -easy) ... You can run around kill guys, grab treasure etc... but MOST of the time running up the stairs it will freeze. One time I went straight for the stairs and made it past there and was able to finish the level. Didn't try any others.

GL DL (1st level easy) Didn't experience any problems, finished the first level and warped out.

That's it so far I've been too busy setting things up to test it too much more. I also haven't tried things with 4 players ... not sure what effect that will have on things.

[Epyx]

Ah so even with the right overclock it sounds like im not missing much if it is that buggy still

Thanks for the heads up, good to know.

[kronic24601]

ya ... it's kinda gay considering how much $$ I plunked down on the upgrade. I was hoping for full GL playback, it works pretty smooth, but there is that one bug that'll just butcher the fun-factor.

[DillonFoulds]

HAHA! That one tiny bug of not being able to go up stairs!

I guess rather than dump my money on an upgrade to my MAME PCs, I'll have to settle for a dedicated GL cab Girlfriend's gonna be REAL happy when that one shows up in the kitchen!

[juksu]

i5-670 is crazy processor. With air cooled it can get to 5.4Ghz =P. I wonder if it can run all the 3D-mame games..

[Havok]

Let's see that toaster benchmarked!

[dosmame]

some good numbers there, i only get 1279.61% on 1941 using the -bench option and 2.6GHz Q6700

http://dosmame.mameworld.info/index.php/Special_Blog?cmd=post&id=21

[Truecade]

Time to dig up this thread, I just upgraded to the new Intel Sandy Bridge processor and did some very preliminary testing last night. 

Here is what I have:
Core i5-2500 (3.3 Ghz stock)
Intel DH67CF Mini ITX board
4 GB Ram
MSI HD 5670 video card
Windows XP 32 bit SP3

I only tested a couple games, but everything ran really good.

I fired up Mace: the Dark Age and played it through to the end.  The framerates never dropped below 100% and game ran perfectly. 

Next up, Gauntlet Legends.  The game played very well with only a couple frame rate drop to 90ish% on the first stage of the mountain world.  For some reason I didn't have sound effects (the music worked fine), but that may have been due to the older version of MAME I was using or mismatched CHD/ROM files.  I will get a newer version of MAME tonight and do some more testing. 

I would have done more benchmarking, but I was having too much fun playing Mace the Dark Age.     So my very early thoughts are that the new Sandy Bridge CPUs are going to finally make almost all of those CHD games playable without overclocking.  With an unlocked Sandy Bridge CPU, overclocking is as easy as just changing the CPU multiplier in the BIOS.  So far the tech sites are saying 4.0 Ghz OC can be achieved very easily on air with the stock Intel cooler.  These are the perfect CPUs for MAME and with 64-bit Windows MAME performance would be even better. 

Nest up, I need to find a PCI-e vid card that is compatible with Soft 15Khz so I can test games running at their native resolutions with my NEC XM29.   

[smalltownguy]

Sorry to drag up an old thread, but I've tied reading this thread in a linear fashion and I just got confused 

My current setup is running a P4 3.0 HT, and plays most chd games ok. Gauntlet and Blitz are still kind of not there yet.

I'd like to drop in something overclocked to the 4.0 GHz range. I've read that the E8400 is a nice choice, but I don't know what motherboard and RAM to get.

Should I try getting my hands on a core i5 2500k? Is there a motherboard that will handle both chips, or are they different sockets?

[scofthe7seas]

Since the thread is already back from the dead; Yes, those are different socket types. I'm pretty sure all of the core2blah processors are 775. there might be some newer ones that are not, but I have a core2quad, my mobo broke and I had kind of a hassle finding an "older"  motherboard that would work with it, and DDR2 ram.
Having never seen the chart above, I find it interesting that blitz runs slower than gauntlet on the OPs PC. I get a lot more playability out of blitz.

As for ram, ddr2 or ddr3 won't make a huge impact on arcade gaming. None of the games are doing things that require heavy ram processing. (actually, most things on Pcs don't need that, but let's not go there.) 64bit is one of the best and easiest choices for a significant speed boost!

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

As for ram, ddr2 or ddr3 won't make a huge impact on arcade gaming. None of the games are doing things that require heavy ram processing. (actually, most things on Pcs don't need that, but let's not go there.) 64bit is one of the best and easiest choices for a significant speed boost!

Has this ever been proven/disproven with actual benchmarks? If you're running the program, you're in ram, and as I understand it, for CPU intensive things like emulation, I would imagine that waiting for the ram could cause wasted cycles.

Edit: Ran a benchmark on 1942 with the above procedures on a P4 3.0Ghz machine with the same capacities of DDR226 and DDR400 with identical results. Perhaps I'm wrong, after all.

[Goalies Rule]

As for ram, ddr2 or ddr3 won't make a huge impact on arcade gaming. None of the games are doing things that require heavy ram processing. (actually, most things on Pcs don't need that, but let's not go there.) 64bit is one of the best and easiest choices for a significant speed boost!

Has this ever been proven/disproven with actual benchmarks? If you're running the program, you're in ram, and as I understand it, for CPU intensive things like emulation, I would imagine that waiting for the ram could cause wasted cycles.

Edit: Ran a benchmark on 1942 with the above procedures on a P4 3.0Ghz machine with the same capacities of DDR226 and DDR400 with identical results. Perhaps I'm wrong, after all.

Thats not really much of a comparison between 2 speeds of ddr ram. You would want something along the lines of an AMD AM2 cpu with a built in memory controller that supports both ddr2 and ddr3.

Even then, I would still think it'd be a small difference.

[scofthe7seas]

I'm sure you might get some small boost on the games that you're already getting 1000 fps on, but for all of the newer games that would currently require the ridiculous super computers people are building for them, the extra bandwidth in DDR3 isn't going to show any beneficial results. The emulation just isn't optimized enough to require a faster speed coming from the memory. There's a big big CPU "bottleneck". It's more of an emulation bottleneck, actually.

[smalltownguy]

Ah, to hell with it. I went ahead and sprung for the i7 2600K. After I get the system up and running, I'll report back with results.

[Charles4400]

Time to dig up this thread, I just upgraded to the new Intel Sandy Bridge processor and did some very preliminary testing last night. 

Here is what I have:
Core i5-2500 (3.3 Ghz stock)
Intel DH67CF Mini ITX board
4 GB Ram
MSI HD 5670 video card
Windows XP 32 bit SP3

I only tested a couple games, but everything ran really good.

I fired up Mace: the Dark Age and played it through to the end.  The framerates never dropped below 100% and game ran perfectly. 

Next up, Gauntlet Legends.  The game played very well with only a couple frame rate drop to 90ish% on the first stage of the mountain world.  For some reason I didn't have sound effects (the music worked fine), but that may have been due to the older version of MAME I was using or mismatched CHD/ROM files.  I will get a newer version of MAME tonight and do some more testing. 

I would have done more benchmarking, but I was having too much fun playing Mace the Dark Age.     So my very early thoughts are that the new Sandy Bridge CPUs are going to finally make almost all of those CHD games playable without overclocking.  With an unlocked Sandy Bridge CPU, overclocking is as easy as just changing the CPU multiplier in the BIOS.  So far the tech sites are saying 4.0 Ghz OC can be achieved very easily on air with the stock Intel cooler.  These are the perfect CPUs for MAME and with 64-bit Windows MAME performance would be even better. 

Nest up, I need to find a PCI-e vid card that is compatible with Soft 15Khz so I can test games running at their native resolutions with my NEC XM29.   

Very cool and good to hear...did you get a chance to test out any of the other heavy  dudty games like Blitz?

[Charles4400]

Ah, to hell with it. I went ahead and sprung for the i7 2600K. After I get the system up and running, I'll report back with results.

Let us know how thaty performs...I expect very well!

When are you getting it in?

Look forward to the results!

[Charles4400]

BTW does anyone know if they fixed the major stairs bug in Gauntlet Legends on the latest release of mame?

[DillonFoulds]

http://maws.mameworld.info/maws/ and search for "gauntleg", the mame changelog is posted under "additional information"

[Silverwind]

Ah, to hell with it. I went ahead and sprung for the i7 2600K. After I get the system up and running, I'll report back with results.

How's the 2600K been running?

[smalltownguy]

Not at all. I haven't had a motherboard for it.

Just picked one up on Friday night on feeBay, so I'll work on some RAM and then I can start some benchmarking.

*lazy*

 

[smalltownguy]

STILL planning on getting to this....I just picked up the last two pieces of hardware I need to test this rig this week: a SSD hard drive and a CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Air cooler.

As soon as the cooler arrives, it's GO time.

[DillonFoulds]

still itching to hear about the 2600k!

[smalltownguy]

Thanks for the prod. I'll start putting some parts together tonight and see if I can get XP 64bit up and running.

[scofthe7seas]

I tried to go with Windows XP 64, but it was super unstable. Freezing up. I went to Windows 7 64 and haven't had any trouble. I just don't know if the 64 bit architecture was fully implemented into Windows XP, or just tacked on.

[SNAAKE]

time crisis randomly lags on my 6core lol..

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

I tried to go with Windows XP 64, but it was super unstable. Freezing up. I went to Windows 7 64 and haven't had any trouble. I just don't know if the 64 bit architecture was fully implemented into Windows XP, or just tacked on.

I think the issue of stability fully comes from whatever drivers you're running, and not from WinXP64 itself. I've been running it on different machines (both work and MAME) for 4-5 years now and never had an issue with stability. The only time I was having stability issues, it turned out to be a failing hardware issue.

[scofthe7seas]

The hardware is definitely not failing, but a lot of brand new stuff that obviously wasn't around when Windows XP came out.

[equlizer]

is mame setup for multiple cores?  I think its just about the speed of the cpu.

[smalltownguy]

Regardless of whether or not you're using multiple cores, with the i7 2600k, you've got 4 pipelines to work with, so even if MAME is running in a single one, the rest of the cores can handle all of the other OS activities going on. And you can OC each of the cores separately.

I'm about to do some formal benchmarking on my i7 2600k soon.

First blush reports show MK4 running for 180 seconds at an average of 89% with the chip clocked to 4.5ghz.

I'm putting the finishing touches on my test rig and I'm hoping to get 5.1ghz stable on air cooling. Then I'll start my benchmark tests.

[smalltownguy]

Alright, finally some results. My core i7 gets pretty flaky after 4.8ghz, so I chose to keep it there for now.

5346.38% - 1942
735.65%  - Area 51
352.60%  - gauntleg12
272.67%  - Blitz
387.44%  - Gradius4
177.67%  - Propcycl
142.97%  - radikalb
121.86%  - starsldr

Not too shabby

My system setup: ASUS P8P67M-Pro, 8 Gigs Ripjaw 12800 RAM,  64GB SATA III SSD, I7 2600k clocked to 4.8 on air, NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT 256mb PCIe, running XP 64bit.

[brad808]

Alright, finally some results. My core i7 gets pretty flaky after 4.8ghz, so I chose to keep it there for now.

5346.38% - 1942
735.65%  - Area 51
327.25%  - gauntleg
272.67%  - Blitz
387.44%  - Gradius4
177.67%  - Propcycl
142.97%  - radikalb
121.86%  - starsldr

Not too shabby

My system setup: ASUS P8P67M-Pro, 8 Gigs Ripjaw 12800 RAM,  64GB SATA III SSD, I7 2600k clocked to 4.8 on air, NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT 256mb PCIe, running XP 64bit.

I've been curious about this actually. When you have benchmark numbers like that on games such as gauntlet legends and blitz are you able to play them without any sound stuttering?

[smalltownguy]

Both games play perfectly with no audio issues. I played a full half of football in Blitz and it plays perfectly.

Gauntlet legends crashes randomly after I start gameplay. My cpu is nowhere near maxed out - the game is running in 4 out of 8 cores, and each of them is at best 60% utilized.

Is Gauntlet Legends emulated properly in MAME?

EDIT: I tried version 1.2 of Gauntlet Legends, and it plays perfectly. Wow, fun game. I'll have to get a few guys together and beat the crap out of that one