How much of a difference does a better graphics card make?

[Jop]

I've been offered a geForce 4400 by a friend and I'm wondering if it'll make much of a difference to my setup below or would I be better finding more RAM to stick in there?

P4 1.7ghz
384mb RAM
geForce 2mx
MAME32 0.106

I'm only really interested in the 2d games and most run good, however, there are a few where I'd like to see some improvement.

[leapinlew]

I'd say you need more memory - especially if your system is running XP and isn't thinned down.

[2600]

I think a processor upgrade would do better then RAM.  The Williamette P4's, 2.0GHz and lower, are practically useless. 
I'd rather run a P3 then those.  The only problem is you may not be able to do a processor upgrade.

[Jop]

I'd say you need more memory - especially if your system is running XP and isn't thinned down.

Yeah, I know, but I need old SD RAM and no-one I know seems to have any knocking around anymore.

Even I can remember uttering the words "no-one will ever need this old crap again" whilst chucking about 2million gigabytes of the stuff in the bin!

I think a processor upgrade would do better then RAM.  The Williamette P4's, 2.0GHz and lower, are practically useless.

I can't agree with you more but I'm existing in the land of 'freebies from my mates' and this is the best I was offered

[Fozzy The Bear]

Graphics cards will make little difference to performance in Mame 2D Games and as that is what you say you want to run, that system is fine. However.......

1) Drop Windows XP and install windows98SE. XP is a System Hog and not ideal for that machine. 98SE will be faster on that machine.

2) As you only want to run 2D classics.... Drop back to a version of Mame around 0.87 or so and get a rom set to match it. Drop Mame32 and install the command line version, and install a front end.

3) Incease that Memory to around 512Megs   (Ebay for memory modules, or find some junk PC's being chucked out and scavinge the SDRam) I quite often pick stuff up from the local junk tip... Where they tend to haul anything like that out and stick it on one side to sell off for a bit of beer money. I've had a complete Mac system with monitor printer and a box of software, in the past for £5 plugged it in and the whole lot worked. I've had 4 PC's of various specs, two of which worked first time, and two which I just stripped for parts for about £2 each. People throw out perfectly good technology when they get bored with it.

4) A 1.7Ghz P4 is perfectly good enough... I run one of my machines with a 1.5Ghz P4 and it's more than fast enough to run almost anything except CHD games.

5) If you're using on board sound, dich it,  it's chewing up system memory. Fit a cheap 16Bit Soundblaster card instead. This can have a massive effect on performance.

It just needs a bit of effort to get something good working....Hope that helps.....

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[Gehrig]

If you are going to drop XP, I would say use Win 2000.  Support for 98SE as been dropped a long time ago by companies.

Also, I would personally upgrade RAM before the Processor.   I would expect to see a bigger difference in MAME perfomance with more memory rather than a fast proc.  But, whatever you get for free is worth a try.


Can you give an example of a game that you think needs improvement?

[u_rebelscum]

geForce 2mx
MAME32 0.106

I agree with Fozzy, mostly, but to clear a few things:

Your graphic card is okay with this version of mame, and any speed increase will be pretty small.  But not because the games you play are 2d; a new card would help the same (ie: very little) for 3d games with that version of mame or earlier.

Later versions (0.107+) of mame probably would see a bigger speed increase by changing those cards, due to the video system overhaul that happened between 0.106 & 0.107, but since you're not using 'em, ehh.

OTOH, the 4400 is better tuned for more current versions of mame, and if you ever get a freebie with better CPU & memory... you could transfer the 4400 over (if it could fit the newer board) and upgrade mame, while the 2mx won't like the newer mames.
 

[MaximRecoil]

You'll get the biggest improvement in speed by running a version of MAME that came out when your processor was current, which would have been 2001 or so. A version of MAME between say, .55 and .62 or so would be about the right time frame.

[Jop]

Cheers for all the advice!

I've taken the 4400 as in the end it was free anyway, but am on the lookout for more memory as we speak.

I've seen that a few people use XP lite setups so I might give this a go. I'm getting a new harddrive for the system as the current one is very noisy and a little on the small size (40gb), so I think I'll put it on then as my cabinet is due to be finished tonight (just the controls to be wired up) and I don't think my wife will put up with another delay 

[Malenko]

I would have taken it too, free is free.

now hit up ebay for some RAM, you can get a lot of old ram for very little cost, just get 4 sticks from the same guy to save on shipping. same thing with processors. I just got an AMD64 X2 3800 for $30 shipped to replace my single core 3500.  socket 939s are hard to find.

I just went through my piles of old parts and cant find any memory sticks, what exactly do you need? I have friends that stockpile junk like me, maybe I can find something for ya

[Jop]

It's using PC133 and I have 3x 128mb sticks in at the mo. I figure a couple of 256 couldn't hurt

Thing is, I live in the UK (just realised you probably know this since you already sent me something gratis - so double  ) so postage would probably make it not worth it, but thanks for the offer anyway 

[WareWolF]

Check your motherboard mfr web site if it is a intel motherboard, alot of those older intel chipsets were limited to 512MB maximum memory.

[TheManuel]

I've been testing an old PIII-800MHz for my MAME cab and call tell you a few things with confidence:

1. For most 3D games, especially the CHD variety, you're screwed anyway so don't even bother.  Hopefully you, like me, don't like any of them.  If you do, get the fastest Core 2 Duo you can afford an overclockable motherboard (see this thread

2. For 2D games, any video card will do fine, even integrated as long as you have a minimum of memory.  The only disadvantage of most on-board video cards is that they use your system memory.  I tried an old AGP video card on my system and it did not improve performance in MAME by the slightest bit.  Besides, if performance is at a premium and/or you plan to use a real arcade monitor, you should be using directdraw to render the video in which case the video card won't matter anyway.  Oh, an if you want it for 3D games, remember you're screwed anyway (see #1).  Caveat: your hardware might react differently, please borrow a video card and try this out for yourself.

3. As for external sound card, I have not tried one myself so I can't comment but I don't expect that to make any difference.  The memory used for sound is a fraction of that used for video and, again, an external video card does not make much difference.  Again, same caveat.  Borrow one and try it out.

4. Tiny XP.  This is an urban legend that people hear and pass along to others needing to scrape out performance without actually trying it on their own systems because they don't need it having modern computers.  I built a super minimalistic install of Windows XP using nLite and removing everything except the motherboard, CPU and sound drivers and Direct X.  As a result I gained about 2% improvement in MAME performance.  I then went back and made a much bigger installation and cut a lot of fat but kept networking capabilities and I still got the 2%.  My point here is that the performance gains are minimal.  By the way, avoiding MAMEUI thinking it takes up resources and slow MAME down compared to the command line version is another urban legend.  Try it for yourself.  Then again I plan to use MALA as front-end.

5. Windows 98SE or DOS.  I've never run on DOS but I used to run Windows 98SE back in 2001 and when I switched to XP actually gained a few percentage points improvements.  However, it can depend on how my system was configured back then and I am not going to dual Win98SE now just to try it out.  Besides it is defunct OS as someone else mentioned and I don't think it is worth the hassle.

6. Memory.  The trick is, where the hell is the point of diminishing returns?  As I understand it, MAME loads the whole ROM into memory.  However, the largest ROM games around tip the scales around 80MB (at least the ones I have tried).  I tested Garou: Mark of the Wolves (80GB ROM) with 384 and 512MB of memory and did not see any difference whatsoever so I think that sweet spot is probably somewhere around 192 to 384.  Now this is something you should test for yourself.  Play with difference combinations of the memory you have now starting with something really low like 128MG.  If you don't see any difference after say, 256MB with the most massive games you want to play, then what's the point of getting 512MB?  And if you think you might need it for the largest CHD games, don't worry.  You're screwed for those, remember?

7.  Hard drive: don't bother.  Just get one that will hold all your games and have room for the OS, pagefile, etc.  The only difference hard drive speed makes is while loading the ROM to memory.  After that, it will be just sitting there for the most part. 

8.  Wireless networking.  Try to avoid having this active during games if performance is at a premium.  It is the one thing in all of my experiments that gave me a significant performance hit.  Of course, you should not be running other applications along with MAME.  Shutting down the antivirus did not make any difference for me so you might just want to stay protected.

9.  Processor speed: the whole grail of MAME performance.  Period.  But like me, you want to make what you have work so upgrading here is not an option (and probably unnecessary in your case, keep reading).

10.  Earlier MAME versions.  Now we're talking  .  This is, by very far, the best way to increase performance in MAME.
On my PIII-800MHz, PC-133 512MB, on-board video and sound, I can:
 - Play all NeoGeo, CPS-2 games at full speed with MAMEplus v0.104
 - Play the Mortal Kombat series with fastMAME v0.56 (uses the same current ROMS)
 - Play CPS-3 games with autoframeskip using VC compiled MAMEplus but not very smoothly at all.  I am working on this front and I think have a solution (and it is not CPS3emulator).  However, I think you will not have a problem with you r1.7GHz on this game.
 - Can't play Donkey Kong with the new discrete sound improvements at full speed but you probably can.

11.  MAME optimizations.  I have tested the different optimization options with the GCC compiler and the gains don't surpass 2% in my system.  However, using the VC compiled of MAMEplus I get about a 10% gain in performance so I recommend using this.  By the way, I'm not trying to plug for MAMEplus or anything.  I have nothing to do with them but I love it because of the performance boost I get from the VC compilation and the ASM core for CPS-2 and NeoGeo games (you don't need this as your computer is more powerful than mine), high score and command list support and confirm quit feature.  Even if you don't want MAMEplus, you could compile the regular version of MAME with Visual Studio (free) to get the performance boost.

Then again, there will be some games you won't be able to play but that goes for everybody anyway and you will be able to play most.

I recommend you use the latest VC compiled MAMEplus for the vast majority of your games and try older versions for whatever games you might not run full speed.

Please try playing with some of these suggestions before you waste good money on PC hardware and report back here with any findings you make to help guide others.

Contact me if you have questions.

Regards.