PC Hardware recommendations?

[Chris2]

Hey y'all. I'm going to be building a new PC for my cabinet and was wondering what others were using. I know for sure that I'll be using Windows XP(at least for now) and will want to play a lot of recent games (late 90's, early 00's). Any suggestions?

[Strife]

Single-core Pentium IV - as fast as you can find/your budget will allow.  3 GB RAM.  500 - 750 GB HD.  Basic sound card and video card with TV output (assuming you're using a TV as your monitor).

[TelcoLou]

My test set-up:

Old Sony VAIO laptop
2.4Ghz Pentium 4
512MB RAM
32MB on-board Radion 7500C video

^ this runs ~90% of the games I've tested at full-speed, so I'll be building a new PC with better specs for it's permanent home in my cab.

.. but 3GB RAM?? isn't that overkill? I was planning on 2GB, max ... 

[Strife]

RAM is cheap and 3 GB is the max that XP home will recognize.  It can only help and the incremental cost vs. 2 GB is minimal.

[TelcoLou]

Makes sense

I haven't bough RAM in like ... 3 or 4 years now LOL

[Chris2]

Thanks for the help. Just one small correction, Strife, is that XP recognizes a maximum of 4GB of RAM. Still, thanks for your help.

*blasts off*

[Chris2]

Out of curiosity, though, why only single core? I could easily go dual core.

[Silver]

Thanks for the help. Just one small correction, Strife, is that XP recognizes a maximum of 4GB of RAM. Still, thanks for your help.

In theory. In practice, XP will only report and use 3.25GB of RAM, even if you have 4GB of ram installed. There is nothing in mame that will use more than 2GB RAM, I believe (unless you are running lots of other programs at the same time!).



I can not agree with the CPU recommendation either. Recent versions of mame are now (slightly) faster with a dual-core processor, not to mention the OS running smoother with 2 cores.

Also, Core 2's completely outperform P IV's clock-for-clock in every possible way, and draw vastly less power. And are quite cheap.

Buy a Core 2 Duo, get 2GB of Ram. It will absolutely eat all but the most demanding mame games. Not much to be gained getting a quadcore at the moment, so save your pennies.

[zvar]

In theory. In practice, XP will only report and use 3.25GB of RAM, even if you have 4GB of ram installed. There is nothing in mame that will use more than 2GB RAM, I believe (unless you are running lots of other programs at the same time!).

Well, it's not XP that's doing that though.  A limit to 32bit computers is the 4GB limit of memory.  What happens is the motherboard and BIOS need a bit of the memory address space for stuff like the memory controller, the IDE controller, North bridge, south bridge, etc.
It doesn't use the memory to control any of that, but it does need that memory space.

The more bells and whistles there are, the less memory that is avail.  On my server-class motherboard, with no one-board satas, no sound, etc I got 3.75 GB in a 32bit OS (Server 2003 specifically, but even XP Home will report and use the same.)

Also since you are getting a new system, you might want to look at the post for the mame32 bit vs. mame64 bit performance and choose an OS accordingly.

Steven

[u_rebelscum]

Also, Core 2's completely outperform P IV's clock-for-clock in every possible way, and draw vastly less power. And are quite cheap.

Yup, a Core 2 Duo @ 2 Ghz is about the same as a P4 dual core @ 4 Ghz for most games in mame.  Go C2D if you want some of the high end (blitz, gauntlet legends) to be playable.  (be sure to check the link in last post)

[BASS!]

Just posted this info in another thread, but it took so darn long, I figured I would post it here too to aid this discussion as well. A pretty all around, very fast and overclockable machine.


Item numbers and pricing direct from Newegg.com

Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX All Solid Capacitor Intel Motherboard
89.99

Processor
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz 6MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor
$239.99

Ram
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-6400CL5D-2GBNQ
$44.99

Video Card
MSI NX8400GS-TD256EH GeForce 8400GS 256MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Video Card
$37.99

Power supply
COOLER MASTER eXtreme Power RP-550-PCAR ATX from factor 12V V2.01 550W Power Supply
$59.99

Cpu Cooler A must for any custom machine, seriously why not?
ZALMAN CNPS9500 AT 2 Ball CPU Cooling Fan/Heatsink
42.99

Hard Drive
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320820A 320GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM
74.99


And all for a grand total of ..................... $590.93 + shipping

[taz-nz]

Item numbers and pricing direct from Newegg.com

Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX All Solid Capacitor Intel Motherboard
89.99

Processor
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz 6MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor
$239.99

Ram
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-6400CL5D-2GBNQ
$44.99

Video Card
MSI NX8400GS-TD256EH GeForce 8400GS 256MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Video Card
$37.99

Power supply
COOLER MASTER eXtreme Power RP-550-PCAR ATX from factor 12V V2.01 550W Power Supply
$59.99

Cpu Cooler A must for any custom machine, seriously why not?
ZALMAN CNPS9500 AT 2 Ball CPU Cooling Fan/Heatsink
42.99

Hard Drive
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320820A 320GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM
74.99


And all for a grand total of ..................... $590.93 + shipping

Not a bad spec, but I'd change a couple of things:

First the Zalman Fans are way over-rated, everyone uses them in their review because they look great and are quite, the best value for money heatsink out the currently in my mind is the Cooler Master Hyper 212, Newegg don't stock it so you have to shop around a bit but they are cheaper than the Zalman and offer better cooling, and a bit of tape down the side of the fins to act as a duct will only improve the cooling preformance.

The graphics card, grab a gigabyte 2400pro, a little more but more reliable with all soid capacitors like their preformance motherboards.

Hard Drive, SATA all the way, IDE is dead just no one told it yet. Stick with Western Digital there are alot more reliable and quiter. Trust me on this one I work for a company that sells 10,000s of hard drives a month, most seagate & western digital, the WD failure rate is a lot lower than any other brand.

The last one to watch out for is the RAM speed, The G.Skill tends to overclock well, but if you want to make life easy for yourself get DDR2-1066 RAM, this way you can easily overclock to 4.0ghz without the need to complicate thinks by having to overclock you ram too, DDR2-800 will only get you to 3.6ghz with a E8400 before you need to overclock the RAM also. You can pick up corsair TWIN2X2048-8500C5 for only a little more than the G.Skill as long as you grab it with a rebate, $10 more will normally get you the Dominator DHX version of the same ram.

[Dmod]

When you're buying custom fans, power supply, and cooling, what about the case?  Does it matter which kind you buy?

Is it generally a better deal to try to purchase a case with the power supply and/or cooling?

[SpeedEng]

for the same price of a e8400 I built most of my new htpc?

PC CHIPS P55G LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 7050 Micro ATX (44.99 shipped - $10 mir)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813185110
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 ($53 - $5 promocode - $25 mir)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145590
Intel Pentium Dual Core E2160 M0 Stepping Conroe 1.8GHz 1MB L2 ($67.99 shipped (about the same price everywhere but this came with Lost Planet PC Game for free)
http://clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=CA1938281

I know mame is cpu intense but is mame cache hungry
I dont think it is, due to it being a emulator