Intel Celeron, 32MB Ram and 4gig HDD??? Enough to run M.A.M.E??

[jardine]

Hey guys,

As mentioned n the subject this is the pc i have and was hoping to run mame 32 with. I wish to play most games like Raiden, the MK series and Street Fighter etc... Not sure what speed the celeron chip is but i am running 98SE with it.

As for the sound and video....probably crappy. 16 colour graphics card is all it can handle at the moment so looking at updating this at the very least.

Will this be enough or should i just build one for $300-400(AUS). Went into the wiki for help and wow...was there some debate, so i know it's a loaded question of sorts.

Any help and guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanx

[TelcoLou]

While that setup might be enough to run some older games, it barely cuts it ... especially in the RAM department.

I advise building a new rig.

[jardine]

Bugger     thought as much...any suggestions for min requirements without causing a massive thread on the matter

[TelcoLou]

Well, I will soon be upgrading to a new PC, but am currently using an old laptop as a "test setup". It runs about 90% of the 2000+ games at full-speed, but I need to upgrade due to a couple of issues:

• Lack of USB 2.0 ports (its only got 2 USB 1.1 ports)
• Lower specs causing the 10% or so of the newer games to run sloooow.

Here's the lappy's specs as a benchmark:

P4 2.4 ghz
512MB ram
32MB integrated Radeon 7500c gfx chip
40GB HD

I plan on getting a pc with:

Pentium Core Duo (Unsure of what speed)
128MB Radeon Gfx card (any kind really, as I don't need s-video out since I'm using a PC Monitor)
2GB ram
80GB HD (minimum)
Decent sound card (any kind since I'll only be using a 2.1 speaker setup)

Hope this helps

[jardine]

Thanx TelcoLou....will probably follow your spec advise...cheers...

Oh....Windows XP??? or 2000??? I think from memory XP is a better system, more stable than 2000 but i guess for mame may not worry

[TelcoLou]

Oh yeah, I'm running XP Home. So I'll stick with that ... I hear horror stories about Vista 

Enjoy

[TheShanMan]

Maybe that would work with an OLD build of mame, but certainly not recent builds. I don't even think you'll be able to do the early games well.

[Jdurg]

Oh yeah, I'm running XP Home. So I'll stick with that ... I hear horror stories about Vista 

Enjoy

The funny thing is, I heard those horror stories as well and it made me VERY reluctant to move to Windows Vista from Windows XP.  It's just that with my new Core2Duo CPU in my laptop (Penryn 2.5 GHz CPU) I wanted a 64-bit OS.  Well, I was kind of limited on my OS choices so I had to go with Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit.  Guess how many of those horror stories have been true?  None.  Vista has been surprisingly stable and I have actually learned to really love it.  Plus, the 64-bit version of MAME is awesome!   

[TheShanMan]

You mean mame 64 is somehow better than mame 32? Can you describe how?

[taz-nz]

You mean mame 64 is somehow better than mame 32? Can you describe how?

20%+ average gain in preformace accross the board, with only a couple of games dropping in preformance due to 32bit optimisation that don't work in 64bit builds.




 

[TheShanMan]

Sweet!

[gonzo90017]

Well if you could at least get 128mb total memory that should be enough to run Street Fighter, and Raiden but not MK. Dowload Aida32 and it should tell you what speed your Celeron is. I'm using a 400mhz celeron and I can run most games full speed with no frameskip up to Mame37b16. You can find the roms by searching google for Mame gp2x roms. Since that mame version is based on Mame 34 with some extra games added from the 37 series.

[jardine]

Ok...gives me something to work with...thanx everyone. By the look of it i'm gonna have to update due to the fact i really want most of the MK games...

XP or Vista...make me a beleiver...but think i'll go with xp

Thanx again guys

[MaximRecoil]

There is no way to know how it will do without knowing the processor speed; as that is the most important part for MAME.

Just as an example, I had a 733 mHz Celeron with 64 MB of RAM and Windows Me that would run SFII, MK and MKII fine (MAME32 v.58), but was slow with MK3 (somewhat playable though).

[TheShanMan]

Video card is also very important part of performance - that can't be ignored either.

[u_rebelscum]

There is no way to know how it will do without knowing the processor speed; as that is the most important part for MAME.

Other thing about the "celeron" brand is it could be core2 tech, down to pentium (I) tech.  With the low mem and no hz number to go on, I'd guess a pI or pII tech celeron.

Video card is also very important part of performance - that can't be ignored either.

With newer mames, yes.  Older versions, which might be needed for that CPU, aren't as dependent on the video card.

[MaximRecoil]

Video card is also very important part of performance - that can't be ignored either.

Not really; not for pure emulation anyway. There are certain effects in MAME that benefit from a decent video card, such as hardware stretching, but those things aren't essential.

[MaximRecoil]

Other thing about the "celeron" brand is it could be core2 tech, down to pentium (I) tech.  With the low mem and no hz number to go on, I'd guess a pI or pII tech celeron.

I would expect it to be a PII-based Celeron considering the amount of RAM it has; possibly a PIII-based Celeron in the 600 mHz range (eMachines pumped out a lot of ~600 mHz Celeron, 32 MB RAM machines in the late '90s for example).

[Kaytrim]

I heard some news on the Vista front from one of my coworkers that might cure the horror stories.  Microsoft will be pushing out service pack 1 for Vista in the next week or so that is supposed to take care of the slowdown issue.

TTFN
Kaytrim

[TheShanMan]

Video card is also very important part of performance - that can't be ignored either.

Not really; not for pure emulation anyway. There are certain effects in MAME that benefit from a decent video card, such as hardware stretching, but those things aren't essential.

I'm going on empirical evidence - I had performance problems until I upgraded my video card. It made a big difference for me. I tried every setting I could imagine before deciding to upgrade the video card. That upgrade by itself is what did it in my case.

[MaximRecoil]

Video card is also very important part of performance - that can't be ignored either.

Not really; not for pure emulation anyway. There are certain effects in MAME that benefit from a decent video card, such as hardware stretching, but those things aren't essential.

I'm going on empirical evidence - I had performance problems until I upgraded my video card. It made a big difference for me. I tried every setting I could imagine before deciding to upgrade the video card. That upgrade by itself is what did it in my case.

I don't know what they are doing in MAME these days, but with the older versions of MAME that would be suitable for the OP's hardware, the video card is irrelevant in regard to actual emulation performance.

[Jdurg]

Granted, however, an incredibly old/bad video card will hurt performance no matter what version of MAME you have.  Generally speaking though, I wouldn't know of anybody who would try to run MAME on a video card that bad.

The gist of it is that you can spend $30 and get a videocard that can quite capably handle MAME.  You don't need to spend hundred of dollars on a card to get performance out of MAME.

[TheShanMan]

Agreed, but this guy is talking about an *old* system. That's very similar to what my configuration was at the time. An old system will not have a video card that is anything close to what you can buy for $30 now. So that's why the video card DOES matter - not for more modern systems, but for older systems. My new amd 4200 dual core system has a $45 card in it and every game I care to play runs perfectly.

[Jdurg]

Agreed, but this guy is talking about an *old* system. That's very similar to what my configuration was at the time. An old system will not have a video card that is anything close to what you can buy for $30 now. So that's why the video card DOES matter - not for more modern systems, but for older systems. My new amd 4200 dual core system has a $45 card in it and every game I care to play runs perfectly.

Agreed.  I just wanted to make sure he didn't mis-interpret your statement and think that he had to spend multiple hundreds of dollars on a new videocard.   

[MaximRecoil]

Granted, however, an incredibly old/bad video card will hurt performance no matter what version of MAME you have.  Generally speaking though, I wouldn't know of anybody who would try to run MAME on a video card that bad.

The games that MAME emulates had their own video hardware, which means that the original video hardware for the game (along with the rest of the game's original hardware) is already on your PC, virtually. If the original game didn't need help from a PC video card to run properly, then why would MAME need help from a PC video card?

A really old/bad video card may cause display problems, but it shouldn't affect the actual emulation performance (speed and accuracy).

[TheShanMan]

Accuracy wasn't the problem. It was performance. Mame has to be able to interface with the video card fast enough to keep going at full speed!

That's all I'm going to say on the issue. I'm not going to make the mistake of engaging you in another pointless argument, MR.

[MaximRecoil]

Accuracy wasn't the problem. It was performance. Mame has to be able to interface with the video card fast enough to keep going at full speed!

That's all I'm going to say on the issue. I'm not going to make the mistake of engaging you in another pointless argument, MR.

So you had a video card that couldn't render low resolution, low color depth video at 60 FPS? What kind of card was it? I've never heard of a Pentium-era PC video card that couldn't do such a humble task.

You could have had a driver issue. Or you may have needed to turn down the color depth and resolution for the games in MAME (rather than having them on "auto"), and turn off DirectDraw, etc.

[johnperkins21]

Ok...gives me something to work with...thanx everyone. By the look of it i'm gonna have to update due to the fact i really want most of the MK games...

XP or Vista...make me a beleiver...but think i'll go with xp

Thanx again guys

If you're only spending $500 on the PC, stick with XP. To see the extra performance in MAME from Vista you'll want to spend at least a grand on the machine. I've been using Vista for about 6 months now and am very happy with it, but I've got a fairly hefty machine. Wouldn't use it on my MAME machine though as it simply takes up too many resources on its own.

[u_rebelscum]

MaimRecoil & ShanMan, there are many options that could make the video card an issue.  It could be just the changes to the default settings.  Just to name a few.

D3D vs DD vs no directX:
Mame's default method was DirectDraw up to 0.106, and changed to direct3D from 0.107 on.  If the card sucks at d3d, use dd.  But the default settings now favor a d3d tuned card.

resolution:
Mame's default method was to switch resolution to near the original.  OTOH, the current is to keep the desktop res and with d3d stretch to the bigger res.  If the card isn't good at that high a res, make mame use a smaller res.  Again, the default settings now favor a higher res tuned card than before.

overlays/bezels/art:
Mame has increased the art features.  By default these are all enabled.  If the card can't handle the high res art rerending or memory size, disable this or delete the art files.  Again, the default settings + having the art files can make a huge hit on old cards.

None of these slow downs are part of the emulation of the original hardware, but to most users, the slow down doesn't matter if it has to do with emulating the game or drawing on the monitor, while to the developer the two are very different.


And older versions that didn't have these features or, if did, had different defaults, will be able to use lesser video cards without slow down.