MAME performance: use of multiple cores and is clock speed more important?

[retrometro]

Thanks for everyone's help w/ my previous question about cpus and compile / no-compile for mame.  This question is somewhat different (or not)...  I saw one of the new Intel E2180 (?) cpu's that run at 2GHz w/ two cores. 

At 32bit, will my Pentium 4 2.53GHz run mame faster?

Does MAME or can MAME take advantage of multiple cores?  (I thought I read not)

Again, I've seen some of the comparison charts but unfortunately, I haven't found one w/ my cpu listed for comparison.  thanks!

[u_rebelscum]

1. No (a core2duo/quad will run about twice as fast as a P4 at the same clock.)
2. Yes (with two cores, no gains with more ATM; speed increase varies from game to game.)

Note that the answer to the second question is only with current and recent versions of mame. And I've heard "it's all about CPU clock for mame" for a long time, but that was bull ever since intel p4 (~20% slower clock to clock than pIII) and the AMD athlon (~ 20% faster than P4 clock to clock) came out; but it took Core2's twice as fast as p4 per clock to break the saying.

[retrometro]

1. No (a core2duo/quad will run about twice as fast as a P4 at the same clock.)

wow, so a cheap $85 Intel E2180 at 2GHz will run as fast as say a Pentium 4 4GHz?

Will a quad core cpu at the same clock run faster than a core2 duo?

thanks.

[KDOG]

No it only utilizes to cores right now if I read urebelscum right

1. No (a core2duo/quad will run about twice as fast as a P4 at the same clock.)
2. Yes (with two cores, no gains with more ATM; speed increase varies from game to game.)

Note that the answer to the second question is only with current and recent versions of mame. And I've heard "it's all about CPU clock for mame" for a long time, but that was bull ever since intel p4 (~20% slower clock to clock than pIII) and the AMD athlon (~ 20% faster than P4 clock to clock) came out; but it took Core2's twice as fast as p4 per clock to break the saying.

[/quote]

[Popcorrin]

1. No (a core2duo/quad will run about twice as fast as a P4 at the same clock.)

wow, so a cheap $85 Intel E2180 at 2GHz will run as fast as say a Pentium 4 4GHz?

Will a quad core cpu at the same clock run faster than a core2 duo?

thanks.

The E2180 is not a core2duo.

[retrometro]

1. No (a core2duo/quad will run about twice as fast as a P4 at the same clock.)

wow, so a cheap $85 Intel E2180 at 2GHz will run as fast as say a Pentium 4 4GHz?

Will a quad core cpu at the same clock run faster than a core2 duo?

The E2180 is not a core2duo.

Right.  I should clairfy.  How does the cheaper dual core E2180 at 2GHz compare to a Pentium4 at 2.5GHz

and then still the questions about how a quad core at the same clock will run mame compared to a core2 duo.  maybe even w/ the same amount of cache?

[massive88]

Mame as far as I know, currently only uses at most 2 cores.

The speed increase from turning on multithreading (using 2 cores instead of one) is about 5%.

There is zero additional benefit to having 4 cores, since Mame is not programmed to utilize them.  You could see a slight increase if you managed to push all other computer processes (of which there shouldnt be many anyway) to the 2 cores that Mame is not using, but I wouldnt expect that to be a noticable difference at all.

Its possible that in the future Mame will utilize multiple cores more, and better, but due to the nature of emulation, thats not likely at least for a good while.

I would imagine the E2180 would be matched up fairly well with the P4, maybe even slower.  If you are trying to keep your budget down, I would go for the E7200, $119 at Newegg, and should smoke the E2180 in Mame.