PC Hardware specs

[georgemcfly]

I know these games were made years ago, but  also know some emulators take some processing power to run smoothly.

My questions:
What system specs do you run?
What systems do you emulate?
What piece is the most crucial for emulator performance? *CPU speed, mem amount, HD speed*?


I see some peoople running dual core 4G+ systems with 10K HD's and I KNOW MAME's have been around long before these systems were. Just want to make sure my system will do what I want it to.

I want to run NES, SNES and arcade. That's about it.

You guys with high end PC's, why do you run them?

Thanks for the info,
George

[Ginsu Victim]

I see some peoople running dual core 4G+ systems with 10K HD's

Huh? 

[HaRuMaN]

I see some peoople running dual core 4G+ systems with 10K HD's

Huh? 

That's what I said...

[risiusj]

I see some peoople running dual core 4G+ systems with 10K HD's

Huh? 

He's talking about dual core (or Core 2 Duo) systems with 4 GB of ram and 10,000 rpm hard drives.  Or maybe he's talking about 4 Ghz cpus.  Either way, that powerful of hardware is going to be unnecessary for most of those looking to make a MAME machine.

To answer the main question:
Emulation is mostly about CPU capability and of course RAM. 
NES and SNES emulation runs fine on computers that are 5 years old.  In my experience arcade emulation runs similarly.  So, if you can play a SNES game from 1993 on your system you can play an arcade game from 1993.

[Ginsu Victim]

My "huh?" was directed at "10k HDs"

[Ginsu Victim]

So, if you can play a SNES game from 1993 on your system you can play an arcade game from 1993.

This is not accurate. Example: Donkey Kong

[gonzo90017]

It doesn't take a really fast computer to run any of those systems. NES, SNES, and Genesis should run fine on just about anything. I'm currently testing on a 233mhz 160mb ram Windows 98SE machine and those 3 systems plus NeoGeo and Capcom arcade games run full speed. The rest of the games are on a per game basis since I use Mame 36 or Raine. The problem with using such an old version of Mame is the romsets.

[Rakae]

Right now in my mame I have the following.

AMD Athlon  1.3 gig
Ram 768 megs of DDR 1
Radion 1600 512 megs ( Note I also used an order card with 128 megs and it worked just as good)

harddrive is just just an old 5400 rpm

I can play all everything 16 bit and before.
I can play almost all arcade games fine. It will not play anything 3d at a the right speed.
Killer instinct plays slow as well.

[wbassett]

I agree that for most games it doesn't take a powerhouse PC.  In my cab now is a 1.2GHz AMD Thunderbird with 512 ram and a 60GB HD.  Video is some AGP card I had laying around, so it's nothing fantastic.

I also have mame running on a Medion PC upstairs that I kinda use as a test bed.  It's a 2.8GHz system with a gig of ram and NVidia AGP card.

Most games play fine, but I ran into some that had some serious lag, so bad it wasn't even watchable for the game intro let alone playing the game.

I know there are more than this, but this one comes to mind because I just tried it out...

Star Wars Arcade would not run on either the Thunderbird or the Medion 2.8Ghz system.  I acquired a new PC from my son because it was 'broke' (ended up only needing a $15 CPU fan) and its a 3.33Ghz Hyperthreading CPU with 2GB ram and I am using the onboard video.  It does have a PCI Express video slot but I don't have a spare card for it.

Star Wars Arcade came up an ran just fine.  Granted there are known bugs with the version I have, but it wouldn't run on the other systems at all.  It was choppy and the sound stuttered so bad I originally marked it as unuse-able but now it looks like a pretty cool game.

There is also a couple of Japanese fighting games that had frame rate issues on my Medion PC and they run just fine on the ASUS board, and as I mentioned, that's with onboard video too and no fancy card.

So like everyone points out, it really depends on what you want to do and play.  If you want a classic cab, then 99% of the classic games should play fine with even a super old PC (like my Thunderbird).  But if you want to play some newer games, or games like Donkey Kong, then you may want a little more beef.

I want to be able to play certain PC games on my system too, so I want a bit beefer PC in my cab, but that's a personal preference.

[Shieldwolf]

This would be nice to have in a  new forum section or to have added to the  "What computer do I need to run Mame"to include other emulators as well.

[miles2912]

My "huh?" was directed at "10k HDs"

10k hd are 10,000 rpm drives.  Raptors and such.  Very fast load times but way overkill here.

[TOK]

My MAME cabs have all been built from parts left over when I upgrade, etc. The fastest machine I have in a MAME cab is a 2ghz Pentium 4 with 512 meg of RAM that was given to me because it wouldn't turn on. One power supply later, I had the foundation for my first cab. My bartop runs on a P3/933.

If I get a really fast machine, I'm running regular PC games on it.
I have zero interest in running console emulators on an arcade cab. It strikes me as goofy, since the only reason I ever had consoles was to try to bring the arcade experience home. 

[georgemcfly]

If I get a really fast machine, I'm running regular PC games on it.
I have zero interest in running console emulators on an arcade cab. It strikes me as goofy, since the only reason I ever had consoles was to try to bring the arcade experience home. 

This is what I was thinking. I have an extra 1.7GHZ machine with 1GB of ram and a 7200 RPM HD. I'm only wanting the older stuff. I have a 360 if I want to play new games.

Thanks for the info. Still gathering pieces and hoping to start my tear down this weekend. Cab is in good shape, top has slight damage but bottom is good. Pulling monitor and electronics out and see if I can get it sturdied up and start stripping it down to refinish.

[TOK]

The 1.7ghz machine will run nearly everything perfectly if you just stick to a bit older version of MAME. I'm using .99 since Robotron speed is correct in that one. You'll need sound samples for some of the games (Donkey Kong is the main one that's now emulated in software in the new version), but I prefer the older, quicker versions with the included hiscore.dat.

Good luck with the project! 

[Paul Olson]

I just had to upgrade my computers, and I am putting the most powerful one in my cab. I have a 360 for the 3d games, so I don't need the best for my main computer. If you have to build a computer for your cab, I would say build a powerful one. The price difference between a low end amd and a 3ghz+ core2duo is not that much; less than $100. If you are using old stuff fine, but get the most out of your investment if you are building a new one.