Basic computer requirements for Mame cabinet????

[skyblast]

Newbie question...Getting ready to build my first mame cabinet and I was wondering what the minimum computer requirements would have to be?

I am interested in only running the basic emulators, mame, nes, snes, etc.  I also plan on building my own arcade controls.

I have already purchased a 22 inch, flat screen CRT??  Am I ok on this one?

As for as the computer goes?

1) 2.0 ghz to maybe something dual core?  I don't need too much do I ?

2) graphics card?  Any suggestions

3) Ram?  Maybe 1.0 gig?

4) hard drive 100 gig?

Anything else?

Thanks for all your help guys.  I am trying to save as much money as possible.  Hopefully I will be able to go on Craig's List and grab a computer that has everything in it already??

Thanks 

[Blanka]

EEE box or Wind PC box?

[Turnarcades]

Aaah... always the topic of much debate. Once you get down to it and play around with the settings/different emulators/frontends/OS, you will see you need very little to make an adequate, even great emulator PC.

My benchmark tests ran my personal basic setup (Mamewah/XP/pre-0.106 MAME plus most Atari/Sega/Nintendo emulators up to 16-bit) with negligible slowdown/lag as far down as P3 equivalent 600mhz CPU, 128mb ram, on-board graphics and sound and just a 20Gb hard drive. I would recommend though for this kind of setup shooting for at least a 1Ghz CPU with 256mb ram, which will also even run 32X and Mega-CD with no trouble.

For a mid-range system with quicker rom-booting times, no lag and possibility of more demanding, plug-in type emulators, I'd recommend a P4 equivalent 1.6Ghz+ CPU with decent on-board graphics, 256mb ram+, and a bigger hard drive obviously. This can get you decent N64/some MAME .chd/possible PSX emulation and faster response times for MAME rom loading.

I'm currently using a custom version MAME v0.105, Laserdisc, PSX plus all mentioned above with no slowdown or glitches on an ex-business P4 2.4Ghz small form factor PC I picked up for 50 quid. Had to get a 160Gb hard drive to manage the bigger PSX isos and laserdisc games, but that wasn't much so I've got an excellent arcade PC done for £80.

I have spent years testing different emu's, settings, OS tweaks and perfecting the Turnarcades/Mamewah frontend though so I had already ironed out most creases my the time I got round to building my new arcade this month!

[Blanka]

Second hand will do for sure, but those specs mentioned cannot be bought in a new system. If you want a no-brainer solution for cheap and new, those simple Atom powered boxes are really nice.

[Malenko]

minimum requirements are:
power supply
motherboard
cpu
ram
hard drive
video card
and if you want sound, a sound card
case,keyboard, and mouse optional but suggested

[ChadTower]

I think he's asking about specs and not what types of hardware he needs.

In order to define the system requirements you have to define the software requirements.  16 bit console emulators don't need much juice.  MAME, on the other hand, often does depending on what type of games you want it to run.  If you want to run JAMMA era games you can get away with an inexpensive system.  If you want to run just the classics you can get away with one you took out of the trash.  If you want to run the most current games MAME emulates then the PC is going to cost you some bread.

Tell us the software requirements and we can help you with the system requirements.

[skyblast]

Aaah... always the topic of much debate. Once you get down to it and play around with the settings/different emulators/frontends/OS, you will see you need very little to make an adequate, even great emulator PC.

My benchmark tests ran my personal basic setup (Mamewah/XP/pre-0.106 MAME plus most Atari/Sega/Nintendo emulators up to 16-bit) with negligible slowdown/lag as far down as P3 equivalent 600mhz CPU, 128mb ram, on-board graphics and sound and just a 20Gb hard drive. I would recommend though for this kind of setup shooting for at least a 1Ghz CPU with 256mb ram, which will also even run 32X and Mega-CD with no trouble.

For a mid-range system with quicker rom-booting times, no lag and possibility of more demanding, plug-in type emulators, I'd recommend a P4 equivalent 1.6Ghz+ CPU with decent on-board graphics, 256mb ram+, and a bigger hard drive obviously. This can get you decent N64/some MAME .chd/possible PSX emulation and faster response times for MAME rom loading.

I'm currently using a custom version MAME v0.105, Laserdisc, PSX plus all mentioned above with no slowdown or glitches on an ex-business P4 2.4Ghz small form factor PC I picked up for 50 quid. Had to get a 160Gb hard drive to manage the bigger PSX isos and laserdisc games, but that wasn't much so I've got an excellent arcade PC done for £80.

I have spent years testing different emu's, settings, OS tweaks and perfecting the Turnarcades/Mamewah frontend though so I had already ironed out most creases my the time I got round to building my new arcade this month!

Wow, thanks to everyone but Turnarcades you really answered perfectly what I was wanting to know!! 

So now I guess what you are telling me is that I need to figure out what types I games I want to play and on what emulators?

My initial thought is that I will only be playing mame arcade types games but I imagine that when one sees all the possibilities...they will eventually want them all!!!  Mooohhhh ha ha ha ha.

Turnarcades, I'll believe your second option is what I should be shooting for and what's great is that I should be able to pick all of that up for cheap!!  Right? A couple hundred bucks?

Ok to summarize (option2)

AT least the following:

XP

1.6 ghz computer P4...is that equivalent to an AMD +2500??

256 ram....maybe half would be better?

How big of a hard drive?  I'm thinking at least 60gig for the 5,000 or so roms that I already have for nes, snes, genesis, mame

Thanks so much!!

 

[Games001]

My current setup:

Running WinXP:H - MAME v.126 as it's the only one that I can get LCD Guns running on.

24" 480i TV (new)
ASUS A7V8X Mother Board
2.0 Ghz Single Core Pentium
1 GB PC-2100 RAM
160 GB Hard Drive (for OS, MAME full set of ROMs, Daphne)
ATI 9800 All-in_Wonder (TV-Out) 128MB Video Card
Onboard '97 Sound w/ 2.1 Speakers
350w Power Supply

Runs everything, except the usual Cruisin' Games, without a hitch or slow down ever.

[Malenko]

a P4 2.0-2.4 with at least 1Gb of RAM and a normal video card runs pretty much everything except the high end arcade games and CHD games.  I have a P4 2.4 in the mame cab and it runs everything I want it to. Killer instinct 2 runs at like 90% speed so I play that on my killer instinct cabinet instead.

it runs every 16 bit emulator perfect, runs the Dreamcast EMU pretty well too. get as much PC as you can afford but dont go breaking the bank for a MAME PC. My MAME PC is my desktop for forever ago, that got hand-me downed to my sister and when she got a new PC she gave it back and it went into the MAME cab to replace the PIII-833 that was in there (that ran the classics just fine and the 16 bits just fine as well)

pardon my earlier smart-assed reply but in my defense it was the answer to your initial question.

Do you have a Desktop PC right now? What are the specs? Run mame on it and extrapolate some results (if your PC is a 2.0 GHz machine and it runs mame fine, then a 2.0 will suffice, ya dig?)

Also note, MAME doesnt make much use of bad ass videocards so just get an adequate one with a good amount of Video RAM

[Blanka]

Even VRAM is useless. A 240x288 pixel screen can do on 256kb VRAM! Even plain pixelwork on a 1920x1200 HD display is perfect done with 8Mb VRAM.

[Turnarcades]

Turnarcades, I'll believe your second option is what I should be shooting for and what's great is that I should be able to pick all of that up for cheap!!  Right? A couple hundred bucks?

Ok to summarize (option2)

AT least the following:

XP

1.6 ghz computer P4...is that equivalent to an AMD +2500??

256 ram....maybe half would be better?

How big of a hard drive?  I'm thinking at least 60gig for the 5,000 or so roms that I already have for nes, snes, genesis, mame

Thanks so much!!

Depending on what you want to run, yeah that will suffice. Not sure about the AMD-Pentium comparison speed, though Athlon processors around that mark are roughly the same as the 1.6Ghz P4. If going for this spec, 256mb ram is minimum, 512 would be better. Though if only running 16-bit games besides MAME it shouldn't matter much. The only difference is that larger MAME roms (Metal Slug etc.) will take a little longer to launch. The best thing when it comes to saving hard drive space is to delete all those crappy games in MAME (large, broken, clones, mahjong et al) to have a 'purer' list if nothing else.

[Jack Burton]

Also keep in mind that you may need to go back a few MAME versions depending on the specs of your system.  Sometimes the emulation on particular games, like Mortal Kombat or Donkey Kong, require at least a decent computer even though they are old.  This will probably only matter if you go with a sub 1GHZ pc like mine though.