What WON'T I be able to play?

[pointdablame]

I've seen all kinds of various computer set ups on here and through looking at people's MAME pages, and I know you can run MAME on practically anything.  However, I've never found any kind of information on where certain "cut-offs" for lack of a better term, are.

So what games in MAME should I be able to play with the system I am planning on putting in my cabinet: Athlon 950Mhz, 512mb PC2100 RAM, 40gig, GeForce2 MX, WinXP Pro. This should be the exact PC I'm using unless I decide to go with a TV instead of a monitor, in which case I'll have to swap out the video card for one with S-Video.

Also, from your experience, how will a system like that play Nesticle? zSNES/SNES9x? Genecyst? Visual Boy Advance?

Thanks.

[spectre]

pretty much everything except the KI's and the cruisin games

[grafixmonkey]

Hey wow I had that exact system except an athlon 850 and geforce2 GTS instead of a 950 and an MX.

Spectre answered you about Mame, but expect zsnes to work great almost all the time, limited by low fps if you enable some of the real hardcore 'image improvement' algorithms.  I like FCE Ultra better than Nesticle cuz it's Windows and works with my gamepads in XP Pro - just a suggestion - but don't worry about NES games not playing fast enough on your system, I can play them in winCE on my iPAQ.  Snes9x fine too, but last I played snes games I liked zsnes better.  

You'll be able to play some N64 games nicely too with pj64, I played thru Mario and both Zeldas with that setup.  Slightly stuttery on occasion, but not bothersome, and your 12% speed increase might fix that too.

[paigeoliver]

Nesticle runs full speed on a 486 processor. Snes and Genesis games run full speed on a pentium 200 (maybe more for the newer fancier emulators).

Visual Boy Advance, I dunno, but it runs full speed on a 650 that I have.

Each step up in mhz over 500 only buys you a tiny handfull of games. You really don't need a expensive, or fast computer for emulation. I keep seeing this scenario over and over again.

PERSON 1: How fast of a computer do I need to run game X?

PERSON 2: Mentions some processor speed that only came out this year.

ME: Hello! That game was running full speed 3 years before that processor you mentioned was even available.

A classic example of this was a thread about a month ago where several people stated that you needed a 500 Mhz processor for Nes games. Man, I have no idea how I was managing to play them full speed on my 40 mhz laptop 4 years ago, or how I still continue to play them on my 100 mhz laptop today.

Buying a 3 ghz computer for mame today is a big waste of money, as the only advantage it has over a 650 is about a dozen games of questionable quality that are either EXACTLY like 100 other games in Mame (the fighting and sports games), or require funky controls that you probably don't have anyway (Cruisin, Stun Runner, Prop Cycle, Area 51, etc).

[anthony691]

Fast enough! In fact... a good middle ground of a speed:)

[Malachai]

I'm running a Duron 950MHz with 256MB in my MAME machine.  Like they say, everything but Crusin' and KI Games run great!  I haven't really had any problems.  It even runs Zinc games well.  Really blows with Nebula M2 games though  Too bad, I really wanted to play Fighting Vipers.

[rampy]

PERSON 1: How fast of a computer do I need to run game X?

PERSON 2: Mentions some processor speed that only came out this year.

ME: Hello! That game was running full speed 3 years before that processor you mentioned was even available.

A classic example of this was a thread about a month ago where several people stated that you needed a 500 Mhz processor for Nes games. Man, I have no idea how I was managing to play them full speed on my 40 mhz laptop 4 years ago, or how I still continue to play them on my 100 mhz laptop today.

P.O. I agree with you in principle, but when people say get x or y processor they are (hopefully) saying:

1.  future proof/overhead for newer emulators or requirements or features
2.  Value  --> you could go to a local PC salvage place and get a used 500 mhz machine for 100 beans (or whatever)... but you could invest in a mid tier AMD xp chip/mobo and be able to run windoze, and a fancy pants FE instead of trying to bilk that last ounce of performance out of an older machine in DOS/etc...

I dunno... there are some fun games that don't run well on a 500mhz or lower box, so if that annoys you...  upgrade. (but I do think a 3 gig machine is overkill for a mame cabinet )

*shrug* I dunno.  I like to buy my chips/mobo's slightly behind the curve.  I replaced a celery 366@550 with an amd xp1700 for like 110 beans (albeit I swapped over soundcard (although it had onboard sound/video) and video card , HD and ram, etc....

Rampy

[pointdablame]

ok, im glad to hear that I'll be able to run most everything.  I bought the computer complete for 120 bux so I was happy with that. As long as I can play the majority of games, I'm happy.

Will there be any problems running a FE? any a bigger resource hog than others?

[SirPoonga]

Each step up in mhz over 500 only buys you a tiny handfull of games. You really don't need a expensive, or fast computer for emulation. I keep seeing this scenario over and over again.

Hell no!  My PIII 500 barely runs zinc well.  It's playable, but not fun.  Many neogeo games don't run at half speed.

A 950 should do well though for most everything you will want to play.  I plan on getting a 1.5ghz machine for my cabinet to run the games I want (like viva nonno emulator).

[anthony691]

Each step up in mhz over 500 only buys you a tiny handfull of games. You really don't need a expensive, or fast computer for emulation. I keep seeing this scenario over and over again.

Hell no!  My PIII 500 barely runs zinc well.  It's playable, but not fun.  Many neogeo games don't run at half speed.

A 950 should do well though for most everything you will want to play.  I plan on getting a 1.5ghz machine for my cabinet to run the games I want (like viva nonno emulator).

Well, my PIII 450 plays ALL CPS2 and Neo-Geo games at 100% speed... I don't know why really...

It plays some games that poeple on PIII 950s say won't be perfect for them... it is quite odd...

[jakejake28]

my neighbor runs mame on his alienware, and lemme tell you, it is amazing. i think its overkill, but he loves it. some people mention killer instinct, but it runs as well as pac-man. cruisin' games? runs as fast as i have seen it run in the arcade. the only downsid? he paid 28 hundred dollars for it

[NiN^_^NiN]

My PII 266 plays neogeo games at almost full speed in mame full speed in neoragex so a 300 would work and i can play all the mame games besides the ki etc that u mentioned on my 700mhz pc it all works great i do say u need atleast a 300mhz cause when i used a frontend for my 266 bubble bobble wasnt at full speed cause of the overhead so a 500mhz is prob the min i would say if u wanna play all the good fighting games like sf2 and dalkstalkers

[IIOIOOIOO]

I found all these periods on the ground, I think they're yours.


..............

[pointdablame]

hahahahahahaha

Thank you IIOIOOIOO, I needed the laugh.

And thanks for all the info, I'm looking forward to this more and more each day.