Yeah, the newer the games you get you will want to look for the oldest version of mame and the romset that you can find. A "certain" site

has full rollback sets for download that have tons of versions optimized for all sorts of versions of mame. You can also look at specific emulators that run more efficiently than mame, and use your gfx processor, like
Model2emulator
Raine
nebula
zinc
final burn alpha
Then go from there. Get all the versions you can on a super striped down operating system and your ready to go. Check out Nlite, and trim down your xp disc.