Hardware Compatibility

[Dillsta]

Hey im looking at upgrading my arcade machine, and was wondering if these parts i'm going to order will make me be able to run most games?

Intel Dual Core E5300 / 2.6GHz / 2MB Cache / 800FSB / LGA775
XFX nForce 610i Intel Mainboard - 2x DDR2 / 4x Sata Raid / 1x IDE / Gigabit Lan / Onboard VGA (GeForce 7050)
1gb ram
plus already have power supply, harddrive etc.

Edit: and can someone tell me if i will be able to use that proceesor on the mother board?

[Lyellin]

Off the top of my head on the processor/mobo combination, I don't know, but this is something reasonably easy to figure out:

The site where you are buying the mobo should also contain the information for the CPU socket type the board fits. These could be things like the LGA775 listed in your processor line.

So in other words, you want to check out the place that you are buying this from, and make sure that that motherboard fits a CPU socket of LGA775.

[Dillsta]

Yea they are both 775 sockets, but i remember seeing somewhere that evan if they are both 775's the MB still may not support the model of cpu

[Lyellin]

At best, go to the manufactor's website for the mobo, and check it there. They'll have a compatability sheet I'm sure.

Running out door, apologies for typos.

[Turnarcades]

Aaaaah...... the old 'how long is a piece of string?' question. Again here is an extract from an old post of mine....

You're going to get a huge range of opinions on this so let me just give you some benchmarks I'm happy with after much testing:

P3 1Ghz, 128/256mb RAM, on-board graphics and sound; More than good enough to cover most arcade games (even Neo-Geo) excluding most .chd games and more advanced polygonal (post-16-bit era) games like Tekken etc. Some Midway games will run ok with a small amount of frameskip but others will be far too choppy to play properly. Will be able to play pretty much all 16-bit era consoles and lower with no trouble. 32X+Mega CD emulation is near-perfect, and if you add a decent graphics card you should be able to squeeze N64 emulation out of it or similar.

P4 1.6Ghz+, 256/512mb RAM, on-board graphics+sound; As above but will play some .chd and Midway games better, plus you will see noticable improvements in 3D fighters etc. N64 emulation is great even without an extra graphics card, plus you can run PS1 and a few other consoles on the same level with little trouble. Noticable improvements in rom boot times and lag/frameskip across all platforms.

P4 2.4Ghz+, 1Gb RAM, decent graphics+sound cards; As previously but will be closer to achieving playable speed on the most demanding MAME games. More RAM should improve seamless launching between emulators/games/frontends and allow for more front-end frills and visual filter effects on games with little impact on performance.

This is just my opinion after much testing of various-grade platforms. I advise using XP (but be sure to remove/stop all unwanted services and memory-sapping background apps) and simpler front-ends that don't demand too many resources if you go further down the scale. I will also add that when using either of the first two specs You would be better off with a pre-0.106 build of MAME as newer versions have compatibility problems on older hardware (trust me on this one) and from 0.100 onwards don't really bring much worthwhile to the table anyway.

Whilst this doesn't directly answer your question, I've used this info to demonstrate the misconception that a few mhz of power extra will not rocket performance. It's a misconception that you can aim for a 'perfect speed' MAME spec, and instead you should be looking at getting the majority working or aiming for a game you definitely want to run. Forking out for top brass for a handful of games you aren't arsed about still running iffy is a waste of cash.

[u_rebelscum]

Well, I checked the manufacture's site for the OP, and the E5300 isn't listed as compatible or incompatible.  Plus there are two (or 6?) 610i boards in the table, and half of them are more compatible than the other half.

Since the Pentium Dual core* is in the same family as the Pentium 4 & Pentium D, I would guess that the e5300 would work on the more compatible boards since it's compatible with all the P4, PD and pentium Dual cores in the table, but I have no idea on the less compatible boards.  I'm just guessing though, so no garauntee.


*Note: Core 2 Duo is different family even though the names are close..