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Author Topic: Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card  (Read 24069 times)

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Dillsta

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Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card
« on: March 15, 2009, 01:22:57 am »
Like the topic suggests, Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card?

Cause i don't want to go and have to buy a Wizz Bang one if i can just use a cheapo at get the same performance.

Blanka

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Re: Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card
« Reply #1 on: March 15, 2009, 03:49:16 am »
Not really. Only thing the GPU comes in is at scaling the frames to high-res computer monitors with CRT like overlays or realistic vector glow.
For use on a normal arcade monitor the GPU does close to nothing, and crappy GMA 950 is enough.

Dillsta

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Re: Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card
« Reply #2 on: March 15, 2009, 04:25:12 am »
Ok thats Good cause the motherboard im getting has a GMA 3100. Will this run 3d games on ZINC?

Im not to worried about that though.

BobA

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Re: Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card
« Reply #3 on: March 15, 2009, 01:02:50 pm »
A cheapo video card can do one thing of benefit.  It takes the load off of the CPU which is sharing ram with the on board video.  So you get a bit more umph out of your CPU if you can go with an external video card.

A quote from the MameDev Site

"How can I get games to run faster?

This is the most commonly-asked question in the emulation world. In general, there is not really that much you can do to significantly speed up a game. However, here are some things you can try to improve MAME's performance:

    * Use a faster CPU. This is the most reliable speed-increaser.
    * Upgrade your graphics card, or update your present card's drivers. Swapping your generic (cheap) card for a high-quality (not cheap) card will certainly boost performance. If you are using on-board (integrated) video, you'll see a great performance increase by simply getting a new graphics card. Check your graphics card drivers, too. Newer drivers — especially for cheaper cards — can make all the difference.
    * Get the latest MAME version. Or try an older/different one. MAME is in constant development. Due to transitional changes in the core code, some games run better/faster with different versions. Try and see for yourself which works best. "
« Last Edit: March 15, 2009, 01:07:00 pm by BobA »

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Re: Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card
« Reply #4 on: March 15, 2009, 03:12:02 pm »
Point to mention is that only the newer builds of MAME (post-0.106) take advantage of additional video or sound cards. Pre-0.105 versions do not require them nor would you see a massive marked increase in performance when using one. Plus with newer versions of MAME, you will not get a performance increase in those few classics that currently have speed issues.

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Re: Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card
« Reply #5 on: March 15, 2009, 03:52:56 pm »
Hopefully cuda will come into play soon. That would be a very useful mame component if not only cheaper cards supported it, but it could also make the need for 4ghz monsters less prevelant as we get closer to the more current romsets.

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Re: Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card
« Reply #6 on: March 16, 2009, 11:13:52 pm »
I'm a bit surprised that there isn't a "pirate" version of MAME that fully supports Direct 3D.  It would be pretty hard to implement, I suppose.

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Re: Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card
« Reply #7 on: March 17, 2009, 02:38:34 am »
Is there already support for Lindbergh or Naomi games?
Those systems use OpenGL and GPU's (Geforce 6600 in one system for example) on a linux kernel. Those OpenGL calls could be transferred to GPU's directly I guess.

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Re: Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card
« Reply #8 on: March 17, 2009, 03:01:59 am »
Is there already support for Lindbergh or Naomi games?
Those systems use OpenGL and GPU's (Geforce 6600 in one system for example) on a linux kernel. Those OpenGL calls could be transferred to GPU's directly I guess.

Apparently, that's against MAME policy. I voiced a similar thought and someone pointed out that MAMEs (according to the Wikipedia entry, I couldn't find the same at the MAME site) goal is to accurately recreate the hardware the games run on. Any other emulator team would most certainly do what you suggest. MAMEDev, it seems, will emulate the whole ---goshdarn--- GPU before they resort to pumping the OpenGL into a modern GPU. :-\

From what I can tell. Our savior won't be 4GHz CPU's but when MAMEDev starts optimizing for multiple CPU architectures.

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Re: Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card
« Reply #9 on: March 17, 2009, 05:43:08 am »
There are always other emulators that run games so much better than mame. See:

Zinc - ps1 arcade hardware
Model2Emulator
Nulldc and Nulldc NAMOMI ( dreamcast )
nebula
final burn alpha
kawaks
raine

what did I miss?

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Re: Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card
« Reply #10 on: March 17, 2009, 03:21:01 pm »
There are always other emulators that run games so much better faster than mame.

FTFY.  Faster might mean "better" for some people, but for me and others, it's not.


Is there already support for Lindbergh or Naomi games?
Those systems use OpenGL and GPU's (Geforce 6600 in one system for example) on a linux kernel. Those OpenGL calls could be transferred to GPU's directly I guess.

...From what I can tell. Our savior won't be 4GHz CPU's but when MAMEDev starts optimizing for multiple CPU architectures.

Sigh....

A. Have you benchmarked comparing video and "-video none"?  Less than 5% difference, average.  As high as 8.5% with propcycle, sure, but only 1.1% with tekken 3.  Using video cards is NOT the save all speed up people think it is.

B. Have you looked at video card comparison reviews?  Ones that compared image quality as well as benchmark speeds?  Different cards render different images from the same OpenGL or DirectX commands.  This goes against mame's "reproduce that game as faithfully as possible" goal (quote from the front page of the official mamedev site).

C. Even if mame went this way, it still would need to support systems that only have on-board video, or a different OS, or

D, ... Ahh, never mind.  If the above three don't get the point across, I'll just be :banghead: some more.  (I'll into techs for people who are actually interested; Lindbergh might be easy to emulate fast in a stand alone translator with only a few stuff emulated on the exact correct hardware, but wrong hardware and you're out of luck, for example.)


Just wait a couple years, and the PC hardware will be able to run it.
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Re: Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card
« Reply #11 on: March 18, 2009, 04:20:13 pm »
There are always other emulators that run games so much better faster than mame.

FTFY.  Faster might mean "better" for some people, but for me and others, it's not.


Is there already support for Lindbergh or Naomi games?
Those systems use OpenGL and GPU's (Geforce 6600 in one system for example) on a linux kernel. Those OpenGL calls could be transferred to GPU's directly I guess.

...From what I can tell. Our savior won't be 4GHz CPU's but when MAMEDev starts optimizing for multiple CPU architectures.

Sigh....

A. Have you benchmarked comparing video and "-video none"?  Less than 5% difference, average.  As high as 8.5% with propcycle, sure, but only 1.1% with tekken 3.  Using video cards is NOT the save all speed up people think it is.

B. Have you looked at video card comparison reviews?  Ones that compared image quality as well as benchmark speeds?  Different cards render different images from the same OpenGL or DirectX commands.  This goes against mame's "reproduce that game as faithfully as possible" goal (quote from the front page of the official mamedev site).

C. Even if mame went this way, it still would need to support systems that only have on-board video, or a different OS, or

D, ... Ahh, never mind.  If the above three don't get the point across, I'll just be :banghead: some more.  (I'll into techs for people who are actually interested; Lindbergh might be easy to emulate fast in a stand alone translator with only a few stuff emulated on the exact correct hardware, but wrong hardware and you're out of luck, for example.)


Just wait a couple years, and the PC hardware will be able to run it.

     Better is a subjective term. For me I like being able to play tekken on a 2ghz athlon from 1999 perfectly. I do on the other hand like that mame archives all of the actual code and hardware of the machine, so that one day many moons from now if something were to happen to all of the machines, we could bring it back. On the other hand, there is the mamedev crowd that is wanting to preserve all of the aspects of the machines themself, and others that just want to enjoy the game.
       My answer to all that protest 3rd party emulators is if it can be done more streamlined, why not do it. Why not just have 3d rendering report to a renderer like in many emulators (Nulldc for one), so that 3d information can then be passed to the gpu. If you are to separate the two from themselves then you can then support other people to find ways of better emulation of the graphics themselves. If setting for a specific game were not properly supported by the renderer then simply setting it back to software is always an option. It just would make so much sense to put more stress on the gfx card when processing the game, when you can get enormous cards for next to nothing now a days.
     I do apologize that what I have just said has been said a thousand times before, and is as equally non technical as many others. I also understand that by using the graphics cards is not as authentic, but I just wish that there were a more simple way that someone could figure out how to just pass rudimentary 3d information to the graphics cards, other than just scaling, and a few others. I don't necessarily just want all games right now to just run fast, I just think that it would allow programmers more wiggle room because they could implement more into a romset than they would have before.

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Re: Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card
« Reply #12 on: March 18, 2009, 06:08:10 pm »
If there are other emulators (as you stated) that do this kind of stuff then what would be the motivation to stray from the longstanding goal of the project? I'd rather see them continue down the road of adding laser disc games than stray from the goal.
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Re: Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card
« Reply #13 on: March 18, 2009, 06:40:38 pm »
     Better is a subjective term. For me I like being able to play tekken on a 2ghz athlon from 1999 perfectly. I do on the other hand like that mame archives all of the actual code and hardware of the machine, so that one day many moons from now if something were to happen to all of the machines, we could bring it back. On the other hand, there is the mamedev crowd that is wanting to preserve all of the aspects of the machines themself, and others that just want to enjoy the game.
       My answer to all that protest 3rd party emulators is if it can be done more streamlined, why not do it. Why not just have 3d rendering report to a renderer like in many emulators (Nulldc for one), so that 3d information can then be passed to the gpu. If you are to separate the two from themselves then you can then support other people to find ways of better emulation of the graphics themselves. If setting for a specific game were not properly supported by the renderer then simply setting it back to software is always an option. It just would make so much sense to put more stress on the gfx card when processing the game, when you can get enormous cards for next to nothing now a days.
     I do apologize that what I have just said has been said a thousand times before, and is as equally non technical as many others. I also understand that by using the graphics cards is not as authentic, but I just wish that there were a more simple way that someone could figure out how to just pass rudimentary 3d information to the graphics cards, other than just scaling, and a few others. I don't necessarily just want all games right now to just run fast, I just think that it would allow programmers more wiggle room because they could implement more into a romset than they would have before.

If you just want to enjoy the game then you could always walk up to your original cabinet and play it.  You DO own the original, right?

MAME, though inefficient by design, is an archive of arcade machines.  If some machine ceased to exist and it was properly emulated in MAME, you could go back and see just how said game looked/played, regardless of what performance hacks nvidia crammed into their latest drivers, which chipset software you installed for your board, and whether you set your audio mode on your SoundBlaster Audigy Over 9000 to game mode instead of movie mode.  The point of MAME is to bypass everything possible so that now, or 10 years from now, as long as a supported OS still exists, you can still experience the arcade game exactly as it was in the original machine, with all of the proper texture alignment, lighting effects, etc.

Offloading 3d rendering to the video card would be impossible while adhering to these respectable standards.  even the simplest operations vary by card.  How would you feel picking up an "old" arcade machine and saying "It didn't look like that in MAME...".  You'd be disappointed because MAME did not faithfully reproduce the original game.  Case in point: Around the time of the GeForce FX series, sites started reporting that the FX5xxx series cards were rendering textures oddly.  It turned out that NVidia, in a desperate bid to play games FASTER sacrificed image quality dramatically.  One feature, anisotropic filter, which affects the clarity of textures viewed at an angle (such as the floor of the 3d level fading off into the distance) was "tweaked" to render these textures with less detail than other cards.  The flaw could not be fixed at the driver level, and could not be fixed in any game, since the game sends the same Direct3D requests to every card, regardless of manufacturer.  The card itself handled the scene worse, but rendered it faster.  Needless to say the product line tanked.

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Re: Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card
« Reply #14 on: March 19, 2009, 12:55:21 am »
NVM just delete.
« Last Edit: March 19, 2009, 02:23:55 am by SavannahLion »

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Re: Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card
« Reply #15 on: March 19, 2009, 05:20:26 am »
Okay, an inteligent point deserves an inteligent answer.  This is a valid point, from a user's point of view:

My answer to all that protest 3rd party emulators is if it can be done more streamlined, why not do it. Why not just have 3d rendering report to a renderer like in many emulators (Nulldc for one), so that 3d information can then be passed to the gpu. If you are to separate the two from themselves then you can then support other people to find ways of better emulation of the graphics themselves. If setting for a specific game were not properly supported by the renderer then simply setting it back to software is always an option. It just would make so much sense to put more stress on the gfx card when processing the game, when you can get enormous cards for next to nothing now a days.

If this were easy while still allowing mame to render authentically (some other way), I'm pretty sure someone would have figured it out.  (It's actually closer to being possible now then it was pre-0.106, if I understand mame design correctly.)

However, from a developer's point of view, there are three major reasons besides the "goals" and "helps only a few games a small amount" points raised in earier posts, on why not in official mame.  The combination of the five all contribute to why it's the way it is.

Bugs, Fake bugs, and non-bugs:  MameDev removed the hiscore.dat hack because it introduced bugs that people reported as emulation bugs, but were introduced only because of the hiscore.dat code.  It was a headache to work with.  Using 3d cards for emulation (or resemblence there of) would be like adding back hiscore.dat.  (see example by VicBond007.)  Having the 3d card code done by 3rd parties would mutiply  bug report mix ups by the number of plugins (aka making it far worse than hiscore.dat).  At the same time, the changes themselves will introduce there own bugs (anyone remember the thirteen u updates in the 0.106-0.107 transition for the last video change?).

Increased amount of code to support, aka code bloat: Right now, official mame can render (post-emulation) the images three ways: d3d, ddraw, and gdi.  (There are other ways to render in other builds, sdlmame, etc).  However, this is post emulation.  (currently) If you wanted to do the emulation on the 3d card, each video chip emulated would need the current emulation way + a new added 3d card way (assuming only one 3d card way).  That means doubling the code (at least) of the hardest to emulate video chips (we don't need to speed up the old, easy to emulate chips on the 3d cards, even though those would be the easiest to do, right?).  Much of this could actually could be "pushed off" to 3rd party by creating a "middle langauge", something like what was done for easing up drc for the different OSes and 32/64 bit multipliers that drc speedups were facing.  However, that wasn't easy, and neither would doing the video; it would take some MAJOR recoding of all the video shuff.  Again.  Plus see bugs problems with 3rd party.

Portability (or lack there of): Unless coded correctly, adding 3d card use for emulation with reduce mame's portability.  Currently, mame runs on windows, MacOS, & linux (including PS3).  If done incorrectly, this could tie mame to one OS and one directX version (assuming it uses directX).  If directX or windows changes something needed by the 3d card code, SOOL until recoded.  But doing it correctly involves a lot more work than doing it quickly, and AFAIK, only a few (if not only one) people in mameDev have the skills to even think about doing it right.  And two of the three I'm thinking about don't use windows/vista, nor run mame in windows/vista; so the "most people use windows so why need portability? (so why not do it the easy way?)" point will not convice the majority of the people that might be able to do it, and the remaining wouldn't want to alienate some of the major coders in the mameDev by forcing windows only.


I'm not sure what's the biggest reason: bugs, code bloat, portability, GPU will only help a very few games a small amount, or keeping with the goals, that's the moving (or not moving, depending on your POV ;)) force on this issue.  Heck, probably most people differ the exact whys even when agreeing "no" view.  However, I wouldn't be surprised if something like this might happen in 5-10 years if CPU power increases slow down as much as people think.  (using CUDA gpu power is slightly more possible, IMO though.)  OTOH, if the CPU hardware continues to keep up with emulation, so only ~5% of the games run too slow in mame, I would be surprised if it does happen.

[tech=off]
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Re: Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card
« Reply #16 on: March 19, 2009, 07:01:16 am »
B. Have you looked at video card comparison reviews?  Ones that compared image quality as well as benchmark speeds?  Different cards render different images from the same OpenGL or DirectX commands.  This goes against mame's "reproduce that game as faithfully as possible" goal (quote from the front page of the official mamedev site).
The good thing is that the new original game systems use OpenGL and not DirectX. OpenGL is generally the same on OSX, XP and Linux.
If the original system had a Geforce 6600, Mame could advice a Geforce 6600 for best emulation, but I bet that 99.9% of Mame users would not give a sht if a Geforce 7600 or better would render those 6 out of 500000 pixels 1 shade from 255 levels darker. Making a Geforce 6600 emulator run by the CPU might be accurate, but would need a 8-core nehalem system overclocked to 20Ghz to run at 5fps. This is beyond nuts-ness.

I know 3d rendering of specific chips should be handled with care, but those games using OpenGL calls will look great to most of the users and run supersmooth on the average today machine. It would be sticking the head in the ground to port those titles to CPU rendering.

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Re: Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card
« Reply #17 on: March 19, 2009, 09:47:20 am »
but I bet that 99.9% of Mame users would not give a sht if a Geforce 7600 or better would render those 6 out of 500000 pixels 1 shade from 255 levels darker.

Problem is with the current graphics APIs there is no control over what the final output will looks like, you could feed in shades of gray and get a bad LSD trip out the other end currently,  this will change will Directx 11 and OpenCL, but until then it will not just be a problem of a half dozen pixels one shade off, it's more likely to be like the missing stones issue in Far Cry 2.





The way 3D game graphics are currently drawn results change from driver version to driver version, let alone from graphic chip to graphic chip, now think about what it be like to upgrade you graphics card or just update your graphics drivers and then find all the characters in your favorite fighter game now have no faces, or that driver game you love so much no longer has any road textures or maybe the sky is now pink in that shooter you played just last month.



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Re: Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card
« Reply #18 on: March 19, 2009, 10:58:44 am »
This has all gone a bit  :dizzy:

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Re: Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card
« Reply #19 on: March 19, 2009, 11:08:11 am »
then find all the characters in your favorite fighter game now have no faces, or that driver game you love so much no longer has any road textures or maybe the sky is now pink in that shooter you played just last month.
So what?
Pac Man started out having far from acurate emulation in Mame 1, and today it can drive a core2duo nuts if you want more accuracy and better looks. If we wan't to archive classic games, we should not give a sht about OpenGL glitches now untill there are OpenCL emulations of all graphic card/driver combinations in 2026. If we say 'don't port 3D calls yet" these games may be under soil by the time they become playable pixel-perfect. If they play mediocre today, people will redistribute them and keep them around until it is up to total Mame-dev-team standards.

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Re: Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card
« Reply #20 on: March 19, 2009, 09:39:10 pm »
Pac Man started out having far from acurate emulation in Mame 1, and today it can drive a core2duo nuts if you want more accuracy and better looks.

Oh Man, my Core 2 Duo is really struggling, it can only run Pac Man at 7366 FPS, I really need to run out and buy a GeForce GTX 295.

If we wan't to archive classic games, we should not give a sht about OpenGL glitches now untill there are OpenCL emulations of all graphic card/driver combinations in 2026. If we say 'don't port 3D calls yet" these games may be under soil by the time they become playable pixel-perfect. If they play mediocre today, people will redistribute them and keep them around until it is up to total Mame-dev-team standards.

Just because a game isn't in MAME or isn't working in MAME yet, doesn't mean that the dumping team haven't already dumped and archived the roms for later emulation. A game doesn't have to be fully emulated and playable to be preserved, even if it takes 10 years to be fully emulated the roms and other information will still be there to make it all work.

99% of the working games are playable on a overclocked Core 2 Duo, so what game do you think is going to magically become playable if 3D hardware acceleration is add to MAME. You'll find a lot of 3D games are still unplayable without an overclocked Core 2 Duo even if MAME supported 3D hardware acceleration, because not all 3D games run slow because of the graphics chip emulation, often it's the emulation of CPU or other things like the sound system that are actually slowing down the preformance of the emulation not the 3D graphics.

If you don't like the MAME Dev team standards, use another emulator, but stop bitching about something you get for free.
 

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Re: Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card
« Reply #21 on: March 20, 2009, 04:34:14 am »
Thanks for the awesome response U-rebelscum:-) I hadn't really thought about the ramifications of over developing the software, when it already supports so many platforms. I guess, as usual I was over simplifying the problem at hand, when the real issue is there is no concrete, set in stone standard for 3d processing. It just seems so simple when you look at your computer from the outside, and go: "Hey I have a massive gfx processor doing nothing but using power, and drawing little glowing things on the outside of shapes in asteroids. Why not just have it act as a second processor, just churning out what the main processor cannot handle." The only reason I use the term "cuda" is because I know of no other standard in technology that passes your processor load to your graphics proc.


If you don't like the MAME Dev team standards, use another emulator, but stop bitching about something you get for free.

I wasn't thinking that we were bitching, just merely pontificating about the usage of a massively huge and untapped resource that all computers have. Don't get me wrong, I am completely in awe with the work that the mame team is doing for the community. I love to be able to re live all of the classics. I just think if all of us are going to be able to properly enjoy the work that they are doing, they may have to take into consideration the usage of more than just your mobo,cpu, and ram.


*edit spellage
« Last Edit: March 20, 2009, 04:36:12 am by uprightbass360 »

Blanka

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Re: Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card
« Reply #22 on: March 20, 2009, 04:49:52 am »
I just wanted to say that Linbergh, Europe-R and RingeEdge systems could be emulated a lot quicker by using the videocard.
Quote from: Wikipedia
Lindbergh Specifications

    * CPU: Pentium 4 3.0 GHz with 1 megabyte L2 Cache, Hyper Threading Compatible, 800 MHz FSB
    * RAM: 184 pin DDR SDRAM PC3200(400 MHz) 512 MB × 2(Dual)
    * GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 6800 AGP (NV40), 256 Bit GDDR3 256 MB, compatible with Vertex Shader 3.0 & Pixel Shader 3.0
    * Sound: 64 channel, 5.1 ch SP-DIF
    * LAN: On board, 10/100/1000 BASE-TX. JVS I/O Connector
    * Serial: 2 Channel (can switch one channel between 232C and 422)
    * Other: USB port x 4, Compatible HDTV (High Definition), DVD Drive Support, Sega ALL.NET online support
    * Operating System: Linux[26]
    * Protection : High Spec original security module.

The Sega Lindbergh standard sit-down cabinet uses a 1360x768 WXGA LCD display.
That's just a PC, and a VMware like solution would be perfect to run those titles. Emulating the Pentium IV on a modern Core2Duo, and emulating a Geforce 6800 on a modern GTX280 would be very very strange. A good virtualisation would be enough.

If you don't like the MAME Dev team standards, use another emulator, but stop bitching about something you get for free.
I don't want MAME to be free. I want it to be GPL-ed by SUN or Apple, have the MAME team earn a decent 100K salary by working for either of them, together with a decent business model to get legal non-DRM ROMS in the iTunes store.
The free-ness makes it available only to a limited amount of users, where I think these classics belong to cultural history and should be available to all earth citizens, and not through a crappy Wii or PS3 store that is out of business in 2012 allready and the game being locked to 1 console. More people play Pac-Man on virtual Wii or on crappy Flash game sites than on MAME, and that is sad, really really sad. It's like the wasabi you get in most sushi restaurants today: based on mayonnaise  :cry:

Nice example:
Gerrit made a awesome N64 emulator for the Mac. Last update? December 2007? Why? Gerrit makes iPhone apps now, and probably he earns better from that than from people like me who donated to his N64 project. Guess it's the same with MameOSX' Dave D (stuck at 0.124), and I bet the MAME team has to earn their bread and gas-bills somewhere else too.

Business is not dirty and can speed up things too. Take Virtual Box for example. This home-brew project was a nice promise as alternative to WM Ware and Parallels. Sun bought it, but it stayed GPL licensed. I never had as many and good updates to Virtual Box since SUN took over. The project is very mature now and even does OpenGL rendering.
« Last Edit: March 20, 2009, 05:07:45 am by Blanka »

BASS!

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Re: Does Mame Take Use of Graphics Card
« Reply #23 on: March 20, 2009, 04:57:30 am »
mmmmmmmmmmm sushi