which mame version to use?

[mlcampbe]

I've got an old pentium 3 machine with 352mb ram that I am using for mame. It currently has mame 0.96 on it and it works fine. I am doing some work and wonder if I should upgrade the mame software. I know I can't use the latest versions but what is the last version that would work well on an older machine that is used to run old games (pacman, dk, etc..)

[Ginsu Victim]

I think you're pretty much at the cut-off.

[bkenobi]

I could be wrong, but there shouldn't be any problem upgrading even to the newest version.  The only thing is that you won't be able to play the most recent games.  All the games you currently have will still work (once updated to the current version of course).

I don't know that this is an advantage though.  If it's working now and you don't see anything you just have to play then I'd just leave it as is.  Don't break a working setup just cause it's an old version number!

[Paul Olson]

You won't be able to play DK past version .120 with that computer. My Athlon XP 2500+ couldn't handle it after emulated sound was added.

[Turnarcades]

Stay where you are at .96. Graphics and sound changes began with 0.97, then there was a big re-write at 0.106. Tests I have done at these marks showed that without the use of D3D capable graphics cards anything over about 0.105 will struggle on certain specs, and even with the highest P3 PC and decent graphics/sound cards there will be issues with certain games that shared a certain hardware type.

[zallax]

Actually, 0.106 should be good as that was the last stable build before major graphics changes.

0.106 - good
0.106u1 - bad

[Kayden]

If it works, don't fix it.   

With that machine, you wouldn't be able to play more than you do already, and as I've read, and others have stated, you're likely to only hurt performance.