Suggested MOBO/Processor combinations

[drventure]

I'm in a bit of a quandary about the MOBO and processor to use on the cab I'm trying to finish up.

Up till now, I've been running Mame on on my desktop to testing purposes and it's worked just fine.

The specs are
Intel D975xbx2 mobo
Intel Core 2 Duo 6700 and 2.66ghz
4gb ram
ATI Radeon x1900 graphics card, 512mb of DDR3 memory
4 drive raid 0+1

The cab itself, however, doesn't have a lot of room for a system. Originally, i thought I'd mount a whole small form factor case in there, just to be easy, but it's looking like there won't be enough room.

Ideally, I'd like to mount a Mini ITX MOBO that just uses onboard graphics and sound. Then, I'd just need a single drive and a PS. That, I believe I could fit in no problem.

I'm fairly sure the onboard sound of any mobo would be fine.

But I'm not sure which, if any, of the mini itx mobos have onboard graphics  comparable to a Radeon x1900. That card is at least 2 years old, so surely there are newer mobos now that have comparable graphics chipsets on them, eh?

And heck, maybe there's a better/faster/smaller solution now that the desktop I'm running on.

Anyone have any pointers?

[Gamester]

What kind of games will you be playing?

[drventure]

Generally Mame, I'm not looking to run the latest 3-d games that tend to require overclocking, but there's very few of them anyway.

Possibly a few emulators, Nintendo, Sega, etc.

And an audio juke (no video, though I plan to use Mala with videos for the front end)

I'm NOT planning on using this system to play newer PC games, those, I'll likely play on my desktop anyway.

My main concern in graphics. The Radeon appears to have enough horsepower to enable all the filters that Mame has available to make a hires LCD look very similar to an arcade monitor (blending and blurring colors etc). I know, it's not the +same+ but I'm not really a purist and besides, this cab is about as far from "traditional arcade cab" as you can get 

[Beretta]

whats your budget?

if you dont intend to OC then just about any board will do.

ECS boards are cheap, i've had a few and although they lack on OC options they was always stable as all sin.

i've seen some good deals on gigabyte 775 (intel) boards i think micro center just a few days ago had one for 40 bucks AR (after rebate)

gigabyte makes one hell of a good board, and usually can OC on them easily if so disired.

processor wise im really liking the benchmarks i've seen for the amd phenom II x2 550, it runs at about 90-100 bucks online, power wise it's close to a E7400..
it's been shown to be a good over clocker with about 3.7 typical some up to 3.9ghz..

it's basicly phenom II (quad core) that has defects in 2 cores, they've been disabled so it's a dual core.. some people have had success in unlocking the other 2 cores depending on the mother board & the cpu.. especially true for early shipments of the chip.. see sometimes they mark a processor for a lower rating then it really is to meet supply.. especially true for new chips.. this is true for both intel and amd.

so for example just because only 2 cores are activated at the factory you could get lucky and get one with 3 or 4 100% functional cores turning it into a quad.. this is not always the case.. as like i said the chip was released so that amd could sell some of it's faulty cpus by disabling the bad cores.. that would other wise go right into the trash.

probably more info then you wanted but it's nice to know, quad core however is of little use on mame.. as it barely can make use of 2 cores let alone 4.

if they ever successfully multi thread on a serious level mame performance levels will explode.

anyway the phenom II x2 550 is the chip im currently planing on using on my 2nd project.. my first the one im working on right now is just a shoe string budget practice run, although something better will probably be out by then.



i also like the e5200, it's a low end intel duo that has been labeled (dual pentium), it has a smaller cache but still a healthy amount clock for clock it should have little impact in mame, it sells for about 60-70 bucks.. a cheap 30-40 dollar mobo can be paired with it if you dont wanna over clock.. but has lots of room to OC, so this is really a good choice if you wanna OC, although for another 30-40 bucks the 550 is hard to resist it's a lot faster even at stock speeds.



P.S intel boards are absolutely snot for OC'ing.. they usually have little to no options in the bios for much of anything, sadly i have to recommend ECS over intels own offerings.

also if you just wanna play mame you can save some cash by dropping the 4 gb ram down to 1 or 2, 4ghb is extreme over kill.

dont worry about raid, it's more trouble then it's worth especially for mame, you will be sorely disappointed with the cost of getting 2+ drives setup with raid compared to the gain in speed you see.

graphics wise you're fine, infact it's over kill.. just about anything with say 32mb or more is plenty for mame.

[drventure]

Bi Beretta

Thanks for the info, but I might not have been clear
The specs I posted are for the machine I'm currently running. But I'm not going to be putting that in my cab. I just know that it seems to be able to run everything I'd want perfectly fine, so I'm using that as a basis for comparison.

I actually originally had a gigabyte mobo in it, but had to return it for some reason (that was 2 years ago, so I don't remember exactly why). The intel board replaced it and it's been utterly solid.

Just checked Newegg, something like this maybe?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135233

That's an ECS A780GM-M3 AM2+/AM3 AMD 780G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
It's only 54$, and a phenom II is 100$

It's got the AMD 780G graphics chipset onboard.

Anyone know how that graphics set compares to a radeon x1900?

[drventure]

Sorry, missed the budget question.

Pretty flexible, though I'd like to stay under 250$ for the mobo/cpu if possible. I've already got a PS, and a 1TB hd is about 80-90$. Wasn't really planning on having a floppy or CD in the thing. Will boot to a USB stick to pave it and I was going to go with a USB Wireless G card to connect to the rest of my network.

The only thing that might be a tad weird is, eventually I was hoping to hook up a +second+ monitor that would be a touch screen. That ESC mobo looks like it has DVI and VGA out, which should work great for that.

[Blanka]

This one is really cool:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813500022
The onboard 9300 is cool already, but PCI-X16 cards can also be added! And MINI-ITX WOOHOOH
Combine it with an E7400 or E7500 (or an E8400)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115056

[Beretta]

ya that dont look bad you should be able to get a 550, mobo, and a hdd for 250..

ddr2 memory is'nt to expensive if you wait sometimes you can get it for practically free AR..

if you're mostly worried about mame then the onboard video should do you just fine, and onboard sound should also be just fine.

1gb is enough 2gb kits are easy to find and will be PLENTY.

you can probably find better prices if you have time to wait.. check out slickdeals.net
it's a great place to find good deals.

[drventure]

@blanka
Sweet system there! Dual video, looks like pretty decent onboard video, audio, AND onboard WIFI!
and that mobo is tiny. It should easily fit (assuming I can find a relatively low profile cpu heatsink).

That just might be the keeper. Thanks for the pointers.

If anyone else has other reco's, let me know. I've got some time before I have to pull the trigger, so I'll be camping on techbargains and slickdeals I think 

[drventure]

Looks like this one got pretty good reviews.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131348&Tpk=ASUS%20P5N7A-VM

It uses the nVidia 9300 gpu, which sure seems to have decent specs.

this  board isn't quite as small, but it's got everything included also... Doh, take that back, no WIFI

Never really had any experience with ASUS mobo's, but the no wifi might rule this one out.

[Dr Zero]

There was a thread about 100 computers for sale at pacific geek http://www.pacificgeek.com/nooner.asp?P=SS http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=94319.0

It changes everyday but they all so far have been around $100 might be something to keep an eye on.

Also depends on what games you want to run you dont need the latest and greatest which is cool.

[drventure]

Well, just for everyone's info, I ended up picking up all the components the weekend.

I had a pile of gift certs to frys so I went that way instead of newegg. However, looks like the prices were within 5-10$ so there wasn't any great deals either way.

I ended up going with AMD. Never used them before so we'll see.

Mobo                  M3N78-VM
Processor           AMD athlon 5050e x2 64 (slightly slower at 2.6ghz, but a lot less power draw (45watts) and it's apparently quite overclockable, though I don't think I'll be going that route for now
2gb ram
1tb Western digital sata HD

One key factor was the onboard graphics. The Mobo has nVidia GeForce 8200, likely not quite as good as the 9300 on that P5N7A, but they were out of that one, and it was about 40$ more anyway.

I already had an old school IR wireless keyboard/mouse (but it was PS2, and this mobo only has 1 ps2 connection, so I scrounged around for a serial header and a 25pin to 9 pin adapter, boy I don't miss the days of serial ports!), but in the end got the keyboard mouse rig operational.

Getting Windows installed was a bear though. I don't have a cdrom to spare, nor a floppy, and I'm not intending on having iether one in this cab anyway, so this was my first foray into setting up a machine entirely via USB stick. Getting it bootable wasn't a prob, but getting that hd partitioned, formatted, making it bootable, etc was a real pain. I learned the hardway that my trusty old copy of Partition Magic won't work with drives that large, it just screws the partition table.

I ended up having to use GPArted, which worked, but only after switching the SATA drive to AHCPI (or whatever, I've probably got that acronym wrong).

I've benchmarked a couple games and so far so good. This machine seems to run neck and neck with the workstation that I've been running on. When I get more benchmarks, i'll post them to my project thread.

It even runs gridwars smoothly full screen with full effects.

I've got 15 days to return it if it doesn't spec out so, better start playing!