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| Suggested MOBO/Processor combinations |
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| 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? |
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