How's this system?

[endrien]

Hows this system for mame emulation and 3d emulation like n64,ps1 etc?
AMD Athlon 64 processor, 160 gb hard drive, 1 gb RAM, windows XP software and an ATI graphics card.
I can get it for 100-150$ and I figure it would be pretty decent.
Opinions?
I'm unsure what ghz it is or the name of the ati card yet.

[bkenobi]

You'll need a bigger HDD at some point (depending on what systems you expand to and if you want CHD's that won't play stored there).  Looks ok for 2D MAME and ok for most N64.

[mh12]

it's good!

CHDs you won't use... i hope that's a joke. why bother.

fine for anything 2D.. and more of it than you'll ever have time to play

[Beretta]

dunno about n64 never play it..

for mame 2d stuff it looks ok for the most part 3d will be pretty hit and miss.. mostly miss.

hdd wise you're ok a full set of CHD's are like 90gb i think.. most dont play or dont play well so you could easily cut that in half.. full set of roms are liek 20-25gb.

for most part you'll be ok

[endrien]

I doubt it would be miss, my crappy laptop can handle all my mame games fine, main reason I want a desktop in there is svideo to use a TV instead of a PC monitor.

[bkenobi]

You can get TV out other ways, but, for the price of that system, you might as well get the second PC.

I was trying to be a bit facetious about the CHDs on that system (or any system really).  I have a full set of CHDs for 0.125 or so and find that most games don't play that well and that about 3/4 of them are rhythm games anyway.  I wouldn't mind getting the LD CHDs, but they are so bloated that I can't really justify it with the current HDD in my system.

[Beretta]

I doubt it would be miss, my crappy laptop can handle all my mame games fine, main reason I want a desktop in there is svideo to use a TV instead of a PC monitor.

did'n tthe cab you bought have a working arcade monitor? just use that you dont need svideo out to hook up to one you can directly from the db15 vga port.

you said athlon 64 so im assuming it's a older single core 64, well even if it was a newer x2 you'd still need to OC It to play all games 100%

try out some of the 3d games on that system you'll see how badly it will choke try running mortal kombat 4, san franciso rush, or gauntlet legends by for example..

i doubt when you say your laptop handles all games fine you're actually trying to run the games im talking about, and im sure the athlon 64 can't.

im not saying that system wont be suitable.. im saying you should test the games you care about most before using it.. nothing will suck more then getting everything setup only to find you can't play a game you really want to.

if it's not fast enough for a game you wanna play then you have to decide if it's important enough to get a faster system or if you can live without it, but do this before you put the effort into setting everything up not after.

[bkenobi]

There is a difference between games that have a 3d type area and true 3d games.  As an example, you can move around in 3d with NBA Jam or TMNT, but those are not 3d games.  SF Rush is a 3d game and uses a 3DFX graphics accelerator in the cabinet.  That game (among others) requires the system to emulate the 3d hardware with your CPU.  Those games will not run at 100% speed on anything but a very fast system (by todays standards) as I have heard.  I still haven't seen Carnevil or any other 3d game run at full speed since I'm running an Athlon XP 3200+ in my cab.  Even when I ran some games on my primary system, they weren't full speed (Athlon x2 4600).

[endrien]

I doubt it would be miss, my crappy laptop can handle all my mame games fine, main reason I want a desktop in there is svideo to use a TV instead of a PC monitor.

did'n tthe cab you bought have a working arcade monitor? just use that you dont need svideo out to hook up to one you can directly from the db15 vga port.

you said athlon 64 so im assuming it's a older single core 64, well even if it was a newer x2 you'd still need to OC It to play all games 100%

try out some of the 3d games on that system you'll see how badly it will choke try running mortal kombat 4, san franciso rush, or gauntlet legends by for example..

i doubt when you say your laptop handles all games fine you're actually trying to run the games im talking about, and im sure the athlon 64 can't.

im not saying that system wont be suitable.. im saying you should test the games you care about most before using it.. nothing will suck more then getting everything setup only to find you can't play a game you really want to.

if it's not fast enough for a game you wanna play then you have to decide if it's important enough to get a faster system or if you can live without it, but do this before you put the effort into setting everything up not after.

The monitor wasn't working right and when I took it out to repair and put back in it didn't work.  My laptop can play any 2d mame game I've played, not sure about 3d.
Its a dell inspiron 1300 with
1.7ghz cpu, 512mb ram and intel 915gm/GMS,910GML express graphics.

[Beretta]

you can get a speed boost if you run mame on a 64bit os along with a x64 build of mame.

since you have a 64bit cpu, it wont be night and day compared to 32bit setup, but it is a measurable increase and every little bit helps.

[bkenobi]

2d games aren't really a good metric of "anything I throw at it".  I think the consensus is that a 1+ GHz system is perfectly good for playing any 2d game.  If you want to play 3d stuff, you need to get the latest and greatest multi-core beast and then overclock it way over 4 GHz.  I've heard people say their quad core blah blah blah can play everything perfectly, but then it turns out to be at ~80% frame rate.  IMO, that's not 100% perfect.

Either way, if you are happy with the games that you can play on your laptop, you should be good with that system assuming it's faster than what you are running now.

[Epyx]

Just find the most demanding game you like and use that as your benchmark...if its an older game and you don't like any of the subsequent games you will be fine...otherwise you will always be after faster CPUs as they come out and consider your current pc as "temporary"