How would this "PC" fare?

[endrien]

I put pc in "" because its a server.
Specs:
2.8 Ghz Xeon, 1 GB DDR, 3 x 76GB SCSI U320
How would it fare in mame?

[Beretta]

well Xeon actually covers a HUGE array of processors.

2.8ghz gets us into a ball park, but still could be several different cores iirc.

the 1gb ram should cover you, you wont need all those hdd's though.

the best solution here is to actually test the games you like best on it..

it wont play a lot of the 3d games or chd's at 100%, it might be a "server" but in this case all it is a beefed up cpu (usually in the form of large cachce and some other tweaks), and scsi instead of ide or sata, it might also support pci-x (64bit pci, not to be confused with pci-e).

anyway my point is dont expect it to be a monster just cause it's got a Xeon.
your best bet is to actually test it out.

although i woudl say it should fair pretty well on everything except 3d and chd games.
but then again almost nothing fairs well against those.

[Ginsu Victim]

you wont need all those hdd's though.

Why not? I've maxed out my 250 GB.

[u_rebelscum]

2.8ghz gets us into a ball park, but still could be several different cores iirc.

Yeah, a quick wiki, and it looks like two generations of (dual) P4s, two gens of core 2 (quad), and a quad core i7 all came out with models running at 2.8 ghz.  (for a total of 5 different xeon cpus @ that speed)

I doubt the one you're looking at is an i7 as they usually come out in multiples of 3 in memory.  So depending how old the "PC" is, it's either a Core 2 or a P4 based CPU. 

[Beretta]

you wont need all those hdd's though.

Why not? I've maxed out my 250 GB.

you must be running more then mame, not even a full set of roms + chd's will run that high.. not even half that infact.

imo it woudl be better to get a single drive then try to spread all that out on 3 drives anyway.

2.8ghz gets us into a ball park, but still could be several different cores iirc.

Yeah, a quick wiki, and it looks like two generations of (dual) P4s, two gens of core 2 (quad), and a quad core i7 all came out with models running at 2.8 ghz.  (for a total of 5 different xeon cpus @ that speed)

I doubt the one you're looking at is an i7 as they usually come out in multiples of 3 in memory.  So depending how old the "PC" is, it's either a Core 2 or a P4 based CPU. 

actually i think we can narrow it down to p4 now that i think about it, core 2 is ddr2/ddr3 and i7 is ddr3 based..

im not 100% certain but i dont think mame is to impressed with large caches which along with the multi processor support is the primary advantages of the xeon, although i've not done any serious testing.. if that be the case he's not likely to see much better results then any run of the mill p4 thats perhaps a few 100mhz faster then the xeon.

when in doubt test it, i was pretty surprised when two systems i was looking at for my project, turns out a 2.8ghz celeron ran better then a athlon xp 2400.

the interesting thing here is the celeron has a faster "rated" FSB 100 x4, over 133x2
but it's cache is nearly non existant.. under most benchmarks the celeron is horrible and the athlon would handidly win. but for some reason in mame it was the reverse.. and i can only surmise that cache must not be of must use in mame.. or at least not as much as raw mhz.. 2ghz for the athlon and 2800 for the celeron.

im thinking the emulation in mame must need to execute instructions very fast (especially seeing it has several cpu's to emulate at once) with each instruction being simple in operation.

sort of like RISC chips execute very simple instructions and make up for it in volume rather then complexity.

but this is just my half baked theory.

[Epyx]

you wont need all those hdd's though.

Why not? I've maxed out my 250 GB.

You also have to have the processing power to run the CHDs that you populate the space with and imo that 2.8ghz won't for most of them so why even populate the HD with them? I would agree with that processor you would do just fine with 1 of them...but if you have 3 available by all means